SPFPP 337: Inside the SPFPP Herpes Stigma Conference - Recap & Insights
If you missed the herpes stigma conference, you’ll be able to view the recordings from it along with other potentially useful recordings that range from sexuality education, to mental health stigma, to healthcare stigma, to the the descriptive Analysis of the 2024 herpes stigma survey, but here’s a podcast recapping the conference and going a little into what you may have missed. The herpes conference recordings are available 1 by 1 if there’s just a portion of the conference that appeals to you or your team. If you’d like training on herpes stigma for you health organization, you can reach out for a herpes stigma minimization training.
Episode 337 Transcript
Welcome and Conference Highlights
00:00:00 Courtney Brame: Hello, welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brame. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that supports people navigating herpes stigma, mostly through holistic approaches, managing people's emotional health, uh through yoga, meditation, one-on-one support calls, and community engagement events. Uh we utilize a lot of educational communities if you will uh like healthcare fields, sex educators, um different like I don't know how to say this but like alternative lifestyle communities. I think that's the best way. uh and we'll do like you know how to talk about your STI status workshops um in order to just expand the message about herpes education and herpes stigma in this resource. This nonprofit started as a suicide prevention awareness resource for people who were struggling with herpes stigma. Um, I am the founder of the organization and I'm someone who is living with herpes and um, I saw that there were a lot of people who were struggling with stigma in 2017. This was 2017 when I started to find communities out there of people who were living with herpes.
00:03:22 Courtney Brame: And that led to this podcast that you're listening to now, which uh I've interviewed a lot of people who were comfortable with being interviewed about their experiences navigating stigma. I've also branched out into interviewing health care providers, um mental wellness professionals, sex educators, uh sexual health related organizations as well. So you'll hear a little bit of that throughout this podcast also. Um, just to give you a little bit of background. So, yeah, not yesterday. Today is two days after the conference and I'm still riding a high from it, y'all. Um, this conference itself is the first of hopefully many at the Something Positive for Positive People um herpes stigma conference. Uh it was way beyond my expectations and I want to thank all of the attendees who came. We had 93 people who were on the call at the most. So at the most we had 93 people on the webinar. Um, we had uh at by the time I got to my keynote at the end of the day, we had 69 people at the start of it and then like um I hung out a little bit afterwards and some people got to see my excitement, my relief, my mood change.
00:04:49 Courtney Brame: Uh, and I just want to thank those I think there were like 63 people that stuck around for a little bit. Uh, thank y'all. Thank y'all for being as engaging as you were uh among one another in the chat. I saw that there were people who are living with herpes who shared some experiences. I saw that there were some health professionals who were, you know, validating and being supportive as well. Uh I loved the engagement. I saw some of the comments. Some people said that this, you know, was probably one of the best conferences that they've been to. I want to thank our presenters, Dr. Evelyn Molina Dacker who uh is the creator of the STARS Talk which is a framework that I use to teach people how to discuss their sexual health status with partners and not only that but also uh their relationship expectations. Uh she presented on uh stigma in healthcare and really spoke to ways to minimize how stigmatizing we can be as health professionals for our patients.
Guest Speakers and Deep Dives into Stigma
00:05:54 Courtney Brame: I say we are like…. I'm a health care provider. I'm the messenger. Um and she asked a poll question and there were a lot of health care professionals who were there which really surprised me because I put this conference together to just give some information to people who were living with herpes. But I honestly saw a lot more “.gov” uh Planned Parenthood and “.edu” email addresses that registered. So, I didn't see too many personal emails. So, I was glad that I brought Dr. Derer on to speak to that. Um, and we also learned about the STARS talk a little bit for not only guiding patients through their own conversations, but this is also something useful for people in their day-to-day life. And then we shifted into Nikita Fernandez, who's a sex therapist and psychotherapist, and she rocked it, y'all. So the title of the conference is sexual health is mental health and the title of her talk is sexual health is mental health which arguably should have been the keynote because me following up with these two back-to-back was probably not my best idea.
00:07:06 Courtney Brame: However, it did tell the story because Nikita is a sex therapist and psychotherapist and someone who self-disclosed, which I was so glad she did. And then she touched on self-disclosure as well as a mental health professional. And she spoke about some really important things. One of which is how little information that does exist and the importance of this information that we were able to present in the keynote and the support and the resources that Something Positive for Positive People is best able to provide. So, not only does it speak to the limited availability of said information, but it also speaks to the importance of our existence as an organization that provides these resources and that is looking to get the information about people's lived experiences out there into the world because it's not there. She struggled to find resources that were at least recent. So, um, her earliest or her most recent data, I believe, came from 2014, but she spoke to a lot of the psychological and emotional health components of stigma that a person with herpes is facing and how even as healthcare or mental health providers, we can be supportive to them.
00:08:25 Courtney Brame: But she really did a great job speaking to the personal experience and the professional mental health experience. So um if you're someone who would like to have that perspective brought into your organization um I strongly encourage you to reach out um you can reach out to me and I can connect you with her but if you've attended the conference then you know how to get a hold of her as well. Um from there we shifted to only the people who came to the conference and will have been able to watch this. We were not able to record it, but the No Shame in This Game documentary recording with Jolene Hernandez, who's the producer of the documentary where she highlighted the experiences of some people who are living with herpes on video. So, you can see that what she did was she wore a sign that said, "I have herpes. Ask me questions." And she wore it to I believe it was Washington Park. Um not Washington Park, it's a big park in New York City. And uh she had it's a professional documentary.
00:09:23 Courtney Brame: It's 22 minutes long. Uh there's a variety of ways that you can watch the documentary. Uh and I'll figure out how to get linked to that because this was something that was like a special added bonus to people who attended the conference live. Uh so yeah, we were unfortunately unable to uh have access to that recording, but uh you can go to noshameinthisgamefilm.com and see where you can access the live showings cuz she only does live showings which is really beautiful about this too. Um, and then we shifted into Dakota Rampen's presentation which was also phenomenal because this is really speaking to stigma minimization. So stigma minimization uh is a phrase that we've come up with because I don't like STI minimization. So it started as STI minimization. I'm sorry I said that wrong. I don't like STI prevention. To prevent means that if you do these things, that thing that you're attempting to prevent from happening will not happen.
00:10:31 Courtney Brame: I think that that word is way too absolute, especially with something like herpes being considered an STI that, you know, we frankly is a very tricky virus. And we don't have a way of actually preventing someone who has herpes from giving someone else herpes. Even if you do uh wear condoms or limit partners or uh practice mutual monogamy, do the things that the CDC says will prevent you from getting an STI. So, what Dakota spoke to is stigma minimization, which is the integration of people's lived experiences with navigating stigma into sex education and STI prevention through efforts. So, the goal is to reduce the possibility of transmissions, right? We see what to do, but we don't know how to do it. And she does a really phenomenal job of bringing this into a youth education standpoint because it's about sexuality education. So she takes Dr. Dacker’s STARS Talk and she makes it accessible to youth… um she didn't say appropriate. She used a different word um I forget what the word is but you'll be able to know what I'm talking about if you attended the conference.
Thank You to Our Sponsors
00:11:47 Courtney Brame: And if you haven't attended the conference, you'll know what I mean when you watch her presentation as well. Um, the other thing uh that we had was one of our sponsors, which I want to shout out our sponsors. Thank you, Wisp. Uh, the … Oh my god, like the hats. Y'all love those stigma hats with the line going through it. Uh, we were able to give away a bunch of hats for the conference. Um, Wisp is a reproductive wellness. I think they're mostly geared towards women. You see a lot of women's reproductive uh health products. Uh, things for UTI. Um, of course, like contraceptives, birth control. Um, these are things that uh, Wisp handles. Uh, so you can check them out as well. And then we also have um, Affirm Arizona. So, Affirm A, it's Affirm sexual and reproductive health for all. Um, they are located in Arizona.
00:12:47 Courtney Brame: They have multiple locations. This is a place where you're able to get uh sexual and reproductive health care needs met. Uh, so I want to thank them. And then I also want to thank the American Sexual Health Association who also had a presentation offering their resources. I'm waiting to hear back. By the time this is up, I'll know and it'll more than likely be up. But they have additional herpes related resources and education resources for providers and for people living with herpes. We had Fred himself come in who's a communications director of the organization. Uh he gave us a presentation letting us know what they had to offer and he's been in the field for he's been there for 27 years so he knows a thing or two. So I want to shout out our sponsors and just… incredible. We were able to between that and ticket registrations uh bring in $12,500 to the nonprofit organization. So these are tax-deductible purchases that you make through the Something Positive for Positive People website.
Looking Ahead: The Safe Sex Expo and Keynote Data
00:13:49 Courtney Brame: Uh with this money, we are able to pay the speakers first off. Um, and then I was also able to invest some of that into another event which we're calling the Safe Sex Expo for uh September 29th in New York City. And that event is going to highlight the spectrum of safety and pleasure. So the same way that you saw these four workshops today, we got a little bit about it. It was mostly, you know, herpes stigma and that was the focus. But you know, we don't have to make this so serious, right? It can be fun. It can be playful. Uh there can be some sexy elements to it, right? So, we want to make safety sexy. And that means like we can talk about how to the how of like talking about conversations. We'll have Dr. Dacker at this conference as well. And we'll have Dakota actually will be there as well.
00:14:44 Courtney Brame: And then uh one of my board members, one of my other board members cuz Evelyn's on the board too. uh Jordan Jones and then we'll have Steph Zapata who I also want to shout out who is the SLAM conference Sexuality Liberators And Movers is what SLAM stands for. Um and she was someone that I consulted on getting this conference created. So I want to give a big shout out to Steph Zapata uh Rise with Steph on social media if you want to follow. Um, but yeah, if you want to be connected to Steph, then hit me up and I will be able to make that happen. I also want to thank Oh, I have to thank Megan, our principal investigator who put the survey together. I want to thank Lindsay and I want to thank Dr. Amber Sofus as well for contributing to the the data review of the keynote because without them I would have just been up there talking and rambling and I would have probably lost a little bit of credibility with how I wanted to speak to the survey data.
00:15:49 Courtney Brame: But they really coached me up well on being able to offer a descriptive statistics analysis with the survey that we got which is the keynote as I transition into that. Um, yeah, the keynote. So, we found some really cool, cool is the wrong word for this, very insightful and I'm excited still riding my high from the conference but also just looking at that data in the way that I did like I am confident that with some very professional help with some funding uh we're we'd be able to put together a bomb research study on herpes not just stigma but we as you'll see when you purchase the recording if you haven't already you'll see that we looked at uh people's people's experience with outbreaks, how long they last, how often they get them, uh the intensity of it, the treatment options, the alternative treatment options, how many people are taking antivirals, how many people aren't taking antivirals. We look at the ability to predict outbreaks and I think that we saw that a significant number of people were able to predict outbreaks two to three days out beforehand which speaks to the safety of a person you know who knows their herpes status as opposed to a person who doesn't.
00:17:12 Courtney Brame: So there's a lot of things that can be taken away from our conference, our data analysis, I was thinking about putting this survey information out there and just making a chart, but I think that it needs to be a little bit more clean before we can offer something like that. So bear with me as we do this. And honestly, we may have to create another survey that uh we can get we can get like more thorough uh and detailed information from because of some of the questions that came up during the conference as well. Because there is more to explore, right? We saw the demographic information. We saw where people are searching from, which uh Texas, California, and New York are like the top three hotspots for genital herpes searches. We're seeing that there's a 160% increase of genital herpes searches this year so far already compared to the year 2023. So, um I'm not going to go into the exact statistics, but some other things that we covered were communication between patients and health care providers about sex and sexual health.
00:18:21 Courtney Brame: We talked about uh condom use among people who are living with herpes. According to our sample, we also spoke to uh some of the mental health components like I'll I'll share this a third of the people who have uh who took our survey said that they had suicide ideation after their diagnosis. And something to flush out even more would be, you know, are these people who are single or in relationships? Are these men? Are these women? Are these people who are um of queer identities or heterosexual? Like what other factors are there that play a role in this? And these are things that we would be able to get access to with more funding, with um more time and with the people, with the resources. And so for me, this conference really established our credibility because I remember in 2017 when I started the podcast, like I tried to get I I tried to ask these questions and offer these resources and people just looked at me as if I was a dude with a podcast.
00:19:20 Courtney Brame: And you know, I understand like everybody has a podcast, but like this podcast has purpose. This is literally a podcast of purpose. And I know that there are others out there in such a way, too. But y'all won't believe some of the messages that I get from people privately. And these are messages from people who will never say anything verbally as far as how much this impacts them. So, it was nice to be able to put a conference together and see so much engagement from people who have whatever level of vested interest that they have in herpes stigma education and being able to help minimize the impacts of stigma, especially the psychological effects of it. Um because again, one-third of people have expressed suicide ideation and this has been consistent across many of our surveys. But some other things that we covered are disclosure uh and not disclosing and people's reasoning behind not disclosing. And a big chunk of that has been that people don't know how to talk about it.
Shifting Focus to Stigma-Free Care
00:20:23 Courtney Brame: People don't know how to talk about their sexual health. And that's what we're here for. We're teaching people how to do that. Um, we're even teaching health professionals how to um offer stigma-free sexual histories. And when I say stigmafree, what I mean is um I compare it to trauma informed. Trauma informed, to me, avoids re-triggering a person whereas you can't avoid triggering me as somebody who has herpes when we need to talk about herpes, right? And herpes stigma. So we want to engage in a way that is empowering and educational and informative and honest, right? So we can do that and engage with people in a stigma-free way without avoiding their triggers by understanding that, you know, not only is it possible that I'm like, I'm always triggered. I think about uh the Incredible Hulk in the Avengers when he was Bruce Banner, his alter ego in human form and someone goes like, you know, what how do you keep from getting angry and transforming into the Hulk and losing control?
00:21:24 Courtney Brame: And he started unbuttoning his shirt. He was like, well, that's the key. I'm always angry, right? So, I'm always triggered, right? And uh I think that the tools and resources and education to navigate you know a person who is in that constant state is more effective than attempting to avoid it because it's unavoidable. So um that's a simulated experience. This is something that I announced that we're offering uh through Something Positive for Positive People. For that please get in contact with me directly courtney spf.org. Uh last things that we covered um actually I think that was that was most of it. Yeah. So demographic information outbreaks uh treatment. Oh um triggers. So, uh, I already shared this, so I'm comfortable with sharing this now, but 15% of people said that their emotional health is a clear emotional stress. I'm sorry, emotional stress is a clear indicator of um, a trigger for outbreaks like if they aren't in a good emotionally healthy state.
00:22:30 Courtney Brame: Um a lot of people on the other and were allowed to write in they put that uh poor sleep quality and lack of sleep. These were heavy contributors. And I want to just announce this like we have yoga classes uh for members. So if you're someone who's living with herpes and emotional stress and sleep are triggers for you to have outbreaks, please consider becoming a member. You'll have access to our letting go uh yoga class series which consists of 20 um sessions of yoga yin style. It's yin yoga so it's very relaxing, very meditative. Uh you can access those. I encourage you to do it before bed. Um and what I do is I apply Dr. David R. Hawkins uh mechanism for letting go which is it's a book called letting go. Um, and it really speaks to experiencing your emotions in order to be able to uh surrender them and let them go. So, the yoga and meditation classes, there's 20 of them.
00:23:35 Courtney Brame: I utilize that from a lens of uh someone who is navigating herpes stigma that's available to Something Positive for Positive People members. You can visit www.spfpp.org/membership org/membership and uh that'll give you access to those classes. But I'm also uh I I just moved across the country from Portland, Oregon to uh I wanted to be closer to New York City. I wanted to be in New York, but I didn't want to have a bunch of roommates in order to be able to afford it. So, um I just settled into northern New Jersey. Um, I'm pretty easily able to get to New York. So, um I'm going to be pursuing more of this uh public health collaboration efforts, uh more yoga classes as support. Um oh, excuse me. And um um man, I guess I'm losing my voice. I did talk a lot over the last couple days and people keep asking, you know, how the conference was and I I keep having to have that conversation.
00:24:41 Courtney Brame: So, if you're on Instagram and you ask me this, I'm going to send you to the most recent live show that I did where I share how the conference was. Uh I I talked about it in detail one time, but um this is for, you know, anyone who might be on the fence about attending the conference or if you have attended, this is a thank you to you. Um I appreciate you prioritizing this, y'all. It means a lot to me that this is so important. Like I I feel like everyone there felt that this conference was something important, that it was something of value, that it was something useful, that uh they were able to take something away from or you were able to take something away from this and apply it whether that be to your personal life, if you have herpes or if you know a loved one who does, a partner, or if you're someone who's in the medical field and you serve people with herpes and you recognize that there's just not a lot of information out there.
00:25:34 Courtney Brame: And one thing that I learned is that health care providers like the y'all are the initial touch point of stigma and STI prevention, right? Because not how you deliver a diagnosis determines not only how a person discloses their status, but if they go on to disclose their status. And how they go on to talk about their sexual health with partners, how they talk about their relationships, how they go on to feel empowered and educated enough to initiate conversations about sexual health with patients. because we also saw that there's an opportunity there for providers to um get uh get patients talking about their sexual health and these are all things that I believe support STI prevention efforts and I think that they minimize the psychological impacts of stigma which we see at their to me at least worst is suicide ideation among one-third of our sample. So, um, I had someone comment when I was, um, I made a podcast episode about what the conference was intended to be about, and they commented. They said, "Uh, I don't understand what the conference is. Uh,
00:26:45 Courtney Brame: What am I getting for my money? What's the value proposition?" And I don't have I don't know like I don't I don't know that I can like really sell anybody on attending the conference or sell anybody on supporting Something Positive for Positive People. It's like for the last seven years I've been interviewing people and they've been talking about their struggles and the need for more of these resources and hi here's the resource it exists. Um, one of the issues is like I see all the time there are people who do amazing, phenomenal things, but no one really knows about what they do. And then there's people who, you know, are amazing and phenomenal and people know what they do, but they spend 85% of their time telling people what they do and so much less time actually doing the thing. So, um, this podcast has really become a way of telling people, you know, the how and the what and the why. And for the last 7 years, this is what we've been doing, like explaining to people the importance of these resources and giving people a sense of hope, security, and community.
Future Events, Funding, and Wrapping Up
00:27:53 Courtney Brame: Uh, and in addition to that, like I I don't I don't know what else to do, right? I put on a conference and this is funny too, y'all. Like I'll advertise free things all the time for people to come learn about herpes stigma, learn how to talk about their sexual health, and I make it with no dollars and like nobody comes. But then I put this conference on for $75 and I get 120 people to register. It was so wild to me. Um, and I'm so glad that we were able to do that because I don't, you know, we get donations and we've had a couple of um, opportunities for funding, but I don't foresee in the near future, you know, really having um, the funds to put on things like this. So, I'm taking the money from the conference and putting on this expo. Uh we're seeking vendors and sponsors and uh it's in New York City uh on September 29th again and we're collaborating with uh the No Shame in this game film documentary because she's very well connected here in New York um and able to you know help with making the event an event like I didn't have my expectations for the conference like were completely different than what actually happened y'all.
00:29:11 Courtney Brame: So, I guess I can share a little bit of personal stuff here, but when I put it out, um it was I wanted to share the survey with people and I wanted to bring people with herpes together. So, I put it out and I was on the dating app. I put uh I I shared a lot of uh posts there. I put the posts on LinkedIn. Um I put it on my social media and nobody was registering. And then when I started to see, you know, Planned Parenthood emails, I started to see.gov emails.edu edu emails. I started to learn that yes, I serve people who are living with herpes. That's my community, but it's the health care field. Like that's my target audience, people who are in health care, nurses, public health professionals, uh disease intervention specialists, right? Like I started to go back through my old emails before I made Something Positive, a nonprofit, and I reached out to the St. Louis County Department of Health.
00:30:08 Courtney Brame: Uh um what is her name? Oh my god. I cannot think of the lady's name. Wow. Okay. I reached out to some people at.gov gov email addresses as well and the National Coalition for STD directors. And I'm so grateful to these organizations and the people there who also happen to follow me on social media and really see what my intentions are because I think that they were the reason that this conference was such a success. Um I want to thank also Dr. David Mel Branch for uh tapping into his network. Um and Dr. Michelle. Michelle. She's in Atlanta. I cannot think of her last name. Oh my god. And uh she added me to her list, sir. She gave me uh contact with them. I I I Yeah, thank you. I have a lot of thank yous and I don't want to, you know, take up the rest of this time with, you know, just saying thank yous to everybody who uh made this possible.
00:31:10 Courtney Brame: But yeah, my presenters, all of the attendees, the people who behind the scenes supported me. I want to thank my supportive girlfriend for really putting up with me. Y'all, I almost was so out of it. I locked myself out of my apartment, which is something I never do. I was in the middle of a call with one of my board members who was helping me with the presentation when that happened. And then the uh the super to let me in wasn't anywhere to be found. My spare key was gone. And oh my goodness, it was a mess. I almost almost uh killed my girlfriend cuz I was like eating cherries and I put like the cherry seed on something and then like I put food in that something and she was eating and then she like she did the little thing and I knew I was like, "Oh my god, you ate the container that had the thing." Oh, it was a mess.
00:32:00 Courtney Brame: But uh I have so much more bandwidth now and I think I really stretched myself really thin because I also moved across the country. I started yoga therapy school. I was doing this conference for the first time. I was connecting with and organizing things with other people and you know I made sure and I also have like family stuff that's happening right. So, uh, it means a whole lot to me. Like, I'll speak to it as best I can, right? Like, I feel full. Like, my cup is full as a result of just seeing the engagement, y'all. Because so much of this work, I'm the center of a web, an infinite web of contact points from people who have herpes. And I know that like I I'm not going to be here forever, right? Like there's going to come a time where my priorities are going to have to change. You know, I'm planning for uh a family and you know, my career and I would like to have Something Positive for Positive People be a sustainable community resource that, you know, I I I'm running it full-time.
00:33:12 Courtney Brame: Yes. But also like I can't be the person who is having all of the one-on-one support calls. I can't be the person who's also teaching all of the yoga classes, who's doing all the research, who's hosting the podcast, right? I want to run my podcast, teach my yoga, and offer these workshops, presentations, and training, right? There's a lot of stuff behind the scenes I got to do. I'm a graphic designer. I'm a podcaster. I'm a podcast editor, producer, recorder, and promoter. Um, I'm managing a community. I just became an events planner apparently because of this conference. Uh, but I love connecting with people. I love the people. Um, behind the scenes, I have to track the donations. I got to be on top of financials. I got to be on top of scheduling our board meetings. I have to uh provide those updates, get things approved.
00:34:01 Courtney Brame: I also have to look for a new board member. Uh, we got five. I think I need two more board members and I think that we'll be solid. um we're more so leaning into this research element of herpes stigma, herpes education, advocacy. Um but yeah, I'm supposed to just keep this about the conference, but if you're someone who is invested enough for the conference, I think that it's important that you also understand just like not just this nonprofit, but also who's running it, y'all. Like I I can't tell you how many times I tried to walk away from this and do something else and I'm always like snatched back by somebody's message and it's always such like divine timing where someone will message me through Instagram or email me and go, "Oh my god, Courtney, I just found this and I was feeling suicidal. I almost did it and I heard your podcast and it was this episode when this person said this thing that made me… it clicked for me like, I don't have to deal with this, you know, I don't have to go this route.
00:35:04 Courtney Brame: Um there's community out there. There's other people out there. So please don't ever stop doing what you're doing. And I see these things, man, and they're like tearjerkers. And it becomes less important to me that the world see what that person said because I saw it and I know I'm the kind of person who I do what I say I'm going to do. And consistency is more important to me than the presentation of it. I would rather be consistent and do a thing consistently than do it right or perfect or well. And it's been seven years. I've been doing this for seven years consistently and also with other jobs on the side to be able to support myself and everything. But this is the most into Something Positive for Positive People people that I'm invested in. Um I'm in yoga therapy school to be able to offer yoga therapy to support those um those uh triggers for people's outbreaks in a holistic way.
00:36:09 Courtney Brame: So utilizing the science of yoga to restore balance you know where there may be imbalances in a person's emotional state and their physical state cuz I'm someone who has practiced yoga since 2013 when I was diagnosed and I've managed to have three outbreaks. The first one, one when I got fired and was under an intense amount of emotional stress and then when I consumed a lot of sugar in a short period of time. Safe to say that um I don't consume as much sugar as I did before. Um and I'm living that I'm living that out loud. I'm putting myself out there because there are people who can't put themselves out there. Um people say that I'm brave for doing this and I don't view it as bravery. I view it as a privilege. I have the privilege of having the skill set, the education to be able to run a business and bring my business skills into this nonprofit setting. Um, and I'm able to support myself sustainably through, uh, the Something Positive for Positive People people things that I do.
00:37:12 Courtney Brame: So, uh, I'm blessed. I'm continuing to pass those blessings on through my presence in this space. And like I said, I know I'm not going to be here forever, but I really really with that understanding, um, I'm pushing for people to show up to these events, come and get a little bit more comfortable engaging with the community and understanding that we are the community. We are this resource, y'all. So, I look forward to y'all's feedback on the conference so that I can make it even better next year. um more engaging. Of course, having more of a schedule in some breaks and everything, but I thought that 6 hours was enough. I've seen various conferences that are multiple days that are like from sun up to sun down. Uh which, you know, it'd be cool to have something like this in person. So, if we can get the sources of funding, I would love to host an in-person conference for Something Positive for Positive People and we can do this in a few different places, in a few different ways.
00:38:14 Courtney Brame: Um, so yeah, if you're someone who has those connections or you have ideas, please submit the feedback form and you can reach out to me directly as well. If you want to sponsor any of our events, if you want to sponsor the nonprofit, the podcast, any of those things, I'm here for it. But in the meantime, um, I'm going to go ahead and upload this episode. I'm going to push this survey out for feedback, um, and do some things to hopefully get people to, uh, purchase the conference after the fact. So, the conference is for sale. Um, and you'll have limited access cuz what I don't want is for people to like start just passing this around and it ends up on YouTube. So, um, it's password protected. Uh, if you do purchase it, if you're someone who attended the conference, you'll have access to this as well with a password. All right. Thank y'all so much. I appreciate you taking the time to listen.
00:39:07 Courtney Brame: I thank you for caring enough to be at this point. Um, so yeah, till next time. Also, this is a weekly podcast. If you want to leave a review, please do. If you did purchase a conference ticket, um, and you feel good about it, I ask that you also leave a review for the public to see. Um, but yeah, that's all I got. Thank you so much, y'all.
Transcription ended after 00:39:33
