Something Positive for Positive People

The title speaks for itself. After so many individual interactions with people living with HSV, and then attending in person social groups for people with HSV, I notice that there's a major willingness to heal from the individual, and the attendees. The only difference is the risk-reward tolerance from person who will only speak to me as someone who's already made their status known, compared to the person willing to put themselves out there into the unknown with the exclusive sense of safety they created for themselves by being part of the community.

Within these communities, you find that there are many amazing stories from humans about their lived experiences as they relate to herpes and as they relate to life outside of herpes and in fact, people with herpes connect far deeper with one another based on non-herpes things in my experience.

A frustrating realization is that the CDC, with all its credibility, does not recommend herpes testing even if requested by a patient. Their reasoning is that behavior doesn't change after a person tests positive for herpes.

As someone who's interviewed about 200 people with herpes and had thousands of conversations with people living with it who've shared exactly how this has changed their behaviors 100% of the time, we gotta question the validity of their research here.

The healing in community vs individually has shown me one thing. Separate, we seek answers from "credible" resources easily accessible and low-risk of another human knowing our status. In community, we share resources as they parallel our own experiences and they circulate among the people directly impacted who also have stake in the accuracy of information given we can challenge it with our experiences and just ask the group. So we ARE the resource.

You can connect with our guest, Jen at:

Facebook: Jen Lamar

Instagram: jen_of_cinnarostor

Snapchat: jenjenj87

and I can be found on social media @Honmychest

Dee was diagnosed with herpes 5 years ago 2 weeks after her then boyfriend now husband had his first symptoms. We don't hear stories that touch on how to navigate staying together after a positive diagnosis occurs in an exclusive/committed/monogamous (whichever you choose to call it, relationship.

Herpes is extremely common. This untold story is the first of its kind shared here, but it does happen. Most people's struggles with their diagnosis initially revolves around not finding a partner. Other stories shared, the relationship ended and then someone got herpes or there wasn't a relationship to begin with.

This is Dee's first time discussing this outside of sharing her experience with her partner, her Doula, her doctor, sister and mother, so I didn't go too deep into her experiences but you get a good feel for where she is with her status as this reflects the experiences of people in relationships where someone tests positive. It just doesn't have to come up.

Two people who had an existing relationship prior to it being sexual were diagnosed with herpes. They got treatment, they continued the relationship and now have a family.

We hear what herpes has taken away from us, we hear about the silver lining in what it gave us, but what if we understand that it just happens? Nothing was lost or gained in regards to their relationship. Dee just couldn't deliver a natural birth because of an outbreak.

How has your life remained the same after your herpes diagnosis? What forced changes have you been making attempts at due to this virus?

Our working definition of disclosure fatigue is being tired of telling people something about yourself that's important for them to know but they may not know about, so you have to educate them and almost convince them to accept what's being disclosed.

On my Instagram account @HonMyChest I've been sharing about this topic from the SPFPP audience. It's interesting how disclosure fatigue shows up and how there are many other things to disclose and have disclosed to us outside just herpes.

Today we hear from someone living with diabetes and herpes. We talk about how they're similar and different. We talk about the necessity based on who has to know. We discuss putting boundaries in place that protect us from experiencing it too much. We also discuss a little about who we choose to disclose to being a contributor to disclosure fatigue.

This will be an ongoing discussion through upcoming episodes so we can learn to navigate the education piece while also protecting our emotions.

What are some other things we have to disclose besides our STI status? What are some things you've been disclosed to that maybe your lack of knowledge about would cause the other person fatigue?

After ending a long-term relationship with her first sexual partner, like many others, wanted to explore and see for themselves what else is out there that they could've been missing out on. It was soon after as she put it, playing 'catch up', that she received her genital HSV diagnosis.

We discuss her behavior change after her new diagnosis in being more aware of a partner's apprehension toward her when it came to sex as well.

I want to start leaving people with questions to ask themselves going into these podcast episodes just to challenge your perspective. This episode, our guest shares that she was in fact more concerned with how men would view her due to her identity being so intertwined with receiving validation from sexual partners. Ask yourself if you were to share your positive status or disclose something publicly about yourself no one knew, what outcome would you hope for and why?

How do you deal with partners' apprehension whether verbal or nonverbal towards you when it comes to sex after you've disclosed?

Last question . . . Pandemic dating, who is "worth" the risk of getting COVID? Now apply that to an STI.

22 year old Brenna shares her "boring ass herpes story" if you let her tell it. This really turned out to be quite the inspiration to young women not only navigating a positive herpes diagnosis, but surviving Catholic school sex education, sexual assault, emotionally abusive relationships, shaving her head & cutting. Learn how our guest found her voice and learned that she's actually a bad bitch.

Do dating sites exclusively designed for people living with herpes do more harm than good? Do they do anything at all? Honestly, it's a matter of perception. How we use the resources we have access to determine their value in this case, not the other way around.

The sites that don't encourage forthcoming about STI status don't overtly perpetuate stigma like their counterparts, but they stigmatize. It is a universal fact that people link up through these dating apps and they engage in sex, but where are tools and resources to help facilitate safer sex conversations?

These are things that warrant ongoing discussion, but after a poll, Instagram actually came up a lot in terms of being the number 1 dating site for people with HSV, which I go deeper into explaining how we can make ANY space we occupy the number 1 dating site PERIOD.

The action of keeping away from or not doing something is avoidance. Letting go is a willingness to accept what is.

I want to relate this to discordant relationships where one person has herpes and the other doesn't. Far too often we hear about rejections and "successful" disclosures (and ya'll know how I feel about that). But what about post-disclosure?

In this episode we take expectation setting and tie in the conversation from episode 154 about being WITH vs BEING with someone. It's about our boundaries, expectation setting and anchoring in our values.

I'm writing this before recording with the intention of staying on topic but we will likely end up with a tangent lol. Nah I kid I kid . . . I have my notes to keep me on track.

As I hit submit and finalize these notes after having recorded, yeah I ended up making some pretty solid other points as well haha.

Adding to this after release . . . I got some good feedback on the overall episode even though I feel it could've been 2 separate episodes. Thanks for rocking with me ya'll.

I’ve been tested at this non profit organization prior to its name change and I hope that this and upcoming episodes will encourage people to seek out these kinds of places because they are doing it RIGHT ya’ll.

The Director of Prevention Services, Jon Martin, sits down with me masked up and 6 feet apart in order to discuss the importance of diversity on staff when providing the customer service experience especially in regards to something as intimate as sexual health.

Where this ties into SPFPP is that I mentioned how when people who had suicide ideation shared their struggles with me, I couldn’t empathize. Since starting the podcast, people have reached out and said that finding someone who relates to them in an episode has been super healing for them.

Vivent Health is formally St. Louis Effort for AIDS and they are part of a much larger national network, and you can find them at www.viventhealth.org.

If you've ever just BEEN with someone (emphasis on BEEN) then you understand that you experience this sense of peace and freedom that comes with not having to modify your behavior around them. Whereas when you're being WITH someone (emphasis on WITH) where you may resist your natural state of existence somehow.

I talk through the experience of being WITH and BEING with myself and how that's come into my awareness after having tested positive for COVID.

I was scared. I wasn't scared I was going to die or anything, just scared at how it impacted my finances having not been able to work for three weeks. I was afraid of losing my friends. I was afraid of having to adapt yet again to an uncomfortable situation. I was afraid of having to face a stigma that parallels that of being diagnosed with genital HSV.

Through it all, I was able to BE with myself those three weeks in isolation. I would've never been able to because I'm always being WITH others in my day to day life whether online or in person. I'm always WITH my thoughts if I'm alone and this keeps my identification and sense of self focused on what's not me.

This podcast episode highlights and uses examples of how I've personally grown through my experiences with therapy, not because of my herpes diagnosis but because of what my herpes diagnosis represents for me in terms of my patterns of behavior.

I'm proud of myself for this episode because I was able to so well articulate my struggles and successes through a very challenging period in my life.

Liz and I have been missing one another for this interview since she first learned she was pregnant. It only took a pandemic and me getting COVID to sit my ass down for long enough to catch up with her.

We talk about dating while pregnant with HSV, her leaving her 5 year relationship and living her best life for a short time if you know what I mean, and having gotten herpes from the person she was hoping it was because she liked him the most.

Our conversation emphasizes the point again of how the younger generations now are handling their HSV diagnosis with such confidence having access to more resources and the willingness to seek them out compared to me not even considering support until I was almost 30 years old.

Liz sought help for her depression and shared some useful tips for anyone else navigating depression as well.

A question that comes to mind is can someone be so attractive that you just don't mind that they gave you herpes?