Janine Brignola

I could recount numerous tales of the different stigma that I have faced but really does it matter? Do the ignorant, mean, hateful things others say really matter? If you allow them to, yes!

Now I am far from being the total zen master but I strive to not allow the negative energy of others affect me and honestly it is because I think enough negative things about myself to allow what others say to matter. The difference is that no matter how critical I am of myself I like who I am flaws and perfections, so if and when people say the negative things that people say I know that regardless of whether there is any truth to what is said it doesn't matter because it is already something that I most likely have acknowledged about myself.

When people ask how did you get HIV or how were you so naive I can now stand tall and be one hundred percent honest about the who, what, when, where, how, and why of what happened in my becoming infected. After that honest dialogue is opened up and there is room for the comments that can be and are some times supposed to be hurtful that is when I as an individual can decide how I will react. The wonderful thing about knowing yourself and liking yourself is that even when someone may do something hurtful toward you you can use their actions to be a teaching moment. You can use their hate and ignorance to teach them and even if they still choose to remain in their state of ignorance and refuse to open up to some sort of acceptance then in the end it is their loss, but when you love yourself it is not hard to be okay with that.

I know the road to loving one's self may be a very difficult one and it definitely has been for me, I have to thank the people that have chosen to approach me with hate, with misunderstanding, with stigma because those individuals have enabled me in finding a true and genuine love of who I am and because of that self love I have self understanding and acceptance.

So I say the next time someone says something ignorant and prejudiced to YOU, educate them (if you can), treat them with the love they so obviously lack, and then thank them for motivation!!!

Sitting here watching the final Oprah show and I can not help but to reflect on what she is saying and how what her messages are translate to me. I have been so fortunate in life to know that at my young age I am what I am supposed to be, with my flaws, my mistakes, my imperfections, and with HIV.

There have been more times than not that I have sat and reflected and thought about how unworthy I am because of some of my past mistakes because so many people have used and abused me because I allowed some of those people to use and abuse me. Carrying pain from loosing loved ones, pain from the things I have done that are just dumb, knowing that no matter how hard I try that I will always make mistakes of some sort, they may not have the results that some of my past mistakes have had and they may not be of the same magnitude that some of my past mistakes have been but I do know they will happen and when they do I will learn from them and share them with whoever will listen so that maybe, just maybe they will not make those same mistakes.

Many people have praised me for what I do because of where I live and because they feel I am brave for standing up and raising my voice, refusing to be silenced or quieted by the social pressures of being different, of not being ashamed of being different and of being different and having HIV which can be a very hard combination. While I appreciate the compliments and the praise I am given, I never stop for one minute thinking about the people who have came before me, the people who have made my road a little less burdened, the people who have died fighting this stigma, this discrimination, the people sitting on waiting lists waiting and dying while waiting for the people who can make the difference to have a little compassion, the young and old men and women who are not only afflicted by HIV or AIDS but who are gay or lesbian and face dual discrimination, people who are living in a country where the simple things we take for granted are luxuries to them. The unseen warriors fighting who continue without so much as thank you in many cases, so I say that whether you are praised by one or thousands or even no one at all use your voice, find your passion as Oprah said today, we all have a special calling we all have a purpose and when we are doing what that calling is there is a passion with such sincerity that it lights you on fire and carries you through whatever hardship or heartache that may come your way.

So after some self reflection I say to you that I am the one who is blessed beyond anything I had ever thought possible to be able to do the work I do, for people to listen to what I have to say, to have an opportunity to make a difference in a world that my son will grow up in so that he may know a more loving and kind world than many of us have.

I remember thinking that HIV was never something that I needed to worry about because HIV just didn't happen to someone like me, I mean I was a little stupid in the decisions of who I slept with when I was younger but I was never too bad. Then after a DUI in March of 2005 which resulted in my being sent to a thirty day drug and alcohol treatment center and being put on probation, I stopped all of the nonsense which even in the years before I had almost completely turned around what I call the young, teenage girl, from a divorced family syndrome and I wasn't sleeping with the suspicious characters that I had once found myself so easily persuaded by wanting to appease them, just to get some attention, some love. But after the DUI, I remember feeling like my parents are going to be so disappointed in me, I remember crying my little eyes out thinking how ashamed they would be, and how ashamed I was in myself for driving a car when I was drunk I could have killed someone, that is when my life changed and I started to take some accountability which I now can look back on and understand that it was the first baby steps of my growing up. I did everything that I was told to do, I abstained from alcohol, I attended AA, I abstained from sex and relationships for almost two years, heck I even chaired AA meetings, I didn't drive and I took the bus most everywhere I needed to go, so I never could have imagined that someone who did everything that they were supposed to do, everything the law outlined, everything that was responsible would be in the place I am currently. Around the time that I got off of probation I was starting to hang out with a friend from the old days and it was not that she was a bad person or that she was irresponsible but the lifestyle that she lived was just not a lifestyle that I could handle, I just am not the party girl, I am the sip a little wine, have a few beers once in a while, get together for dinner girl, so it wasn't long until some of my old demons started to creep back up. You see I have had some major traumatic events happen in my life and I by no means say this so that people feel that I am using the past events as an excuse but I feel that a young woman has enough pressures in this world without adding, a dead sister, amnesia, rape, abortion, near death experience to the mix of growing up and finding out who you are when you are a teen and young woman in your twenties.

After probation I figured I can do what I want so I started trying to fit back into the party crowd and I ended up getting fired from the salon i worked at because of tardies I started to mount up. That is when I decided I wanted a fresh start so a cousin of my friend that was living in Florida invited me to come down and stay with them until i got a job and got on my feet and I figured, why not!?!? Well why not is because this man gave me HIV after pursuing me once I was in Florida and then trying his best to abuse me enough emotionally that I felt as though I was stuck, what he never understood is that I am survivor always have been and always will be, so one day when he gave me money to go get groceries, i snuck as much in my car as I could and high tailed it out of there. Off I went back to my upper middle class fathers home, to safety.

I got back to Nebraska and started looking for a job and just living a very normal life then I met my sons' father. We dated for about three months and I got pregnant the second time we where intimate, impossible right, nope. Well as much as that scared the be-Jesus out of me I knew that I would do my best to be a wonderful mother so even though I had been so frightened by the prospect of being alone and pregnant out of wedlock at 23 I thought well it doesn't matter pull up those big girl panties.

At about my three month check up I was asked to come back in to give more blood, I thought nothing much of this, I mean i had only been with three men in almost a three year period. In hindsight I am more happy about the fact that I did not allow my own ignorance, fear, and misunderstanding to prevent me from saying yes to being tested for HIV. I say this because so many women I know do not get tested for HIV when pregnant because they don't feel that they fall into the group of people who are affected or infected with HIV. Now we all know that obviously I found out the reason they asked for more blood is because my body was in the process of seroconverting and they had to confirm that the lovely, white, middle class girl they looked at and thought never, was actually positive with HIV. And the rest well it is history.

It is history because nothing I can ever do will change what is, I can not go back and ask that they would have taught me more about this disease in school, I can not go back and change the ignorant frame of mind I and so many young people had/have, I can not go back and tell myself that the man that seemed like prince charming at first with his big beautiful house and money was the man that would change my life and reshape the human being I am today so much so that my core being was shook, but I CAN inform people, I CAN share my story, I CAN do something, I CAN never shut up, and I CAN share with YOU what some of my life experiences have been in the hope that you understand that NO ONE is immune from HIV, or other STD's for that matter even if you can take a pill to cure it because that just increases the chances you will catch HIV, I CAN tell you that it is not a gay disease, that it is the leading disease and cause of death globally for women in the reproductive age range and right HERE in America it is the leading cause of death for African American women, not a third world country, HERE, and if you think so naively as to say well I am white or whatever guess what you are sleeping with every partner of every person that the ONE mate you are sexing it with has had, so I don't care what your skin color is and neither does HIV.

So in conclusion folks, this is what I ask no this is what I challenge you to do, walk up to one person, one parent and ask them what they know about HIV and if you do not know anything inform yourself, use some of the facts I shared with you in this, back to the point now, the challenge ask them to talk about HIV with someone they do not know ask them to pass the info on and at the next dinner party you have or the next time you are sitting down to dinner and talking to your kids about drugs and alcohol talk about HIV, make HIV a part of your norm and pass this domino effect on through the world, all it takes is a couple willing people to start a revolution, will you be one of them?