For as long as I can remember, I thought survival and worth were the same damn thing. 🫀
If I was needed, I mattered.
If I was wanted, I was safe.
If I was useful, generous, accommodating, desirable — then I had earned my place. ⚖️
That didn't start with HIV.
It didn't start with AIDS.
It started when I was a kid and my body wasn't safe. 🧸
It started when my family fell apart in ways that leave scars you don't see but feel forever. 💔
Somewhere early on, my nervous system learned a brutal rule:
People leave. Love is conditional. You better make yourself worth keeping. ⚠️
So I did.
I became big-hearted, loud, generous, overgenerous. 🌊
I learned how to be valuable.
How to be useful.
How to be desirable.
How to take up space in a way that made people stay. 🪞
When my daughter was taken from me, that belief didn't just crack — it exploded. 💥
I didn't simply grieve. I spiraled.
I threw myself into excess, chaos, generosity, distraction — anything to survive the unbearable absence of her. 🌪️
And I lived that way for years.
Giving too much.
Spending too much.
Showing up for everyone.
Ignoring myself. 🚨
Even when my body was breaking.
Even when I was exhausted.
Even when I was dying. ⚰️
When I became critically ill with AIDS, I was still overextending myself.
Still caretaking.
Still prioritizing everyone else.
Still ignoring what my own body was screaming. 🫁
So no — AIDS didn't make me this way.
But it did force the truth into the light. 🔦
After my diagnosis, people disappeared.
Some loudly.
Some quietly.
Some with big words and performative support.
Some with a post, a comment, a moment — and then nothing. 📱
And I did what I had always done.
I blamed myself.
I blamed my diagnosis.
I told myself I was dirty, unlovable, too much, not enough. 🧠
Because when people leave, I assume it's because I failed.
Because I didn't give enough.
Because I wasn't enough.
What I couldn't see then was this:
Clarity is not the same thing as healing. ⚠️
AIDS gave me awareness — not capacity.
I was still in survival mode.
Still traumatized.
Still overcompensating.
Still doing whatever it took not to be left. 🛑
It wasn't until much later — honestly, not until 2025 — that I was finally stable enough to look at myself without flinching.
2025 was the year I stopped just surviving and started paying attention. 🌱
Not to my weight.
Not to my productivity.
Not to what I could offer.
But to why I have spent my entire life feeling disposable. 🧩
Why I chase.
Why I overgive.
Why silence wrecks me.
Why abandonment — real or perceived — sends my nervous system into a full-blown panic. ⚡
That work was messy as hell — and it's ongoing.
Therapy.
Stillness.
Brutal honesty.
Sitting with my own shit instead of performing strength. 🪑
It didn't make me healed.
It made me aware.
And awareness will knock the wind out of you. 🌬️
Here's the truth I finally had to face:
I believed I had to prove my value to be loved. 🎯
That belief shaped my friendships, my relationships, and even my creativity.
I chased.
I performed.
I overextended.
I made myself smaller when it felt safer and bigger when it felt useful. 🎭
When people pulled away, I didn't ask if the relationship was healthy.
I asked what was wrong with me.
That's not insecurity.
That's trauma. 🧠
And it shows up in a lot of women living with HIV and AIDS.
Living with AIDS didn't devalue me.
But it did teach my nervous system that bodies fail, people leave, and safety can disappear overnight. 🌒
So I adapted.
I made myself indispensable. 🧷
But survival strategies are not self-worth.
And what keeps you alive in one chapter can quietly destroy you in the next.
Recently, something small but sharp happened — a vague goodbye, a quiet exit — the kind of thing that shouldn't wreck you, but does. 🥀
Also, not long ago, in December on World AIDS Day, I showed up loudly.
I wrote.
I shared.
I educated.
I asked for intentional allyship. 🗣️
And mostly?
Crickets. 🦗
Yes, I understand algorithms.
But I also understand choice.
And for the first time, instead of turning that silence inward like I've always done, I stopped. ✋🏼
I didn't ask what was wrong with me.
I asked why I keep measuring my worth by other people's participation. 📏
Here's what finally landed — in my body, not just my head:
People leaving is not proof that I am disposable.
It is proof that I am no longer abandoning myself to keep them. 🛡️
Some relationships lasted because I was overgiving.
Some felt deep because they were intense, not reciprocal.
Some people stayed because I was useful.
When I stopped performing value, the imbalance became impossible to ignore. 👁️
That realization hurt like hell.
But it also freed me. 🕊️
HIV did not devalue me.
AIDS did not destroy me.
What nearly destroyed me was believing I had to earn my right to exist, to be loved, to take up space. 🔥
Medical gaslighting taught me how to advocate for my body. 🏥
Dying taught me that I was right all along.
But self-love?
Self-allyship?
That took something else entirely. 🌿
There's another layer to this that matters, and I want to name it gently.
Since my diagnosis, most people have been kind — but not everyone.
Another part of this that shaped me — and this one is complicated — was my mom. 🧩
Her intentions were good. I know that. 🤍
She had several friends with AIDS at that point.
She had always spoken as an ally on their behalf, even in rooms they weren't in.
She believed she understood.
But when it became personal, fear lived louder than education. ⚠️
That first year after my diagnosis, when we were living together, she didn't really learn about HIV.
She dissociated from me instead. 🌫️
For at least the first six months, she retraced nearly every step I took through the house with bleach. 🧼
I don't say this with anger.
I say it with honesty. 🧭
Because stigma doesn't always come from hatred.
Sometimes it comes from fear. 😔
And even when people love you, stigma can still land in your body. 🫀
Being treated like something that needs to be cleaned leaves a mark — whether it was meant to or not. 🩹
There have been moments where my diagnosis was weaponized against me. Moments that cut deep and lodged themselves into my nervous system in ways I didn't fully understand at the time. 🧠
Early on, I entered a relationship that should have never happened. One Christmas Eve, in my first year post-diagnosis, the person I was with got extremely intoxicated and spiraled into a rage that lasted for hours. What followed wasn't just cruel — it was dangerous.
Christmas morning came anyway. 🎄
My mom took my son to his dad's for Christmas. I wasn't invited.
The man I was with continued the same abuse and then left.
I spiraled hard.
The last thing I remember is calling the suicide prevention hotline.
I was inconsolable.
They called for medical help, and our small town's first responders showed up.
When I came to, there were at least fifteen of them in my yard — calm, gentle, human. 🚑🤍
I know it was their job, but in that moment, their kindness was the only thing holding me together.
I spent Christmas and the next seventy-two hours in a psychiatric hold.
There have been other moments since then.
People who thought it was acceptable to say ugly, dehumanizing things.
Relationships that ended the second someone showed me who they really were.
And even within extended family spaces, there have been instances where alcoholism and abuse collided with stigma in ways that were violent and cruel.
I don't share this for shock value.
I share it for context. 🧭
Because learning self-worth in this season didn't happen in a vacuum.
It happened after being told — directly and indirectly — that I was disposable.
It happened after having to choose, again and again, not to believe the worst things said about me.
It happened after realizing that protecting my peace, my body, and my sense of self was not selfish — it was survival. 🛑
So when I say this is a new season of self-value, I mean it.
I earned this awareness the hard way.
And I'm choosing to build something different now. 🧱
Now it's 2026.
2025 was the year I turned toward myself.
2026 is the year I put it all together. 🧠✨
Advocacy.
Self-trust.
Boundaries.
Self-love.
Not as ideas.
As a way of living. 🧭
Not so I can prove anything.
But so I can finally stay.
With myself. 🤍
If you're reading this and you're still in the middle of it —
still chasing, still overgiving, still wondering why it hurts so much —
please know this: 🌙
Your value is not waiting on someone else to see it.
It never was. 💎
You don't have to arrive here yet.
You don't have to be healed.
You don't even have to understand it all. 🌱
Just know this season exists.
And when you're ready, you will find your way to yourself too. 🧭
❤️🧁
