The day started out like any other day. My daughter, Deondra Mae, was in the hospital again with pneumonia.
When I look back over my life, it has been filled with many roadblocks, bad choices, deaths, and adversities--yet, somehow, someway, I have always found the strength to carry on.
Check out The Well Project's A Girl Like Me LIVE!, an interactive, livestreaming series created to advance health and wellness education among women living with and vulnerable to HIV.
This is not just a story about illness— it's about intuition. The terrifying silence of being dismissed. And the sacred roar of deciding to save yourself.
HIV cure work is something that is beginning to fascinate me. Having the opportunity to be in spaces where this is the topic of discussion, I have learned so much about the virus.
Sharing my stories and giving courage to others like me who can relate to some of my struggles and victories is a way I can give back to a community that has literally saved my life.
Being stigmatized with the closest friends and relatives... the people you really loved and trusted. It was really hard on me... But now I stand up straight to tell the world that I'm strong... Stigma can't kill my future.
It all seemed like talk – until it happened... Words could never do this journey justice. But I will try.
I don't see myself, I'm trying to rediscover myself. I want to feel like myself again.
This framework is my way of calling out the systems of tokenization, manipulation, and performative inclusion—especially in spaces that claim to advocate for us.