It’s not so much that I fear that I’ll die with HIV or AIDS, ‘cause I don’t think that’s gonna kill me anymore. But I think that some of the other co-occurring conditions are premature aging issues that I’m gonna have because I’ve been on HIV meds for so long. I’m worried that I’ll have […]
In San Francisco, it was the community that had to come up with creative ways to deal with all of this, and The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are all about creativity, and social service, and social activism. And a lot of the street theater tactics that we used in the early 80s, ACT-UP came
Back in the ‘80s when I found out I was positive, I was just hoping to get to see my son graduate from high school. Never in my wildest dreams were grandchildren a part of the equation. So it’s a blessing. My son was 19 when he had his first child, and I said, “You’re
Initially, a lot of responses were: are you angry? You know, even my grandson expressed that he was mad. But I wasn’t. I had to accept my own responsibility. Listen, I could have said no. I could’ve closed my legs. I didn’t. So, I wasn’t ever angry with him. I had to be angry with
I think that we’re not a priority in the health system. They are thinking more in the young person. We are fighting for medicines, for treatment, we need to be accepted in the hospitals – that is difficult in Puerto Rico.
Ruth: Through my sobriety process I started feeling better about myself, started looking better, and I was like, okay, now let me address my HIV status. So I started going to different AIDS service organizations in the area, and volunteering, and learning what I can learn about HIV. I started volunteering at an organization where
I’ve been doing a lot of healing through my culture and traditions…It actually came by accident, when I started attending the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network at the national level, and they did these short little versions of the smudging ceremonies. Then it got to having the traditional healers come in and do the cleansing with
When I first discovered I was HIV, I started to reflect on my “formative years” as I call them, and they were so fantastic that I said, “You know what? If I were to drop dead as a result? I would not change a thing, because I had such a fabulous life, and had such
