Interviews with people living with herpes simplex virus (HSV), which is the virus that causes herpes outbreaks. Hear experiences from everyday people on how they navigate stigma from diagnosis to dating to disclosure.Read more »
Interviews with people living with herpes simplex virus (HSV), which is the virus that causes herpes outbreaks. Hear experiences from everyday people on how they navigate stigma from diagnosis to dating to disclosure.Read Less
I chat with former traveling Canadian, Christian speaker, Meagan, who spoke to high school kids with a non profit organization called “Live Different” sharing her story about her herpes diagnosis for 5.5 years. Meagan shares the reality of what it means to be open about your status as a career before you've done your own healing. After experiencing compassion fatigue to the extreme, she shut off her emotions and went from enthusiastically inspiring hope to young adults through her story to just getting a job done. After falling into a depressed state, she quit speaking and eventually sought out therapy. Her therapist pointed out early on that her attempt to heal was a cycle of retraumatization that just kept eating away at her. We learn that venting is in fact NOT a form of therapy. We learn that not everyone is qualified to present a solution to a problem they aren't educated in and that we should seek guidance from those who are. We learn that it is important to take care of ourselves before we offer to be there and care for others as a way of avoiding our own healing process.