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The Michael W Connett LIVING Trust/SouthBankHIVe | 315 W 7th Street, Suite #2 | Covington | KY | 41011 |
South Bank HIVe CommUNITY-Based Network
"Correct Principles are LIGHTHOUSES..." They will not move, They are not odds, You cannot break them, We can only Break Ourselves against them....These are self-evident principles, perhaps not yet habits. We already know them, but what is Common Sense is not Common Practice." The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
"On Coming Home"
"Home is not a place; it is an attitude. It is an attitude which depends on how much we are able to feel at home with ourselves as well as with others.
Home is something which happens to a person; homecoming has less to do with geography than it has to do with a sense of personal integrity or inner wholeness. The most important of all endeavors in life is to come home.
The most terrifying of fears is loneliness. It means that one has become a stranger to himself, and consequently, to others. To be lonely is to feel fear, to be forever unsettled, never at rest, in need of more reassurance than life can give.
Someone truly loves us when he brings us home; when he makes us comfortable with ourselves, when he takes from us the strangeness we feel at being who we are. We are loved when we no longer are frightened with ourselves."
"Dawn Without Darkness" - Anthony Padavano See More
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As you know; this year World AIDS Day is the Thursday following Thanksgiving on the 1st Weekend of National HIV/AIDS Awareness Month, and we are now Recognizing the third decade of this global catastrophe. I once taped an interview for a World AIDS Day program being produced to air on local cable outlets. Sitting there in the living room/office space of My South Bank HIVe, I looked into the camera after being asked my thoughts and replied: "I Never expected to Live This Long". I've been thinking about that ever since. I have been a Witness since the beginning and a survivor for the last eleven years. After I was tested and diagnosed in 1991, I began writing about my experiences and compiling them under the title:
"Coming OUT of Hiding: A Retrospective Journey through AIDS..." .
The purpose and goal of this endeavor: To use the rest of my life the best I can so that the people and places through which my journey leads me will remain a little bit better for me having passed their way. The importance of telling such stories was recently addressed by a keynote address given by Mary Fisher during National AIDS Awareness Month (http://www.hivcouncil.org/mary_fisher.htm). To continue; I've been thinking a lot about that statement in my interview, looking back over my last eleven years and having a hard time coping with My Life with HIV. I finally seem to have emerged from this current Blue Spell and wanted to share these additional thoughts as well as begin compiling them on my web site.
Although we now know that the Virus doesn't discriminate against who it infects anymore, I think that the overriding point that SOCIETY still does is what the theme of Stigma and Discrimination was developed to address. It is that Stigma and Discrimination that continues to present obstacles to an infected persons "Quality of Life" and I fear that the current medical advances and increased longevity have come to sugar coat the reality of Life, and Living, with HIV/AIDS:
"Coming OUT of Hiding: A Retrospective Journey through AIDS..." .
The purpose and goal of this endeavor: To use the rest of my life the best I can so that the people and places through which my journey leads me will remain a little bit better for me having passed their way. The importance of telling such stories was recently addressed by a keynote address given by Mary Fisher during National AIDS Awareness Month (http://www.hivcouncil.org/mary_fisher.htm). To continue; I've been thinking a lot about that statement in my interview, looking back over my last eleven years and having a hard time coping with My Life with HIV. I finally seem to have emerged from this current Blue Spell and wanted to share these additional thoughts as well as begin compiling them on my web site.
Although we now know that the Virus doesn't discriminate against who it infects anymore, I think that the overriding point that SOCIETY still does is what the theme of Stigma and Discrimination was developed to address. It is that Stigma and Discrimination that continues to present obstacles to an infected persons "Quality of Life" and I fear that the current medical advances and increased longevity have come to sugar coat the reality of Life, and Living, with HIV/AIDS:
"U.S. Supreme Court decision: "Subsequent decisions have held that AIDS is protected as a handicap under law not only because of the physical limitations it imposes, but because the prejudice surrounding AIDS exacts a social death which precedes the actual physical one.
This is the essence of discrimination - formulating opinions about others not based on their individual merits but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics." from the movie "Philadelphia"
I'm doing the best I can, but it's not easy. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Thanks for allowing me to share my Journey with y'all.
Best Regards,
Michael 11/22/2002
"I used to be afraid of dying, but I'm not anymore.
I'm more afraid of what happens to the people who live..."
from "And The Band Played On"
I'm more afraid of what happens to the people who live..."
from "And The Band Played On"
"If liberty means anything at all,
it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
George Orwell
it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
George Orwell
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