Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this piece are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the position of Positive Women’s Network – USA.

June 3, 2020

by Tana Pradia

I’m sitting here feeling depressed. As a black woman living with HIV, people talk about you, and now comes COVID 19. I have lived through the stigma, discrimination, and feeling less than. COVID 19 reminds me of the beginning of HIV and what that looks like today. I have been living with HIV for 20 years, which I’m grateful to have lived this long after being told in 2009 I had six months to live. Out of my 59 years, I have never seen anything like [COVID19] before. As I watch around me, family and friends are dying every day. There are people saying COVID 19 is fake, and you don’t need to wear a mask.

As a woman living with HIV, I know the risk of getting sick and doctors don’t yet know how to really treat this new COVID 19. As I look around me so many families have lost jobs, shelter, and loved ones. It breaks my heart. Stigma is still real for people living with HIV and while stigma and discrimination around COVID 19 are escalating; communities of color are paying the price. How do you heal and maintain from such loss and sorrow? Until health professors tell me it’s okay not to wear a mask I might think about it, but as a black woman living with HIV for 20 years, I can’t afford to gamble with my life and my family’s life around COVID 19. In order to make a change, you must be the change in your own life.