A herpes diagnosis can make you feel taken from, or like God took away your ability to have sex. What exactly was taken from you? Reality is that you are still capable of sex, and nothing was 'taken' necessarily except for the identification we had with ourselves leading up to the diagnosis. If in fact God did take away your ability to have sex, then by God's Law of compensation, you're entitled to something of equal or greater value in return. I speak about the laws of Thermodynamics to hopefully give an idea of the energetics/physics of what to do with a herpes diagnosis.

There's a statement phrase that goes, "Can't do, teach" and I don't know the punctuation exactly, but it means those who don't have the bravery to have the experience become people who just teach because they can't do the thing they teach. Here, you'll hear me share my own personal experience which highlights the importance of why those who do NEED to teach. This is why teaching from experience is necessary.

It was March 23, 2013 I woke up and had my first herpes outbreak. It was a whole 13 years now of living with herpes. The past 9 years of running SPFPP and the podcast, I have hidden behind the experiences of my guests, and now I'm very challenged with what it looks like to maintain this consistency of sharing experiences of people living with herpes and it's become much harder to find guests. I now have accepted that I gotta quit being a lil' baby about not sharing my own lived experiences with herpes. I've been afraid of criticism, the fact that things change over time, the fact that it's the internet and anything I say can be brought up and used against me somehow. Wild to say, but I'm working through that barrier and hopefully that transparency brings in more guests as well. But here's a recap of how I celebrated my 13 year herpes anniversary with the community!

A few times this past week, people on support calls have shared that when they talked to their therapist, a friend, or even the suicide lifeline, that they were met with, "It's not the end of the world". The reality is, it is. And telling someone whose whole world as they know it is being torn apart is invalidating to their experience. We've been learning since 2017 that the consistent reason for suicidality after a herpes diagnosis is an invalidation of identity. A person's beliefs are not to be invalidated, but interrogated with curiosity. I probably shouldn't say that in writing, because there's a fine line between curiosity and being nosey, and not everyone can navigate that with someone seeking support. My intention this episode is to share and validate that yes, herpes is the end of the world, as is that first heart break, first job loss, first encounter with losing a loved one, only for us to take the remnants of the ending and incorporate it into our identity. To nurture our nature is to integrate the essence of our previously ended worlds to come to create a new one for ourselves from it.

What if a herpes diagnosis didn't take away your freedom, but actually freed you from an energetic cage you didn't know you were in? In Part 2 of "What Herpes Taught Me About Authenticity," Courtney Brame drops the standard narrative of "good vs. bad" and dives deep into the quantum physics and spiritual mechanics of an STI diagnosis.

We explore how living unconsciously chasing validation, ignoring the gentle whispers of the nervous system, and bleeding energy into casual encounters can leave us fragmented. Through the lens of his own 13-year journey, he explains how a herpes diagnosis acts as a "Heavenly Restriction" (Jujutsu Kaisen Reference) a permanent, physical boundary that chokes off the leakage of unconscious energy, forcing a return to radical authenticity and intentional connection.

If you are exhausted by trauma-dumping, people-pleasing, or feeling stuck in the identity of your diagnosis, this episode provides a new atomic blueprint for achieving maximum evolution with minimum waste.

Episode Timestamps:

• [00:00:00] Intro: The danger of the "Good vs. Bad" polarity.

• [00:05:58] The Leasing Office Analogy: Why we miss the early warning signals of our nervous system.

• [00:12:45] The Identity Collapse: How a diagnosis "screenshots" us into a stuck identity.

• [00:28:08] What is True Authenticity? (Hint: It’s not just "being yourself.")

• [00:40:07] The Luffy Rule: Why I stopped being an "emotional boyfriend" and trauma-dumping sponge.

• [00:47:12] The Heavenly Pact: How a herpes diagnosis acts as the ultimate energetic bouncer for intimacy.

• [00:56:46] The New SPFPP Boundaries: 30-minute caps, the end of weekend calls, and zero-waste operations.

• [01:04:37] March 21st NYC Event Details & The future of the SPFPP Podcast.

Finally! We celebrated me closing out the 400th podcast episode it took me damn near 3 months to record, only for me to realize I’m not closing it out after all. My options for getting these resources out there are limited given social media has not been kind to anything I have to talk about, however, the website has been booming given the care and attention I’ve given to it. Last month we had almost 80 scheduled support calls, this month halfway through February, we’re at 40, so I’m busy, but I think instead of replacing the podcast with the support groups, it’s time I give much less energy to social media instead. The podcast has served several major purposes including remaining connected to the community by bringing people in to share their experiences, letting people hear from others, and I think most of all, it’s been another outlet of expression as an extension of me. Last year things were chaotic for the first half of the year. I’d say I got some solid footing in August/September 2025 and now I have a firm rhythm of running SPFPP, working part time, wrapping up Yoga Therapy Training, and my romantic life. This is part 1 of what herpes taught me about authenticity, where I just share about some changes that happened in a way that hopefully makes sense to ya’ll listening. Apologies in advance for the audio. My mic was never plugged in and when I noticed it, I lost track of my point so I ended the episode shortly after haha. Anyways, welcome back!

I had every intention of making my last podcast episode being on this topic but I was called to take a different route based on the direction this episode went. I interviewed a member of the Women's Support support group as well as a Yoga Therapy client at the time of this recording. Herpes and Spirituality is one of the main searches that drive people to SPFPP, and many of the people I talk to have a background of Christianity, growing up Catholic, and our conversations generally head in the direction of speaking to their relationship to God. With all this free time I'll have from no longer running the podcast, I'll be able to read the Bible myself and be able to have more fitting conversations with people coming from that purity culture upbringing. I enjoyed getting to bounce some reflections off someone in this conversation rather than doing it alone and rambling too much, so I'm grateful to Lia for letting me talk her ear off and tie her experiences together with this conversation topic that has become so meaningful to so many people.

I interview _Laurentellsstories (Instagram page) who reached out to me yesterday. She and I recorded today and spoke about what inspired her to tell her story about dating with herpes. She's been a beast in the dating world, so hearing from her would be inspiring to someone looking to get to the other side of their diagnosis and start dating again. She shares a little about not telling people about her herpes status in the past and we talk through the mindset of that space. A rejection in 2021 sent her down the path of finding passion in storytelling and she decided to be open about her status the literal day of this podcast recording and upload. Be sure to be on the lookout for her One Woman Show in Chicago and perhaps the world depending on the year you listen to this.