SPFPP 408: Safe Sex is Communicative Sex - with Tamar Weir

What happens when you find out you've been exposed to an STI you've never even heard of? This week on Something Positive for Positive People, Courtney Brame sits down with Tamar Weir (founder of Pomegranate Pleasure) to unpack a real-life scenario: Tamar's recent Ureaplasma diagnosis and how she communicated the exposure to Courtney.

Courtney and Tamar explore the nuances of Ureaplasma as a commensal bacteria, the intense frustration of navigating confusing and unhelpful medical providers, and how the stigma surrounding "cleanliness" makes these infections harder to talk about. Tamar also shares her tips for building your own personalized sexual health "script," while Courtney breaks down why it's time to shift from a high-pressure "confession" to a co-created "discussion." Tune in to learn why having conversations about sexual health doesn't have to ruin the mood—it can actually make intimacy sexier.

Links & Resources Mentioned:

• Follow Tamar Weir on Instagram: @pomegranatepleasure

• Read Tamar's Blog: Everything Juicy (Link via IG)

• Subscribe to the SPFPP Newsletter: spfpp.org/herpes-newsletter

• Get Tickets for the NYC Expo (Aug 29): spfpp.org/expo

I had a support call go sideways and was hung up on for the first time since I started doing this work in 2017 supporting people living with herpes. I had to learn for myself real quick that my authenticity is more important than anybody else's discomfort. I can't coddle folks into healing.

Are you bleeding energy into things that don't serve your highest self? This week, Courtney is back with a massive life update and a profound shift in the podcast's direction. Transitioning to a once-a-month format, Courtney dives deep into the yogic principle of Brahmacharya—the right use of energy.

Listen in as I share how removing social media distractions and enforcing strict personal boundaries led to necessary changes. From transmuting unspent sexual energy into writing the first draft of the SPFPP book, to transforming my physical health through Ayurveda, to processing relationship trauma on the Zouk dance floor, this episode is about vertical growth over horizontal distraction. I also also break down the main differences between the men's and women's support groups, share my upcoming travel itinerary, and explains why true authenticity is the ultimate friction-remover.

Links & Resources Mentioned:

• Subscribe to the SPFPP Newsletter: spfpp.org/herpes-newsletter

• Read the SPFPP Blog: spfpp.org/herpes-blog

• Request a Donation-Based Support Call: spfpp.org/herpes-support-call

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.