Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

We spent the day remembering Hydeia Broadbent, remembering the first time we learnt about HIV, remembering lessons, if any, we remember about preventing it for ourselves and other girls and women like us. Today is National HIV/AIDS awareness day for girls and women and so we spent the day remembering all those who have paved the way so that no other girl or woman may live with HIV. Hydeia died last month and though she fought the good race with this thing called life, I will always remember her as a gentle warrior, a woman king, who lived and conquered HIV one day at a time, her way. So we spent the day sharing all we can do, our dreams and hope, with preventing and ending HIV for girls and women everywhere. Her health, I shared, can be phenomenal, strong, safe, surviving, when women and girls come together to talk about HIV. I believe it deeply. Becoming a SISTA (in college), including becoming a certified SISTA facilitator changed my life. We have all since moved on from behavioral HIV prevention interventions. But what if we returned back to our roots, returned back to listening and speaking to each other, about our inner mysteries, everything about us that is so ethereal, so divine. Perhaps, we may live phenomenally, live too in a world, where every girl and every woman, their stories and their voices, are outspoken as they share ways to talk to each other about HIV. It’s the dream and hope of my daughter and I, one I am so proud we shared today on this special day. Keep, keep all they ways girls and women prevent and end HIV.