Skip to content

Finding your inner strength

The unfortunate reality in this country is that there’s a lot of discrimination. So it sometimes can feel like a burden to be a black man. To be a same gender loving man. And then to add on top of that to be living with HIV. It’s one of the toughest things that any of us could possibly be charged to live with.
You’ve overcome a lot of other things up to this point, so you can get through this.
This is your journey. And so there’s going to be a moment where you have to find that inner strength. You have to find that inner resilience to fight against things. To take your medications every day. You are valuable. You do deserve the best healthcare, you do deserve to live out all the dreams you had in your life. You are entitled to the proper health care and you are entitled to live all your dreams out to the best of your abilities and HIV is not going to stop you from doing that. So just know how valuable you are, how beautiful you are, and how HIV is not to change any of that and you’re going to be just fine.

Dr. David Malebranche, MD, MPH, a clinician-researcher specializing in HIV, gives the lowdown on all things HIV care and treatment in the latest installment of the #AskTheHIVDoc video series.