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Resources

African American AIDS Policy & Training Institute (BlackAIDS.org)

The Balm in Gilead (www.balmingilead.org).

Minority AIDS Project  

National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS

National Native American AIDS Prevention Center (http://www.nnaapc.org/)

National Minority AIDS Council (http://www.nmac.org/)

Outreach, Inc. (Atlanta)

Harlem Directors Group

SisterLove

TPAN (Test Positive Aware Network)

 

 

 

 

Health & Fitness

Our Sisters With AIDS . . .
Straight . . .

Denise Stokes -- Biographical Sketch

DENISE STOKES is a Motivational Speaker. By building upon her life experience (which includes living with HIV for 19 years) she shares her tenacity and hope with audiences around the world. Denise has the remarkable ability to captivate the unlikeliest of audiences and use her life as an example of how to overcome insurmountable obstacles. As a speaker, her story is both powerful and memorable. As a woman, she is nothing less than a miracle.


Visit Her Website: 
www.denisestokes.com/index.html

Denise has spoken to many well-known entities such as the NFL and other sports groups. She was featured in the America Responds to AIDS Campaign, CNN Headline News, Tavis Smiley BET Tonight, Heart and Soul, The Rolonda Show and The Ricky Lake Show. Some of her other media credits are; Esteem Straight Talk, Direct Wire, Emerge and Glamour Magazines. Ms. Stokes served under Clinton for 5 years and is currently serving a brief tenure under Bush as a member of The Presidential HIV/AIDS Advisory Council.

Finally, Denise Stokes is an emerging writer and artist. Her spoken word CD entitled 'The Glass Staircase' will be available summer 2001. It will be quickly followed by both a collection of poetry entitled 'Blank Pages' and the most compelling autobiography of our times.

Rae Lewis-Thornton has worked for Jesse Jackson and Carol Moseley-Braun, makes a living by speaking to groups and schools, and is studying to be a minister. She’s well-to-do, educated, doesn’t use drugs or drink, and has never been promiscuous. She’s also had full-blown AIDS for eight years.

And Lewis-Thornton uses those facts about her life to try to reach others about the dangers of AIDS and the importance of preventative behavior. “Nowadays you have to be careful,” she told Jet. “You don’t know who has what. The face of AIDS is not always a visible face.”

Lewis-Thornton was first diagnosed with HIV, which she contracted through heterosexual contact, after making a routine blood donation to the American Red Cross while working as a political organizer in Washington, D.C. She was 23. “If I did not know God,” she told the Daily Northwestern in 1998, “I would have walked straight out of the Red Cross and into the Potomac River.” Seven years later, the HIV developed into full-blown AIDS.

Up to that point, Lewis-Thornton had been doing her best to hide her illness. But then, as she told Jet, she remembered an African proverb, “He who conceals his disease cannot be cured.” She decided to tell her friends and family and, as she told Jet, “Once I revealed my HIV status, healing took place.”

It was also the beginning of a new career. Not long after she went public about her illness, she says, speaking by phone from her Chicago home, a teacher from a local high school called her up “on a fluke” and asked her to do several AIDS-related workshops at the school. “After the second or third workshop,” she remembers, “kids were skipping class to hear me speak. I walked away from that experience enriched. It was clear I had a gift to talk about AIDS in a different way.” A few weeks later the same teacher called, asking her to make a presentation at a teachers’ retreat, and ever since, she’s done between five and 15 speaking engagements a month, most of which she books herself. Many of these talks are aimed at African Americans, particularly women, and young people. “I do prevention with communities that don’t see themselves at risk,” she explains.

To date, Lewis-Thornton’s efforts have gotten her profiled in publications like Ebony and Essence. A whole episode of ABC-TV’s Nightline was devoted to her, and a series on her life, Living with AIDS, which aired on WBBM-TV, Chicago, won an Emmy. She has also appeared on The Oprah Show several times, as well as a number of documentaries and news programs.

Lewis-Thornton credits the fact that she’s alive to three things. One is her doctor, Marge Cohen, who works at the CORE Center in Chicago. “She was a godsend. She’d been treating women with AIDS since the beginning of the epidemic, so she knew what I needed....If she moves to Alaska, guess who’s moving to Alaska!” One is her therapist. And one is her strong religious faith. As she told Jet, “God gives me the joy that no one can take away from me. I am rooted in that; it gives me the strength to wake up every morning.”

This doesn’t mean that Lewis-Thornton hasn’t had her share of health problems. Last year, she was taking a cocktail of Crixivan, Zerit and Epivir, but recently switched from Crixivan to Sustiva and has been taken off protease inhibitors because she’s developed severe hypodystrophy. Last October she had a severe attack of shingles on her right leg for which she had to be put on morphine; even now she finds walking painful. And last year she obtained a divorce from her husband, Kenny Thornton, who she separated from in 1998. But she’s determined to keep going.

Last year, after considerable thought, Lewis-Thornton felt she was being called to be a minister, although she says women pastors are not common among her denomination (Baptist). She was licensed by her minister last summer and last fall entered McCormick Theological Seminary with the aim of earning a Master of Divinity degree and eventually becoming ordained. “I believe God is calling me to do a greater work than I’m doing now,” she says firmly. “In making that decision I am so at peace. I really feel this is where God wants me to be.”

—D. C. Culbertson (Kujisource)


Website & Speaker Information:  www.raelewisthornton.org


Engagements

Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
 
July 21, 2002
After the Regional Luncheons
 
Centennial Olympic Park-Across the Street from the Atlanta Convention Center
Atlanta, Georgia

 
Lincoln University
Freshman Orientation
 
August 22, 2002
8:00 P. M.
 
Student Union
Jefferson City, Missouri
 
 
Hope Presbyterian Church
104th Anniversary



 
August 25, 2002 1354 West 61st Street
773-737-8394
Chicago, Illinois
Albany State University




 
September 26, 2002
10:00 A.M.
Albany, Georgia

Or Lesbian . . .

Website:  www.prettytomboys.com/index.html

Read Her Thought Provoking Poem

In 1999 Conscious landed a position as the Executive Assistant to the Executive Producer of the Queen Latifah Show. Hard work and commitment in building the Queen Latifah Staff influenced her appointment as Production Assistant for Queen Latifah.In a short time she showed her ability to manage the music for the Queen Latifah Show and was promoted to music manager.

Last year, because of her magnetic personality, Conscious was recommended by word of mouth to audition for the Oxygen Media Network to host the TalkShow She-Commerce as well as field produce segments in which she also hosted.

Conscious started her television career as an intern for Broadcast News Network (BNN) in New York City. Before she knew it she was transferred to the technical department where she wired Avid Computers, Beta Decks, dubbed Digital Beta tapes, installed light switches and ceiling fans.

During the day she used her technical support to wire machines for BNN and at night she used her technical knockout punch, and skill in the martial arts to become bodyguard for Mark Wahlberg during taping of the movie "Boogie Nights". Her reputation led to bodyguard jobs at famous New York nightclubs such as, The Palladium, The Tunnel, The Limelight, and personal bodyguard jobs with Rap stars, Missy "misdemeanor" Elliot, Busta Rhymes, DMX, Jay-Z, R&B artist Aaliyah, and more.

Conscious studied electronics and electricity while in the United States Navy and studied electrical engineering in college. Conscious turned down the opportunity to play professional basketball in order to become a part of the elite electrical engineering department at Con Edison (A New York City Utility) where she designed electrical engineering blue prints.

Conscious is presently promoting her book "Getting Unstuck" ( Girl to Girl, You can Be, infected indeed...) a true story about the repressed memory that revealed her turbulent childhood and adolescent life. A life filled with incest and molestation, which helped lead to recovery from drugs and alcohol abuse.

Conscious is a talented, articulate star that is bolstering with positive energy. She has a personality that is rich with compassion and genuineness. Conscious is a people magnet. She is someone you must meet.

When you feel down like life isn’t giving you a chance, you cry, , kick and scream and every way you turn there is a brick wall, think about me and read my story, it will help you climb that wall. You can overcome all drama and still succeed……I did. Keep a smile on your face and keep it moving.


Yours truly,
Conscious

 

Interview with Conscious: author of “ GETTING UNSTUCK”  -- By Michelle Cox -- When I was handed this assignment, I was floored. HIV transmission woman to woman? Yes, I’ve read of cases, but I had never encountered any sister that had been infected by another woman. I didn’t think they would even tell anyone if that were the case. That kind of honesty is rare.

Michelle Lopez

Home: New York City
Occupation: Director of treatment education, Community Health Care Network; founder, the Family Legacy Project
Tested Positive: 1991

The Dying Game
Thanksgiving '95 I thought, "This is it." I developed pneumonia, and my fever went up to 105. The doctors were losing my vitals. I said, "Please bring my kids over." When my mother got to the hospital with the kids, seeing me in this situation, both of them just broke down. That tore me apart. When they took me to get X-rays, two technicians had to hold me down. But my kids kept flashing in my mind. I said, "You know what? I gotta live."

Turning Point
Some time before that, I had asked a good friend to take care of my kids if anything happened to me. She came to the hospital and said to my mother, "Michelle told me she wanted me to have the kids, but you're their grandmother. You should take them." My mother said, "Sure, I'll take them -- if the government gives me some money." When I heard my mother say that, I told the nurse, "I'm pulling all these tubes out of me, and I'm going home to take care of my kids." I went into a shaking fit and broke out in a crazy sweat. When the doctor took my temperature, it was down to 100. The next afternoon, they discharged me.

Money Matters
When the welfare reform law went into effect in '97, all my services were cut. Boom! Here I am, getting $106 every two weeks. And because I'm not a citizen, I was no longer eligible for additional assistance. For a while, I became angry and bitter, and drove my partner away. But I enrolled in training for women to do advocacy and treatment work because I needed a job to feed my kids. When I started working, I began taking better care of myself.

Mother's Helper
I started taking my first protease inhibitor, Crixivan, in January '97. But it wasn't until I saw my daughter, Raven, doing well on her HIV meds that I felt hopeful about the two of us and our survival. I started getting complications from the ddI with my liver, and I developed neuropathy in my right leg. And I was out there, going to the conferences, heading up meetings, up late at night -- I missed my middle doses a lot. I never had an undetectable viral load. Now I'm not on any treatment, and my choice of drugs is very limited. But I feel full of life. And more hopeful.

My daughter is going to be nine in June. She's going through some difficult issues. She's just realizing what she's living with, why she has to take all these medications. She doesn't want to take them right now. In the past few months, three of her little friends have died. I've got to deal with pre-puberty too. She's already asking me, "Mommy, when I get older, can I have a baby with my husband?" I tell her, "You have to keep the focus on you. You have to be healthy, because right now, honey, we don't have a cure."

The Way She Lives Now
When I thought I was going to die, I looked at what it was that helped me. It wasn't the medication -- it was the family therapist. I got a child psychologist to work with my kids, too.

My son is growing up with me as his mom -- an out lesbian who does advocacy work and public speaking. He's 12 years old, and his male side is kicking in, and we're having clashes.

I have a lawyer helping me get my citizenship. I've got a scholarship to go back to school. And I won a cash award in December from the Fund for the City of New York. I'm using it as seed money to fund the Family Legacy Project, which I founded to be run by and for women who are positive. If I'm not helping somebody, mentally I start breaking down and then I get physically sick.

You Are At Risk

 

Previous Topics:

Our Sisters With AIDS

Quit Smoking

Walking For Wellness

Fibromyalgia

Hypothyroidism

Breast Cancer and African American Women

The Fibroid Epidemic

Breast Cancer Facts

 

 

Herpes Likely in HIV-Positive African Women

Cervical Cancer and HIV  Related to an infectious virus, cervical cancer is a real threat to women living with HIV/AIDS

 


Download PDF version

May-June 2001 issue of Kujisource
Download the PDF Version


Download the PDF Version

January-February 2001 issue of Kujisource
Download the PDF Version

View More Issues of Kujisource

Dyke TV: Risk: Lesbians and AIDS

Dyke TV: Michelle Lopez
An interview with the noted AIDS activist

 

www.FemmeNoir.net ©2001

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