Until we meet in person, I’d like to start the conversation by telling you some things about myself.

     Oh, I didn’t notice this right away, and of course, there were experiences that made me grit my teeth and refuse to acknowledge them - there still are. But I always know they’re there. And the day always comes when I need to bring them back up again and figure out where they belong in the whole of my tapestry. I’ve come to understand that in some way I have summoned up these experiences so I can learn from them.

     Growing up in what would later be called a ghetto (it was just a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York), I was very ordinary, right from the start: the way I looked, the kind of student I was, my impossible shyness. (Perhaps you felt this way, too. Maybe we just didn’t realize it was only normal at the time.)  I had big dreams, though. In my dreams, I was anything but ordinary. And my dreams were there long before I understood what they were all about.

     For instance, I didn’t know until I was grown that life experiences were generously seasoned with many doors that opened, giving me choices all along the way. I was bored by school. I started college, but I was happy to quit to get married in my first year. I supported us, getting an unexpected job in the publishing industry with the help of a friend, as an editorial assistant. And then, after a strange series of events I’d love to tell you about when we meet, I discovered that only the "sky was the limit" when I was asked to manage a political campaign in Bridgeport, Connecticut - how strange was that!? No one in my family had done anything more than their civic duty of voting. I started to feel, well, powerful. Eventually, my husband and I parted company and I traveled around the country working in and around politics and government. It all seemed very unlikely for the girl I thought I was.

     Somewhere along the way I realized myself as a woman, and then I needed to get a formal education. While I went through college and law school, I worked at a bunch of little jobs. I sold ladies’ clothing for only one day because at the end of it the manager and I politely agreed this was not work I was meant to do. Later, I turned my childhood love of coloring books (!) into coloring plaster figures on a display stool in a department store, with paints and pastels I sold along with the figures. It didn’t matter what the jobs were; they were just there to help me realize myself as I was turning into the person I wanted to be.

     After passing the New York State Bar, I first practiced in criminal law and then went to work in New York City government. I worked on housing and policy issues related to meeting the social services needs of homeless individuals and families. And then I met the man of my dreams.

     I was in love! And I began to see myself as yet another kind of woman, a joyful and fulfilled one, as we started down the road to happily-ever-after.

     Two years later, Art was diagnosed with HIV disease. He died three years after that, disappearing like water through my trembling fingers.

     Suddenly, I was a too-young widow who been catapulted into the heart of the AIDS pandemic. They called me a person "affected by AIDS," one who suffers from the fear and politics of the disease even though I was not infected. It was all I had left of my fairy tale romance.

     I could not have anticipated the journey that was to follow. Yet, I treasure it.

     Can you understand what I mean when I say I am grateful for it? All of it, every painful and tear-filled bit that I’ve experienced as I slowly, so slowly, rebuilt an entire new life for myself.

     With my law degree, I opened a small, solo practice in my new home in a rural part of New York State, north of the city I had grown up in. I became a small business owner, even as I continued to struggle to recover from my experience in the world of AIDS.

     Two and a half years after Art died, I was still feeling isolated and afraid. Although I thought I had "done everything right," I seemed unable to take my life back. A colleague urged me to join a support group, and although I resisted for a long time - because I was never the type to join a group for talking - I did finally "give up."

     After I’d been there a while, the group’s facilitator called to ask me if I would be willing to speak about my experience at a college conference on HIV prevention. There was to have been a panel of people living with the virus, and one had become too sick to appear. Although I had never done any public speaking, without leaving any airspace for my fear, I said yes.

     What an amazing experience that was! There were 250 people in the lecture hall, and I was the last of four speakers. I didn’t really know what I was going to say; all I could think of was that I was about to "come out of the closet," with the secret of Art’s death to HIV, which I had been keeping, then, for more than five years. When I looked out and saw some people from my support group, I started to talk.

     At the end, people were cheering and rushing up to hug me and tell me how brave I was - that I, was brave. And Raising Healthy Voices was born, although I didn’t know it at the time.

     After that, I was invited to talk with young people in many schools about what had happened to me, about falling in love and then losing the person I loved most to AIDS. With the tone of intimacy I found easy to set between us, I talked with hundreds of teenagers about how it feels to want something, or somebody, and to contemplate risks and barriers to realizing our wishes. I became an HIV prevention educator.

     As the epidemic changed, I was invited to talk with women of all ages, from different backgrounds and lifestyles. I also talked with couples, parents, and groups of nurses and other HIV health professionals. So many people knew about AIDS by then. I changed my message as we talked about how the epidemic impacted the ways we live our lives in its shadows, and, increasingly, about how we keep ourselves healthy and safe.

     Just as I’m doing now, I always started the conversation by pulling up something from my vast trough of experiences that could help us get to know one another. Each time, I was surprised at how each of my experiences - although seemingly unrelated - had its own, unique place to be woven into the whole of my life.

     At Raising Healthy Voices, we talk about ourselves, honestly, without fear or embarrassment, learning to trust and communicate with one another. When I created Raising Healthy Voices, I knew it had to be a safe space, one in which everyone agrees to listen to and respect everyone else, and where no one feels obliged to talk if they don’t want to. This is important, because these are the critical first steps in doing the challenging work of communicating how we take good care of ourselves as we go out into the world. We mix funny exercises and great fits of laughter into our serious conversation, as everyone strives to find her and his own voice. As we find our voices, we work at learning to trust them, to prove to ourselves that they’re on-site and on-call, and that, if we let them, they’ll be on our sides all the time.

     For me, the key that opens my life is always finding that quiet voice deep inside myself that loves me unconditionally and only wants what is best for me. I call it my essential self, my best friend and advisor. Raising Healthy Voices has grown up from there, an opportunity to show all the people I meet that we each have such a caring friend right inside us, to help us make smart and healthy choices and decisions for our lives. I like to think of Raising Healthy Voices as food for thought.

* * *

     Well, I’ve talked quite a lot about myself and, of course, there is still more I wish I could say to you. And that doesn’t even count the experiences that are yet ahead of me!

     For now, let me invite you to look around the site. Check out my new blog page, which will quickly fill with some of the subjects we talk about in our workshops. I’d love to hear from you, too. If you have any thoughts and ideas you’d like to share with me, or if there’s a particular subject that interests you, please click on the Contact link and let me know.

     And, of course, I look forward to meeting you soon at a Raising Healthy Voices event!

                                                                                                                                                                                                               Dina Wilcox

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