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featured gallery for December 2015
Choosing Joy
CHOOSING JOY
Joy is glorious. Joy is proud. And, for people living with HIV, joy is a crucial part of our resilience.
Depictions of people living with HIV are often weighted in tragedy and challenge. But something lies beyond those overly simplistic portraits: our love of life, the bravery and empowerment that comes with facing a chronic condition with dignity, and our daily commitment to health and well-being.
Joy is humor. Joy is love. Joy is a choice.
Our lives are defined not by what happens to us, but by how we respond. We choose to take part in our health care, to seek happiness and longevity, to defeat our virus through medication, to strive to be undetectable and incapable of infecting someone else.
There is joy in being fully alive despite the crushing blows of stigma. We choose joy and reject prejudice.
Joy is triumphant. Joy is a miracle. We claim our joy, and no one can take it away.
Curator
Mark S. King
MARK S. KING is an award winning writer and HIV/AIDS advocate who has been involved in HIV causes since testing positive in 1985, the year the HIV antibody test became publicly available. His blog, My Fabulous Disease, was awarded the National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association’s first “Excellence in Blogging” honor in 2014, and was nominated for a 2015 GLAAD Media Award.
His book, A Place Like This, chronicles his life in Los Angeles during the dawn of the AIDS epidemic. His essay on being a longtime HIV survivor, "Surviving Life Itself," is featured in the June 2015 issue of POZ Magazine.
Mark lives in Baltimore, MD with his husband, Michael Mitchell. Michael works to implement the Affordable Care Act and is a much kinder and smarter person than Mark. Ask anybody.
Twitter: @myfabdisease email: mark@marksking.com web: www.myfabulousdisease.com