Victoria Noe

Award-winning Author, Speaker, Activist

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Sometimes Your Calling Chooses You

Sometimes Your Calling Chooses You
Sep 15, 2015 by Victoria Noe
Last week I spent four days in Washington at the US Conference on AIDS. I’ve attended single-day conferences and meetings in the AIDS community over the years. But the last time I attended a multi-day conference was also in Washington, DC. It was an advocacy conference where we were lobbying for the authorization of the first Ryan White Care Act, now 25 years old (and in danger of being defunded, but that’s another story). The theme of the event was “The Numbers Don’t Lie: It’s Time to End Disparities”. We heard a lot about how the South represents 1/3 of the population of the US, but 50% of those living with HIV or AIDS. We witnessed a powerful #TransLivesMatter demonstration during...

Straight Women in the AIDS Community

Straight Women in the AIDS Community
Sep 01, 2015 by Victoria Noe
With my assistant, Steve Showalter, at the first Chicago House gala, September, 1990

Next week I head to Washington, DC for the US Conference on AIDS, Sept. 10-13. I’ve never attended it, but it promises to be an intense few days. I’m looking forward to seeing friends and colleagues and making new ones, in part because of what I’m about to share with you.

I’ve already announced the final book in the Friend Grief series – Friend Grief and Men: Defying Stereotypes – will be out late this year (or January, depending on how it goes). While I work on that, I’ll be starting another project: bigger, more complex, and loosely related to what I’ve already written. That’s...

Grieving Friends Lost in Two Different Wars

Grieving Friends Lost in Two Different Wars
May 26, 2015 by Victoria Noe
When I was writing Friend Grief and the Military: Band of Friends, I was struck by the stories of grief and survivor guilt. Though many of the stories came from those doing the actual fighting, there were also those that came from non-combatants: war correspondents, medics, chaplains, nurses, even a little drummer boy.

As I read them, I couldn’t help feeling a sense of déjà vu. It wasn’t that I’d necessarily heard these stories before, but rather stories that were very similar. Only after several weeks did it become obvious to me: not all those who experience war faced an enemy armed with guns and bombs. Some faced off against a virus.

Activist/author Larry Kramer referred to AIDS as a plague. It...

News about Friend Grief and AIDS

News about Friend Grief and AIDS
Mar 29, 2015 by Victoria Noe
It’s that time of year again! I’m pleased to announce the 2015 update of Friend Grief and AIDS: Thirty Years of Burying Our Friends.Each year about this time I update the resources and statistics in my book. That's one of the advantages of publishing today - nothing ever has to be out-of-date.You can find the updated ebook on Kindle, Nookand Kobo. The updated paperback will be available in about a week.If you have a previous version, just go to the AIDS UPDATE page here for new information on the epidemic.And as always, 25% of the retail price is donated to one of my favorite organizations in the fight against the epidemic: Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

National Women and Girls' HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

National Women and Girls' HIV/AIDS Awareness Day
Mar 10, 2015 by Victoria Noe
I was on staff at Chicago House when we opened the city’s first hospice for people with AIDS in January, 1990. At that time, there was only one funeral home that would accept the bodies. Nursing homes and stand-alone hospices refused anyone dying of AIDS. Sympathy was extended only for those who contracted the virus in a way that defined them as “innocent victims”: blood transfusions or birth. It was a beautiful old house near the lake shore, donated to our organization. The doctor who lived next door was opposed to it, but once he understood that people would arrive in an ambulance and leave in a hearse (unlike crowds lined up for the overnight shelter he imagined it to...

World AIDS Day 2014

World AIDS Day 2014
Dec 01, 2014 by Victoria Noe
Today, December 1, is the 27th annual observance of World AIDS Day.Since that first year, when I dropped a few pounds in the collection can at the curtain call of a play in London, I’ve marked the anniversary.The second year I coordinated a fundraising event. Some years I went to a special Mass or memorial service. Other years I simply made note of it and went about my business.This year I’ll be part of a reading and panel discussion at Women & Children First bookstore in Chicago about the generation gap in the AIDS community. This reflection on Huffington Post last week will give you an idea of what that means in terms of fighting the epidemic.The theme for World...

Avoiding Grief at Work

Avoiding Grief at Work
Sep 26, 2014 by Victoria Noe
He looked great in a tux, tooI’ve been working hard lately on the next book in my series, Friend Grief in the Workplace: More Than an Empty Cubicle. But I struggled to find some validation about the importance of friendships at work.There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence: stories you’ll read in the book. What I wanted was something more objective. Maybe I needed to conduct my own survey, a daunting prospect I was not prepared to seriously consider. So I ignored the issue for a couple days. As luck would have it, just such a survey presented itself yesterday morning.You’ll learn more about the survey results in the book, but one of the obvious truths in it was the evidence that we...

Veterans in the War...Against AIDS

Veterans in the War...Against AIDS
Sep 18, 2014 by Victoria Noe
Last night I attended an emotional event at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, in commemoration of National HIV and Aging Day (September 18). “We Aren’t Dead Yet! What Do We Do Now?” was billed as a community discussion, with an impressive panel of experts: Dr. Judith Rabkin, Columbia University Dept. of Psychiatry and Dr. Perry Halkitis, professor at NYU and author of The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience spoke along with two long-time HIV+ survivors, Jim Albaugh and Kevin Oree, and my friend Jim Eigo, long-time HIV- survivor and fellow ACT UP NY activist.The event was held in order to get feedback on the kinds of support and services needed by this often-forgotten, often-stigmatized group of people in my...

"Body Counts" by Sean Strub

"Body Counts" by Sean Strub
Mar 13, 2014 by Victoria Noe
I’m not a fan of memoirs. I find a lot of them to be self-serving justifications for past behavior, spinning a fictional tale that presents the narrator as either a victim or hero. And while AIDS is an issue I’ve been involved with since the 80s, Sean Strub’s Body Counts was not a book I was excited about reading. Strub changed my mind on page 2, when he mentioned that a mutual friend, Jamie Leo, dressed as a priest at ACT UP’s controversial 1989 St. Patricks’ Cathedral demonstration. My mind flashed back to a Halloween party Jamie and I had attended in the mid-70s, and I now found myself connected to Strub’s story in a way I hadn’t anticipated.Body Counts...

Update on Friend Grief and AIDS

Update on Friend Grief and AIDS
Jan 14, 2014 by Victoria Noe
One of the benefits of self-publishing is the ability to revise your books at your discretion.The second book in my series, Friend Grief and AIDS: Thirty Years of Burying Our Friends, has been well-received. It recently earned a 5-star review on Readers Favorites and continues to generate impassioned – and positive – reviews on other sites.When I wrote it a year ago, the statistics and resources in the back of the book were current. Time for an update.Around March 1, I will re-release Friend Grief and AIDS with:Updated statistics on HIV and AIDS around the worldAdditional books and films for those who are interestedMore links to organizations devoted to education, prevention, treatment and advocacyIf you have already purchased a copy,...

This Year – and Next - in Friend Grief

This Year – and Next - in Friend Grief
Dec 27, 2013 by Victoria Noe
Those of you who have been following my blog for a while know that this has been quite a year. I think we all have the tendency to look back in late December, and cringe at the thought of all we’d planned to do but didn’t. I started to do that not long ago, but had to stop myself. I was looking at only one part of my goals for this year, and in that category I definitely came up short: I self-published three books instead of six. Yeah, I know, I was a bit too optimistic. But what surprised me more than anything was what I accomplished that was not on my list. And I’ll tell you right now,...

World AIDS Day 2013

World AIDS Day 2013
Dec 01, 2013 by Victoria Noe
In his November 4 review of Time Line Theatre’s revival of The Normal Heart, the Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones attempts to put the play in historical context: “AIDS is no longer a death sentence.” If only.While it is true that those newly diagnosed are not given a prognosis of, say, thirty days (like Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club), in the fourth decade of the epidemic, there is still no cure and no vaccine. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), new infections are on the rise in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: 13% since 2006. In the past 12 years, new HIV infections have doubled in North African and the Middle East. Worldwide, 1.6 million people...

How to Help A Friend Who’s Dying

How to Help A Friend Who’s Dying
Nov 05, 2013 by Victoria Noe
Since I saw Dallas Buyers Club (my review here) I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Although the main character, Ron Woodroof, is initially focused only on his own survival, eventually the people he helps – especially Rayon – become friends. He is literally helping them stay alive. And that got me thinking: what would I do?Sometimes what we are called upon to do, what we are able to do, seems insignificant: running errands, chauffeuring to doctor’s appointments, cooking meals. All serve a dual purpose: taking the burden of the mundane off the shoulders of someone who needs to focus all their attention and energy on fighting their disease, and also to provide a tangible example of friendship.Not everyone’s good...

"Dallas Buyers Club"

"Dallas Buyers Club"
Oct 29, 2013 by Victoria Noe
Matthew McConaughey (Focus Features)“You’ve got 30 days.”To live.We’ve just met Ron Woodroof, an electrician and rodeo cowboy, who seems to spend an equal amount of time getting drunk and having sex. Suddenly ill, he finds himself in the hospital, being told what was unthinkable for a straight man in 1985: he was HIV positive. “Get your affairs in order,” the doctor tells him. He doesn’t. Instead, his crash course in research about AIDS makes him the most unlikely – and initially, unlikeable - cinematic hero you will even encounter.Based on a true story, Dallas Buyers Club recounts with great authenticity a moment in history. Rock Hudson had just died. Tens of thousands of non-celebrities had died of AIDS. ACT UP...

What’s New on Friend Grief?

What’s New on Friend Grief?
Aug 27, 2013 by Victoria Noe
I always considered the first day of school to be more like the start of a new year than January 1st: lots of new beginnings and excitement (not to mention shopping for new clothes and supplies). There is certainly a lot of excitement here (though not much shopping)! So, I thought I’d bring you up to date on what’s coming up with Friend Grief in the next month:1.      I’ll be a guest on Madeline Sharples’ websitetomorrow, August 28, talking about how my writing made me an activist - again.2.      Through Labor Day, I’ll donate 25% of the price of the paperback and e-book versions of the second book in the Friend Griefseries, Friend Grief and AIDS: Thirty Years of Burying Our...

What Could Be Worse Than A Friend’s Death?

What Could Be Worse Than A Friend’s Death?
Jul 25, 2013 by Victoria Noe
Surviving. Of course we survive. We wouldn’t be here to grieve our friends if we weren’t alive. Sometimes the depth of that grief takes us by surprise, which is one of the reasons why I started this blog and my books.But when I started writing about grieving the death of a friend, I didn’t expect to find that survivor guilt plays such a huge role in the lives of many people.While researching the second book in my series, Friend Grief and AIDS: Thirty Years of Burying Our Friends, I learned that one of the biggest issues for long-time HIV+ men is survivor guilt. Like me, they lost a lot of friends: dozens, even hundreds. But because of luck or...

AIDS: Mad as Hell. Again.

AIDS: Mad as Hell. Again.
Jul 05, 2013 by Victoria Noe
(This is a little long, so bear with me) I planned to walk in Chicago’s Gay Pride parade last Sunday. But by the time I got near the staging area to join my group, the pain in my hip was growing worse by the minute. I knew I couldn’t walk, and even riding in the truck would be more than uncomfortable; forget about standing for a couple hours. I bailed just before it started. But before I did, I got mad.It wasn’t my first Pride parade. I rode on the Chicago House float in 1990, when I was on staff there and the AIDS epidemic was going full force. I’d attended the parade, lived on the route, got caught...

ACT UP/NY’s Non-Reunion Reunion

ACT UP/NY’s Non-Reunion Reunion
Jun 18, 2013 by Victoria Noe
Few things get your attention like hearing the news a friend has died. For many of the original members of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), the death of Spencer Cox was just such a wake-up call.Keep in mind that these were men and women who lost dozens, if not hundreds, of friends to AIDS. They were on the front lines of the epidemic: educating, advocating, demonstrating, demanding. Some of them carry the AIDS virus themselves, saved by the ‘cocktail’ developed in 1996.So you could forgive them if the numbness of experiencing so many losses would affect their ability to grieve. Similar to the military, you have to put your grief aside because the deaths just keep on coming....

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS
Jun 04, 2013 by Victoria Noe
I’ve been fortunate to meet a few of my heroes recently, founders of ACT UP. While there were times when I disagreed with their tactics, I never questioned their passion or results.They’ve been there since the beginning, as caregivers and advocates. They’ve been through the wars and now face something just as dangerous as AIDS itself: complacency.AIDS is simply not on the radar for a lot of people anymore. It’s no big deal. So what if you get infected? There are drugs to take. You’ll be fine. If only it were that simple.When the epidemic first began, the arts community suffered a disproportionate number of losses. That was certainly because many gay men were involved in theatre, design, music, dance...

AIDS: Everything Old is New Again

AIDS: Everything Old is New Again
May 02, 2013 by Victoria Noe
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana There is perhaps no more perfect quote to describe the current state of the AIDS epidemic. A close second would be “out of sight, out of mind.”Last week I found myself at a fundraiser for the West Hollywood Public Library Foundation and the proposed AIDS memorial. It was a benefit screening of How to Survive A Plague, the Academy-Award nominated and much-honored 2012 documentary about ACT UP New York and the AIDS epidemic.I spent time with Jim Eigo, a founder of ACT UP NY, who I’d met at their meeting in New York earlier in the month. He participated in a panel discussion that followed the film.What...

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