Victoria Noe

Award-winning Author, Speaker, Activist

blogpage

Blog

HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day

My Second Pandemic - Part 2

My Second Pandemic - Part 2
Apr 10, 2020 by Victoria Noe
When I wrote my latest blog post I hoped it would be the only time I wrote about COVID-19. I certainly did not want to write anymore about how this virus triggered painful memories of the early days of the AIDS epidemic. 

I was grateful that the response to that post was immediate and positive. I heard from other members of the HIV/AIDS community who were in a similar place. Our conversations, mostly on Facebook, were emotional and oddly uplifting: we’d discovered a new connection. I figured I said my piece and I was done.

In the past couple of weeks, articles have popped up on various websites. Most have been written by long-term survivors in the HIV/AIDS...

Finding Grace on a Metro Platform

Finding Grace on a Metro Platform
Oct 04, 2019 by Victoria Noe
It's been quite a while since I blogged. The absence was not intentional. Two weeks of travel, the death of one of my dearest friends, and severe bronchitis have brought my daily life to a screeching halt. But in the midst of so much stress, there have been some wonderful moments. None as wonderful as this:

 

I spent the weekend after Labor Day in Washington, DC at the US Conference on AIDS. There was a lot of focus on long-term survivors, as well as how to serve the unique needs of those aging with HIV. As usual, it was an intense 3-½ days, which this year included a book signing in the A&U Magazine booth for the book I’d first started...

HIV Long-Term Survivor Awareness Day

HIV Long-Term Survivor Awareness Day
May 31, 2019 by Victoria Noe
In 2015, this essay won the Christopher Hewitt Award for Creative Nonfiction. I'm sharing it again today, in advance of June 5, which is HIV Long-Term Survivor Day. I never thought of myself as a long-term survivor, but I was assured I fit the definition. 

 

 

"Long-Term Survivor"

It’s only the past few years that that designation has become widely used. Hell, no one expected it would ever be possible. There was a time when my only prayer was to get through a week without reading the obituary of someone I knew or admired from afar.

Since many who have reached that milestone are also baby boomers like me, I’ve taken a special interest in their challenges. During a visit to New York, I...

Another World AIDS Day

Another World AIDS Day
Nov 30, 2018 by Victoria Noe
December 1, 1988

I was in London at a performance of the The Secret of Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke. At the end of the curtain call, Brett made a brief speech. It was, he explained, the first World AIDS Day, and the ushers were about to circulate around the house with buckets, collecting donations for local AIDS service organizations. I dropped some money in the bucket and filed that idea away, not realizing I’d use it back in Chicago on the second World AIDS Day. And here we are, thirty years later.

I have a lot of friends who are long-term survivors. There was a time when long-term meant a couple of years, not decades. The fact that...

HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day

HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day
May 31, 2017 by Victoria Noe
June 5 is HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day, so I’m sharing my essay, "Long-Term Survivor", that won the 2015 Christopher Hewitt Award for Creative Nonfiction from A&U Magazine. Since then I’ve written more and presented on the topic of moral injury in long-term survivors, something that is close to my heart. We can’t help each other until we recognize the challenges. And for me, that meant admitting that I had challenges, too.

 

Long-Term Survivor

It’s only the past few years that that designation has become widely used. Hell, no one expected it would ever be possible. There was a time when my only prayer was to get through a week without reading the obituary of someone I knew or admired from afar.

Since...