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

        Growing up in what would, many years later, be called a ghetto (it was just a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY), 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).  I had big dreams, though. In my dreams, I was just who I wanted to be, and they kept me going.

        I was bored in school, but I thought, honestly, that was because I was too dumb to be educated.  It was only years later, when I realized myself as a woman, that I knew I needed that formal education. I went through college and law school, working at a bunch of little jobs. (I sold women's clothing for only one day, because, at the end of it the manager and I agreed it wasn't work I was cut out to do. I also 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. 

        I passed and was admitted to the NYS Bar in 1974, working first in criminal law and then in NYC government. I worked on housing and policy issues related to meeting the social services needs of homeless individuals and families.

        And then I fell in love. I began to see myself as yet another kind of woman, a joyful and fulfilled one.  But, that only lasted a few years.  Art was diagnosed with HIV disease, and when he died three years later, I felt as if he had disappeared like water through my trembling fingers.  I could not have anticipated the journey that was to follow.  I dreaded and was frightened by it.  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.

        A few years after he died, when I was practicing law in a very small, rural hamlet in NYS, I was asked to speak at a conference at the State University in New Paltz about my HIV experience.  Although I had never done any public speaking, I had been lucky to remain uninfected by the virus, and I wanted to tell young people what I believed they needed to know to keep themselves safe.    

        What an amazing experience that was! There were 250 people in the lecture hall, and I didn’t really know what I was going to say.  Before I knew it, though, people were cheering and rushing up to hug me and tell me how brave I was - I, was brave. And Raising Healthy Voices was born.

        After that, I was invited to talk with young people in many schools.  With a tone of intimacy I found easy to set between us, I met 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 also spoke with women of all ages, from different backgrounds and lifestyles, and with couples, parents, and groups of nurses and other HIV health professionals. So many people knew about AIDS by then, and I changed my message as the epidemic changed.  I focused on  how we make choices and decisions in general in our lives and on building strategies to keep ourselves healthy and safe.

* * *

        For me, the key that opens my life, always, is finding that quiet voice deep inside myself, the one that loves me unconditionally and only wants what is best for me. I call it my essential self, my best friend and adviser. Raising Healthy Voices has grown up from there, an opportunity to show everyone 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 good food for thought. 

        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 will be 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 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 conversations, as everyone strives to find her and his own voice. When 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.

     * * *

        Recently, I've been reading books on brain research written for lay people, which I believe put a scientific explanation to my own, personal experiences.  I've been incorporating my reading into our Raising Healthy Voices conversations, enriching our food for thought in many new ways.

         I've discovered that our brains are exquisitely designed to help us survive, and knowing the many ways this is true has changed my life yet again.  We are so powerful, in ways we could not have appreciated without this important information:

•     Do you know we are meant to be emotional and feeling beings, first and             foremost?  Trying to deny these aspects of ourselves will only raise our blood pressure and make us sick!
•       Did you know we can make it our goal to have positive feelings as our "default postures"?  Yes, you can!    
•       Have you ever experienced making your fear disappear just by naming it and writing or talking about it?  It's true!  I've done it, many times, and so can you.    

         A human is an extraordinary thing to be. We just didn't know it.  And now, we can celebrate that by integrating our external, learned technologies with our internal, human resources - then we can be working from our greatest strengths all the time.  I think you'll like the way the results will look on you!

        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 Contact and let me know. 

     I look forward to meeting you soon at a Raising Healthy Voices event!                                                                              Dina Wilcox

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