Living With HIV, Leading Through Experience: Bridgette J. Picou, LVN, ACLPN

In the bio for Bridgette J. Picou, LVN, ACLPN, stakeholder liaison, The Well Project, Brooklyn, New York, it states, “Sitting at the intersections of being Black, a woman, and living with HIV, her goal is to remind people that there are lives being lived behind a three-or four-letter acronym.” For the third and final part of this discussion, she addresses her impact as a Black woman living with HIV and as a community worker, as well as advocating for all women living with HIV.

Part 1 of this interview explored taking a holistic approach to HIV and women going through menopause who are living with HIV, and in part 2, the discussion focused on overcoming the often siloed care for this group of individuals.

This transcript was lightly edited for clarity; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

What impact do you hope your advocacy work will have on people living with HIV?

It is important for me to show up as my entire whole authentic self. I can't walk into a room without being a Black woman. I can't walk into a room without being a woman. But often, when I walk into a room, until I introduce myself as a woman living with HIV, people don't have that perspective. And so to fight stigma, to make women feel seen, to make women feel heard, and so that women know that they're not alone in HIV, I show up in every space that I possibly can as all of those things and speak out loud about concerns that women have. We are often left out of conversations, and it's important to me to make sure that we are included in those conversations, and not just included, but that we're listened to and heard in those conversations and in those spaces.

How do you work to overcome stigma about HIV?

I definitely have come across spaces where people haven't wanted to hear the message or it has less impact. A really good way to illustrate that is that I am a nurse, but I'm also a woman living with HIV, and so I'm considered a community member. Sometimes clinicians, researchers, scientists, are not accustomed to or familiar with the community perspective of living with HIV, and so things that we say may have less weight—but it's really, really important that they understand that lived experience is experience, and the way that I overcome that is just to be me, to say what needs to be said. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.

I can say what I need to say, and whether or not you choose to take it in is about you. Hopefully, there's a bridge and there's a space in there, which is what I like to do is stand in that bridge, in that gap, so that we both understand each other. I want to be able to trust the science and the people that are taking care of me, and I want them to trust that my experience is what it is, and that it’s relevant.