FEAR eats the soul

I do have positive friends through doing HIV support work and I know that some of them are much more cagey about it. I

also know positive mums who don’t even tell their kids. I find this strange too because I think openness is the key.
The more open you are with people then it’s really up to them to work out how to react. The truth is out there and it eliminates so many problems.
I think the ultimate way of getting rid of stigma is being close to someone who is affected by HIV.”

Julianna Kenny has a young son; she’s experienced violence and has been ostracised from her small town in the west of Ireland on account of her HIV:
“I find that with a small child I am always worrying about the next leak about my HIV status - my biggest fear is with his play-school - they don’t know. So many people severed contact when they heard I was HIV positive and it is a real fear. I don’t want my son to lose friends or opportunities to socialise normally because of HIV. But the reality is people do not trust the information that is out there about HIV.
Also HIV has been so sexualised that it is still synonymous with deviant sex as far as mainstream Ireland goes. I had people make statements to me about my sexual practices that were targeting mainly anal sex.
I now realise, as more than one person has said to me, the feeling is women only get HIV if they have anal sex too. This shocked me. I wasn’t aware that this attitude or belief was out there. I wondered if this was a reason for people to pull away.
I think there’s a lot of fear too about how you get the virus. I do believe people are very paranoid about getting in contact with body fluids - even if you sneeze. When I am sick, sometimes with bad chest infections, I find people are very absent...they don’t want to catch anything viral in general.
My partner was very rough sexually and I think this was what caused me to become infected; he was also having a sexual relationship with other women, throughout my pregnancy, I later found out. None

of them he told his status to, tested positive. I received a lot of hostility for this.
My family was very angry at times and told people who then didn’t speak to me again.