I Didn’t Plan for Advocacy or Gratitude, Yet Here They Are

Thanksgiving has always been a bit of a mixed bag for me, not in a tragic or dramatic way, but in that specific way you get when you grow up loving the holiday and growing up in the church. I’ve always enjoyed the food, the chaos, the family, the ritual of it all. But the season also came with this subtle expectation to perform gratitude, like the “giving thanks” moment could quietly morph into a post–Bible study prayer circle if you weren’t careful. Not disingenuous, just… a little showier than felt right to me and Jesus. And maybe that’s why, as I look back now, I’ve realized nothing about the road that brought me into advocacy is neat, polished, or suitable for a holiday centerpiece. It’s messy. Imperfect. Deeply human.

If I trace the line back to where it all began, the ink is more Rorschach blot than paint-by-numbers. I didn’t grow up dreaming of writing about HIV policy or public health or anything remotely adult and sensible. I grew up absorbing the quiet and not-so-quiet messages that who I was needed correcting. And to be fair, I didn’t just sit there and take it. I came out of the closet young for the time, ran headfirst into freedom, and made choices that would make Freud say, “see what I mean?”

But those early church scripts are stubborn. They cling like glitter after vacation Bible school. So in my twenties I did what far too many queer kids raised in pews eventually do: I marched myself right back into the sanctuary and tried to pray myself straight. Ten years of shrinking, contorting, and spiritual self-flagellation in the name of being “acceptable.” When I finally came up for air, gasping and blinking, trying to remember what it was like to breathe again, the universe had a plot twist waiting for me.

“Sir, your test results are in. We need to see you in our office.” The nice lady from the Wake County Health Department had no idea I’d been laid off from my job the day before, that her timing would land like a comedic beat in a very dark sitcom. Better get that COBRA coverage, hunny. In reality, the voice I heard when I was diagnosed with HIV in 2013 wasn’t the clinician’s. It was the church. “See, [insert slur]? You deserved this.” Not God. Not my mother. Not anyone who actually loved me. Just that old, well-worn shame cassette clicking into place like it had been waiting years for its solo. Shame doesn’t need facts. It doesn’t need context. It just needs a crack in the door. It can take a moment of pure biology and twist it into prophecy.

I wish I could say I rose to the occasion right away, but life isn’t linear or cinematic. There was no orchestral swell, no title card reading The Turning Point. The years after my diagnosis were a blur of contradictions. Some spiraling, yes, but also a lot of functioning. A lot of over-functioning, honestly. Working nonstop. Achieving. Pouring every unresolved fragment of identity and trauma into my career like it was mortar holding me together. I got married. I excelled. I tried to be “good enough,” whatever that meant. Worthy. Whole. Not broken. Oh, the stigma of it all. Oh, the pain we carry.

So when COVID hit and work evaporated overnight, it wasn’t just a job loss. It was an identity collapse. The marriage, which had long been more about me playing savior than building a partnership, blew apart next. Everything I’d built in the name of being acceptable crumbled at once. And when I let a man put a needle in my arm for the first time, it wasn’t rebellion or thrill-seeking. It was because I genuinely believed I had nothing left to live for.

And then, because life is bizarre and occasionally merciful, I met Jen. You may know him as CANN’s CEO. I knew him first as “Jen,” the guy I met through a mutual friend at a time when I wasn’t exactly giving “promising candidate” energy. Somehow, in the middle of my scrambled-brain era, he saw something I had long since stopped recognizing. He believed in me when I didn’t trust my own wiring.

So when he asked me to write for CANN in September 2023, it wasn’t about being rescued. It was about being reminded. There was still something in me worth tapping into. Something I’d buried but not lost. Even through the fog, I could feel it: I wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot.

And then I looked around at the moment I was walking into and thought: You’ve got to be kidding me.

Public health under political attack. HIV programs being destabilized and dismantled. Cuts that would undo decades of progress. LGBTQ+ people being treated like legislative piñatas. Clinics forced to scale back services while they wait for grants that used to arrive on time. Providers trying to keep people in care while the system beneath them is being quietly hollowed out. Everyone exhausted, angry, anxious.

This is when I show up? Now? When everything is on fire?

A hell of a time to get into advocacy.

But maybe that’s the point. You don’t get to choose the moment you’re needed. You only get to decide whether you’re going to show up, shaky knees, frayed edges, all of it.

My gratitude this Thanksgiving won’t be found on a Pinterest board. It’s not arranged on a charcuterie board with rosemary sprigs. It’s the gritty kind, the kind that comes from knowing how close I came to disappearing. The kind born from surviving things I absolutely should not have survived. I didn’t get here because I was virtuous or inspiring. I got here because people threw me ropes when I was sinking, and because I had access so many people don’t. Access to meds, to care, to community, to plain dumb luck. Privilege wrapped in trauma wrapped in stubborn persistence. I think about that every day.

That’s why the work isn’t abstract to me. When I write about funding cuts or bureaucratic sabotage, I’m not theorizing. I know what it feels like when systems fail. I know how shame can warp a diagnosis into a death sentence. I know what happens when care depends on luck, or geography.

And this work, as infuriating as it is, lets me fight back. For myself. For my people. For the folks who didn’t get the lifelines I did, who missed the right friend or the right doctor or the right skin tone. I get to push against systems built to confuse and exhaust people. I get to challenge the ridiculous fiction that some lives deserve less and that some people are worth more.

And strangely, I’m even grateful that advocacy requires actual humanity. Not rage-tweet humanity. Real humanity. The kind that asks you to hold onto your heart even when you’d rather slam a door. It’s easy to fight enemies. It’s harder, and far more necessary, to fight for justice while refusing to lose yourself.

Hope feels irresponsible these days. Believing in institutions feels like bad budgeting. But here I am. Here we are. Somehow still choosing to show up.

I’m grateful, not neatly, not saintly, but honestly.

Grateful to still be alive.

Grateful to have crawled out of the wreckage and found something worth rebuilding.

Grateful for every rope thrown my way, even the ones I didn’t think I deserved.

Grateful that CANN took a chance on me, the recovering, rewiring, not-exactly-LinkedIn-ready version of me, and said, “Yeah, this guy has something worth hearing.”

Grateful that I get to use every broken, complicated, hard-won piece of my story to help someone else carry theirs.

And I’m grateful, truly, that I get to show up in this exact moment, look around at the mess, and still say: I’m here. I’m ready. Let’s fight.