"The Naked Truth" – Young, Beautiful, and (HIV) Positive

Marvelyn Brown, a former top track and basketball star, was young, beautiful, in the best shape of her life, and in love. On one fateful day, when a sudden illness landed her in intensive care, a battery of tests revealed that the then 19-year-old had acquired the HIV/AIDS virus.

Now as a 24-year-old, Brown's new memoir, 'The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful, and (HIV) Positive' (Amistad/HarperCollins, August 2008) reveals her intimate journey living with HIV/AIDS and learning to use her voice to educate and empower others from making the same choices which led to her diagnosis.

She continues her mission of education and empowerment as a guest blogger for Blackvoices.com's More Than Words. Read her story below and then pick up a copy of 'The Naked Truth.' It's powerful and may just save lives.

Embracing the Truth: By Marvelyn Brown

Writing a book about your life is probably one of the most difficult and challenging things one can ever do. It requires you to open up in a way that forces the recollection of memories you'd probably prefer be left in that forgotten mental vault. Writing a memoir also means being open and honest: first and most importantly, with yourself. The process can strip you bare, leave you emotionally spent, yet happily free and cleansed. The title of my memoir couldn't be more relevant and appropriate to my experience – The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful and (HIV) Positive.

My name is Marvelyn Brown and I am HIV positive. It took me so long to look in the mirror and be able to utter those words. When I look at myself today, I don't see HIV. What I see instead is a young, beautiful, worthy and positive woman. It is for this reason that I chose to place HIV in parentheses for the title of my book. Why is this important? Because we exist in a world where we continue to define the disease as only affecting people with a certain look or belonging to a certain socioeconomic group. I'm living proof that nothing is farther from the truth.

I was 19 years old, a normal teenager who'd met a guy that I really liked. We had unprotected sex. It only took one time, one impulsive moment, and my life was forever changed. Rather than looking forward to what should have been the "hey day" of my twenties, I was given a death sentence. Suddenly, many of the people I loved and who'd cared about me were afraid to touch me, hug me, kiss me. Many refused to believe I was HIV positive, so the topic was avoided altogether. To be able to look in the mirror and state the truth, what is fact, that I am HIV positive, was a major step for me. It's also the moment when I realized that I do not live with HIV, rather HIV lives with me. And no matter how negatively the world views this virus, I will always love myself, no matter what.

One of my chief concerns is that HIV-positive people may not pick up the book because they are fearful their own HIV status will be revealed by merely purchasing or reading the book. I also fear that HIV-negative people may look at the book and feel sorry for me. Or worse, not read the book at all because they feel HIV is not an issue for them. Might I add, a feeling I likely shared before being diagnosed with HIV. The reality that I pray The Naked Truth brings to light is that HIV is everyone's problem — it is a human disease.

Despite all of the stigma and ignorance surrounding HIV/AIDS, I finally quit living my life for everyone else and started living it for me. The Naked Truth is about my journey of finding self-love, self-worth and self-acceptance, despite this devastating virus.