With a black striped coat and dress slacks covering her body, Dawn Breedon stood on stage with black dreadlocks and dangling shell earrings framing her face as she spoke.
“What do you think people with HIV look like,” she asked of the crowd of about 35 people.
“Thin,” shouted one voice from the audience inside the conference room at the George Sherman Union. “Sick,” another person yelled. “Coughing all the time,” said a third.
Breedon then told the audience the biggest problem with HIV and AIDS is “thinking people look a certain way.”
“In October 1991, I was diagnosed HIV positive,” she said. “I was five months pregnant.”
Breedon, a motivational speaker with Speaking from Experience in New Jersey, spoke to the crowd Wednesday about stigmas attached to being HIV positive and the tough journey to overcome such stigmas. She also told students what they can do to prevent AIDS and HIV during the event, which was organized by the Boston University chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Counseling and Wellness Center and the Howard Thurman Center.
BU NAACP Secretary Jessica Ventura said the event was meant to coincide with Black History Month and Valentine’s Day. The groups wanted to reinforce AIDS and HIV education as the romantic holiday nears, she said.
But the decision to have Breedon speak at BU was planned months earlier, according to chapter President Kristen Chung. She said the groups contacted Breedon in November to come and speak at their annual event. Chung and Breedon are from the same town – Teaneck, N.J. – and Chung said she hoped Breedon could “extinguish the stigma attached to HIV.”
After she was diagnosed in 1991, Breedon said it was hard to cope because everyone around her heard about it.
“The entire town was talking about me,” she said.
Breedon also said 35 percent of people with HIV don’t know they are infected. HIV is easy to prevent and abstinence from sex, drugs and alcohol eliminates any risk to contract the disease, she said.
The key to educating people about HIV and AIDS is talking about it, she said. Breedon said no one likes talking about the diseases, so she challenged everyone in the audience to go out and tell at least two people about the AIDS awareness event.
After her son was born HIV positive, Breedon said she fought a custody battle with her ex-boyfriend, who did not have the disease. Eventually, a judge ordered joint custody of the baby but would not give her full custody because he discovered she was HIV positive. In 1996, her ex-boyfriend poisoned their son to death before killing himself, she said.
School of Hospitality Administration senior Meera Hyun said she was pleased with Breedon’s speech and said it gave her a new outlook on the disease.
“I thought she was a very powerful speaker,” Hyun said. “I thought the stigma with the disease made me want to go out and get tested.”
Breedon said even though she “went through hell and back,” it made her a stronger person.
“I turned a positive situation into a positive situation,” she said.