[lighthearted music] [lighthearted music fading] - Get it together, get together.

We can do this.

Hey, girl.

Today is the day we are thankful [sighs] and you are here, so let's get ourselves aligned and ready.

Right?

Think about all the others, all the other warriors out there, right?

That's fighting their way through and it helps you to know to keep going, right?

Yes, Kashinda, keep going.

We you gotta spend time together.

And I tell you, I like spending time with you.

I didn't, I didn't use to, but I like it now.

And, there you go, girl.

Let's go get 'em.

I choose to define myself as more than a diagnosis.

I would not allow any diagnosis to become a barrier in my past.

[slow somber music] I was born and raised in Newark, in Irvington, New Jersey, and I raised my daughter in Maplewood, New Jersey.

Jersey was my life.

I think I was a natural-born storyteller.

Ironically, [laughs] I was a good writer, but I didn't like my voice.

I had this crave putting words together and finding out the emotion that these words can elicit.

- So without further ado, I'd love for us to put our hands together and give Rahway's own author, facilitator, and my mother Kashinda T. Marche.

- This will be my first time introducing my work of art.

I was diagnosed with HIV in 1995.

I was 19 years old and I just had my daughter some months prior.

Receiving that diagnosis is nearly indescribable.

It created a grave inside of me.

But I had this baby that I loved more than I loved myself, and I knew I had to get up and be whatever it was that I could be for my daughter.

She was born HIV negative and still is today.

[slow somber music] There was a time clock on my life.

I'm caught between I have to raise this kid, but I'm going die at any moment.

[slow somber music] We lost Asia's dad.

She was about three years old.

My mental health declined.

No one knew.

I was so good at the storytelling.

I was so good at wearing multiple masks and that's not something to be proud of.

It was the only way I can keep from taking myself out.

And I tried that on multiple occasions and that didn't work.

There was a moment that I realized I gotta love myself.

I learned how to be HIV-positive and honest.

I learned how to love myself.

I learned how to be a parent in a healthy way.

I do believe mental health is overlooked.

We live in a society where the stigma of mental health is still there.

To become mentally well, it has to become a lifestyle, something to work towards.

I make it my business to create every single day.

I never thought I was gonna be a professional writer.

Writing can be very cathartic, and so the reaction that you would get from this book, people saying, "Whoa, this hit," it was a way to help me become me.

That book did its job.

If it only touched one person in the world and it changed them or shifted their mindset in some kind of way, then I as the author and God as the Creator, we did that.

Positive self-talk, my affirmations, listening to others' affirmations, doing things that I love, conversations with my mom and with my daughter, that helps keep me mentally.

- Extra.

Okay, that's a nice photo there.

Oh, we have lots of them.

- Oh, the extra one?

[laughs] - Yeah, yeah.

- To have that generational healing take place, and it could be as simple as us just chilling right now.

- That's right.

- Looking through our pictures and just kind of key keying.

- Doing things related to like Kreative On Purpose or building up people's self-esteem, I was the first girl, so to speak, and I feel like that's just like hitting now when I see you like out and about doing stuff and I hear people talking about like the work you're doing, and I'm like, "Dang, I got that early.

Look at how blessed I am."

- Yes, Kreative On Purpose, finding creative ways to be mentally well.

- And in 2020 when it was all crazy, you started this?

Oh my god.

- Kreative On Purpose is so special because it was built on resilience.

It was built through challenges.

It was built from a person that knows what it's like to not love themselves, but want to love themselves.

[light upbeat music] [light upbeat music continues] We specifically work at building up your confidence, your self-esteem, your belief in yourself.

We are here to listen to any challenges that you may be having.

Everything is all about affirmations.

Y'all heard about affirmations?

- Yes.

- Mm hm.

- [Kashinda] Those powerful statements that you say, what I like to call make your dreams come true.

- I am worthy of love and acceptance just as I am.

- Just as you are.

Do you believe that?

- Yes.

- Declare that, own that.

I do consider myself a long-term HIV survivor in the HIV community, period.

It's been 25 plus years for me.

I am surviving HIV.

I'm surviving, present tense.

A part of me does this for the other long-term survivors because it's a day by day thing that we got to keep holding on.

I have affirmations for the day for you.

You read that to yourself and you accept it and you own it.

You have to start with a mental commitment to yourself.

By giving yourself that, you are opening up a big, big, big, big door with a lot of different things behind it.

[slow somber music] [slow somber music continues] Union County is definitely expanding.

It's a good thing to see.

Where you live definitely affects how you live and it definitely affects your mental health as well.

We have the freedoms and the liberties to live where we want to live.

And I try to stay away from better or worse, or good or bad.

The community is just different.

I'm blessed.

I live my life off of affirmations and the most powerful way of describing yourself is I am.

And so I am becoming the best that God wants me to be.

I am strength, I am light, I am love.

Those are the things that define me.

Not mentally ill, not HIV-positive, not disabled.

Those things play a part, they a part of me, but I choose not to let them define me.

[slow somber music] [slow somber music continues]