For decades, Cassandra Steptoe felt like she couldn't talk about her HIV diagnosis with anyone.
"I couldn't forgive myself for getting HIV," says Steptoe, who spent much of her early adult life in and out of jail for shoplifting and burglaries linked to her IV drug use. "But someone told me a long time ago, if you are looking for a reason to feel shame, you can always find it. I learned to look for something else: forgiveness."
It wasn't until Steptoe, now 59 and a grandmother, was in her 40s that she finally completed a drug rehab program and committed to ongoing HIV treatment.
Today she talks openly about that experience onstage, as part of a theater project aimed at inspiring others. The quote about learning to forgive herself is part of an autobiographical monologue Steptoe wrote and performs in a San Francisco theater production of The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women/HIV Circle.
[For more of this story, written by Farida Jhabvala Romero, go to http://tpr.org/post/theater-he...sform-lives#stream/0]
Comments (0)