Stories
Love and other forms of resilience
04/02/2026
A Positive Living magazine article by Tsari Paxton
I was four years old, jumping on my mother’s bed, when I asked her, ‘What does positive mean? I know it means happy… but it means something else, doesn’t it?’
My mother, the inimitable Susan Paxton, then sat me down and talked me through what HIV was and what it meant that she was positive. From that point on, Mum and I were always a team and never kept secrets from one another. I was mostly unfazed about the whole ‘positive’ thing, it was just a fact of life.
So accustomed was I to the HIV scene that one time at a black-tie event decorated with white balloons I loudly cried, ‘Mum, isn’t it beautiful – look at all the condoms!’
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