LAGUNA BEACH : Tape Describes Coping With AIDS
One is a housewife. Another is a grandmother, and a third is a foster mother who cares for babies infected with the AIDS virus.
They are some of the women living with AIDS, women whose anguish is described in a newly produced 55-minute audiotape, “HIV: Women’s Voices.” The tape, accompanied by slides, will be shown tonight at 8 at Laguna Outreach, 340 St. Ann’s Drive.
AIDS is now one of the five leading causes of death for women ages 15 to 44 in the United States. In Orange County, women make up only 70 of 1,798 AIDS cases reported through February. Still, their plight is a growing concern.
Since last fall, Laguna Beach psychotherapist Valerie Gold-Neil has led a support group for women infected with HIV. Not only have they shared their pain, but in an effort at “empowerment” they have produced this audiotape, Gold-Neil said.
She described it as “an oral history” that lets the women tell their own stories.
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