By Karla Scipio, RN, MPH
I didn’t just choose wellness. Wellness chose me—through pain, purpose, and powerful moments that shaped my calling.
I graduated from nursing school during a time when HIV was still surrounded by fear and ignorance. We learned about gonorrhea and syphilis, but trichomoniasis and chlamydia were barely mentioned. HIV was whispered about, if mentioned at all.
I became a nurse, because I almost died during childbirth. That near-death experience shifted my life’s direction. I didn’t want to diagnose others from afar. I wanted to serve. Nursing was the path that allowed me to walk beside my patients, not above them.
My first job was in a large city hospital, mostly serving Black women, who were immigrants, working-class women, survivors. They were women who reminded me of myself, my family, my community. I started in antepartum, caring for women who hadn’t yet delivered. One of my first patients was a pre-teen girl with syphilis who was allergic to penicillin. I watched as she went through desensitization treatments. Another was a mother, HIV+ and addicted to heroin, carrying her 13th child. At the time, I was pregnant myself. I remember suiting up in full protective gear and being unsure what was safe, but certain I was called to care for her.
I’ve held babies abandoned in the nursery for weeks—only to later learn their mother was HIV+. Back then, we didn’t wear gloves. We didn’t fully understand the virus, only the fear.
As I moved across the states, I continued in labor and delivery. I delivered babies barehanded. Not out of bravery, but because there wasn’t enough research, resources or protocols. Those were the early days—before AZT, before PrEP, before hope.
I witnessed young women silenced by shame. A mother who was too afraid to tell her partner she was HIV+. A father recently released from prison, HIV+ and misunderstood. I held space for both their truths.
As a nurse manager at a community health center, I was the one to deliver the hardest news to a 17-year-old I had cared for like my own. I had to say, “You’re HIV positive.” I told a pregnant woman—already grieving her own mother’s death—that she, too, carried the virus. Her only “crime” was loving someone who didn’t tell her.
These stories broke me open. I cried with my patients. I advocated. I taught. I fought the systems that failed them.
Unknowingly, at first, I led with fear-based education or scare tactics. However, fear doesn’t heal. It doesn’t empower. It shames. I learned that transformation begins when we move from fear to love, from stigma to strength.
In my role in College Health, I introduced peer education and wellness-centered programming. Students were disconnected, unaware of risks and unbothered by fear. So, I changed my approach. I stopped focusing on what might happen if they got infected, and I started showing them why their health, lives and futures were worth protecting.
This work became personal. I saw how HIV, STIs, and reproductive health were tangled in systems designed to suppress Black women. I saw shame eat away at self-worth. I saw wellness framed as privilege, when it should be a birthright.
So, I started creating programs, workshops and spaces rooted in education and grounded in love. I did more than just look at charts. I focused on truth-telling without judgment, prevention without fear, and care that sees the whole woman.
Why did I choose the wellness space? Because I couldn’t ignore what I’d seen. I couldn’t sit in rooms where shame spoke louder than science. I couldn’t walk away from women who looked like me, loved like me, and hurt like me.
Today, I’m still here still advocating, teaching and believing that Black women deserve more of everything — more knowledge, more access and more freedom.
Leave a Reply