When a swollen lymph node brought Regan Hofmann, then 29, to a doctor’s office in 1996, the last thing the Princeton-bred Trinity College grad expected to hear was that she was HIV positive. Globally the disease was spreading exponentially, but Hofmann, heterosexual, white, and female, was not in any of the high-risk groups.
In her just-published memoir, I Have Something to Tell You, she chronicles her journey “from hell to being in a good place.” Hofmann, now 42, went public with her HIV status in 2005 when she accepted the post of editor in chief of Poz, a magazine and website that serves the HIV/AIDS community. The publication, she says, “helps people get informed, get inspired, and get involved. It helps lift the isolation of the illness.”
Hofmann hopes her memoir will allay the stigma and some of the misconceptions about the disease and create some much-needed dialogue. With 33 million people worldwide and 1.1 million people in the United States (35,000 in New Jersey) living with HIV/AIDS, she says not talking about it is literally killing people.
The key to ending this 100 percent preventable illness is to replace the fear and shame of HIV/AIDS with communication and knowledge, Hofmann says. “With so many people infected, the mathematical odds of getting the disease are greater than ever before. There is a generation of children who think they are not at risk, yet 50 percent of new HIV cases are in people under the age of 25.”