Valuing children who live with HIV/AIDS giving them a hope and future

It began at a snooker table. My lips were glossed, eyelashes curled and my green scarf had been chosen to match my eyes while fending the Canadian winter off my neck. At sixteen, I was the youngest in a clique of girls whose social scene was the local pool hall in our small town.

On that particularly cold night I found myself playing doubles with a tall boy whose Inuit features, jet black eyes and mysterious self-confidence gained my curiosity.

Our game was suffering when I resorted to using my feminine advantage. I leant over his shoulder in an attempt to distract him from a shot, when he suddenly turned his face toward mine and kissed my cheek. Stunned, my eyes scanned the room to determine who had witnessed the moment. He went on to make the shot, win the game and steal my heart.

When I graduated college a couple years later, we had become mad about each other.

We were inseparable and our love grew wild as we shared independence, desire and adventures together. Miles from town, we would lay our sleeping bags on frosty fields to stare at the moon together and share the becoming of ourselves. He encouraged my creativity and taught me to love music, value difference and to notice the small, important things in life. But above all, he saw me. Others looked, but he saw.

Love is powerful because it changes us. Although we often walk on from love without the one we experienced it with, we know we have loved because in the depths of it we are greatly altered. Men and women alike, we long to be seen. Often, it is to those who see us that we give our hearts.

Today, I am living in Uganda and leading an organization that champions the lives of children living with HIV/AIDS. When we heard that orphaned children infected with HIV/AIDS were being denied education, healthcare and a future we set out to 'do something' that could transform their lives, their communities and the mindsets of those who believe their lives are not worth living.

Last week, six girls graduated from our nursery level education into primary. I looked at these six little ladies in their caps and gowns; each life representing a miracle. Thinking forward a few years, I imagine them graduating college and I wonder if they too will find themselves in love.

Here in our village, love is the medicine that proves most effective in shaping life. It is love that undoes the painful knots of lost identity, grief and neglected existence. Love is creating for each one a world of opportunity and supporting her with hope for a promising future.

Yet as I watch her adjusting her miniature cap and fidgeting with her oversized gown, I think about the kind of love that awakens a soul. I imagine that when the time comes, her questions about love will not be easy and in order not to infect another she will have to find love with a man who is also positive, unless a cure is found.

She has been created for love by the one who is love. One day, she will long for someone to be a witness of her life and to draw her inner soul out into the light of adoration. I dream that one day she too will be seen. I dream that her future will hold love so deep that she will be shaped by it, made alive through it and found complete in it.

Until then, we continue to do what is possible to create a world around her that will enable this dream. We pray for a cure and for those working diligently to find it. We do not hesitate in the face of stigma, because everyday she proves with her life that she is a girl created to live and to overcome- to love and to be loved.

The fields of her world will never be covered in frost, but I pray that her heart will know the warmth of stolen kisses and her change be witnessed by the moon.