“Notes on faith” is theGrio’s inspirational, interdenominational series featuring Black thought leaders across faiths.
Sing a song for Hydeia Broadbent.
Say her name as a prayer: Hydeia
One who is kind, noble, thoughtful; bent like a reed, yet not broken.
Hydeia Broadbent.
Sister Hydeia.
Like a comet, born into an accelerated lifeline, acquainted with the depths of tear-soaked grief.
It wasn’t her sorrow that was compelling;
It was her self-possession; a joy all her own.
No visible models before her, she was an exemplary living epistle,
Keenly aware that she had a voice to tell her story
Empowered to speak for herself with the knowledge that it is never too early to do so.
Defying any potential robbery of innocence or security
Hydeia’s story taught us that even a little girl — a woman can reclaim it all.
Her resolve taught a generation that even a woman-child’s truth could set us free.
Unbound she was, indeed.
Undeterred by what she saw, felt, experienced, or was told of her condition.
By her witness, we were confronted with the injustice of it all.
The medical apartheid, disease transmission,
and our perceived ineptitude when confronted with what plagues us.
The passing of HIV/AIDS activist Hydeia Broadbent at age 39 marks a sobering new chapter for the then-young generation first introduced to her in an emotional exchange with Magic Johnson in 1992. In a 1996 appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” Broadbent, who came into the world HIV-positive, was foisted further into the limelight for being among the first generation of children born with HIV/AIDS. When Oprah asked the young Hydeia about the toughest part of living with AIDS, the then-11-year-old’s brief pondering of the question, her bright smile dissolving into tears as she described watching her friends die from the disease, became a jarring moment that made real the many faces impacted by…
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