hiv/aids long-term survivors from the 1980s - Bob bowers

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It’s more than years—it’s fire, love, and the refusal to disappear.

Too often, long-term survivors are measured by numbers. But those of us who’ve walked this path know the truth: survival is more than a timeline. It’s a testimony.

HIV long-term survivors include several groups:

• People who have had HIV for 10 years or longer 
• Adults with HIV who acquired the virus as babies
• People who were diagnosed with HIV before the availability of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in 1996
   

But those are just the facts.

What truly defines a long-term survivor goes far deeper than dates or diagnoses. It’s the tenacity to keep waking up when your body feels like it’s quitting. It’s the courage to love and be loved after profound loss. It’s the commitment to stay informed, to fight stigma, and to advocate for others—especially when your own strength is running low. It’s the resilience to hold your ground in a world that once wrote you off.

Long-term survivors aren’t just people who lived through HIV—they’re people who refused to disappear. Who found ways to carry grief, to celebrate life, to demand justice, to build community, and to keep the conversation going even when the world wanted to look away.

As someone who’s lived through it, I can tell you—survival never felt guaranteed. 

It’s been a street fight from day one. I’ve buried more friends than I can count, lived through years when hope was rare, treatments were punishing, and stigma was a constant shadow. There were nights I didn’t think I’d see the next sunrise—physically or emotionally—and days when the silence around me screamed louder than the diagnosis ever did. But I kept showing up. For myself. For others. For the ones who no longer could.

I didn’t survive this long by accident. It took grit, grief, love, purpose, and a refusal to disappear. I clawed my way forward, sometimes crawling, sometimes carried by community, but always moving. And along the way, I found strength in the ashes, rage that turned into resilience, and grace in the moments when laughter somehow found its way into hospital rooms. Being a long-term survivor isn’t just about time—it’s about heart. It’s about choosing to live fully, scars and all. I am more than a long-term survivor. I’m living proof of what it means to endure—with pride, with fire, with tenderness—and with a soul that refuses to be quiet.

At 62, Bob Bowers continues to live, educate, and advocate as a long-term survivor of HIV/AIDS in Houston, Texas.