breaking the cycle of shame: how shana singleton turned her herpes diagnosis into a community for healing

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Shana Singleton is a mother, author, coach + herpes advocate who is passionate about helping people navigate an HSV diagnosis without shame. After being diagnosed with herpes on the same day she learned she was pregnant, she began challenging cycles of shame, survival mode + self-abandonment. Today, through Hey Cousins, her coaching, educational resources + book, she helps others build self-worth, acceptance + fulfilling lives beyond their diagnosis. Read on to learn how Shana is breaking the cycle of shame + turning her experiences into healing, purpose + possibility for herself, her son + others.

How do you define a "Cycle Breaker?"

I define myself as a cycle breaker by being intentional about what I choose to carry forward and what ends with me. I’m willing to look at patterns, beliefs, behaviors, and experiences that have been normalized and ask myself, “Is this actually something I want to continue?”

For me, breaking cycles isn’t about being perfect or never repeating a pattern. It’s about becoming conscious enough to recognize it, doing the work to understand it, and making different choices when I can.

A lot of my life has been about choosing healing over simply surviving, creating the things I needed but didn’t have, and being mindful of what I’m teaching and passing down to my son.

I think a cycle breaker is someone who is willing to say, “This may have been my normal, but it doesn’t have to be my future.”


What adversities or experiences have you lived through?

I’ve lived through quite a few experiences that have shaped who I am and how I see myself as a cycle breaker.

I was diagnosed with herpes in 2015 on the same day I found out I was pregnant. While I was pregnant, I also had to watch my partner start a new relationship, so I experienced pregnancy and eventually motherhood largely on my own. I became a single mother and had to figure out how to build stability for myself and my child.

I’ve experienced the death of a parent, abuse, homelessness, discrimination, and growing up as a Black little girl in a family where I also experienced colorism because of my Puerto Rican/Hispanic side of my family. That experience had a real impact on how I understood my identity and my worth growing up.

None of these experiences define me, but they absolutely shaped me. They taught me what it feels like to navigate loss, rejection, instability, stigma, and having to rebuild yourself.

A lot of my cycle breaking has come from deciding that what happened to me doesn’t get to dictate what I pass down. I’ve had to learn how to create safety, stability, self-worth, and emotional awareness in places where I didn’t always experience those things myself.

I think that’s what being a cycle breaker means to me. Not pretending the hard things didn’t happen, but becoming conscious of them enough to decide what ends with me.


What is a cycle, belief or pattern you’ve worked to break or challenge in your life?

One of the biggest cycles I’ve worked to break is the belief that you have to simply survive what happened to you and then carry it forward.

I’ve had experiences that could have easily taught me to live from fear, shame, abandonment, or scarcity. I’ve had to consciously challenge the belief that because something happened to me, it gets to define me or determine the rest of my life.

My herpes diagnosis is a huge part of that. I could have allowed the stigma surrounding herpes to become my identity, especially after finding out I was pregnant at the same time. Instead, I had to learn how to separate what happened to me from who I am.

I’ve also worked to break patterns around self-abandonment, staying in survival mode, and believing I have to be everything for everyone while neglecting myself.

Now I’m much more intentional about what I normalize, what I tolerate, what I teach my son, and what I pass down. I’m not trying to create a perfect life. I’m trying to create a different pattern.

For me, cycle breaking is being able to say, “This may be where it started, but it doesn’t have to continue through me.”


What helped you begin healing, growing, or changing that cycle?

I think one of the biggest things that helped me begin changing these cycles was realizing that I had already survived myself once.

When I was 13, I attempted to take my own life. So when those thoughts returned in my 20s, I knew how serious they were and I knew I needed to do something different. At 26, I had a son who needed me, and becoming a mother gave me a reason outside of myself to fight for my life. But I also knew that I couldn't just survive for him. I needed to learn how to want to live for myself, too.

One of the unexpected things that played a huge role in that was Solange's album "A Seat at the Table." That album met me in a place where I was trying to understand myself, my identity, my pain, my anger, my Blackness, and what it meant to make peace with parts of myself I had spent years struggling with. Music gave me language for things I didn't know how to articulate yet.

Healing for me started with choosing to stay, but it grew into learning why I wanted to stay. I had to learn that surviving wasn't the end goal. I wanted to build a life I actually wanted to be present for.

That mindset has continued to shape me. I don't want to simply survive difficult experiences and pass the survival patterns down. I want to understand them, heal what I can, and create something different for myself and my son.


What are your proudest accomplishments?

My proudest accomplishments are my son and the lives I’ve been able to impact through my work in the herpes community.

My son is probably my greatest accomplishment because becoming his mother changed the trajectory of my life. Everything I’ve experienced, overcome, and built has shaped the kind of mother I want to be for him. I’m proud of the person he is becoming, but I’m also proud that I’ve been able to create a life and a foundation for him despite everything I’ve had to navigate.

I’m equally proud of the impact I’ve made in the herpes community. I took an experience that could have become a source of shame and isolation and turned it into a purpose. Through Hey Cousins, my coaching, my book, and the conversations and resources I’ve created, I’ve been able to help people move toward healing, acceptance, self-worth, and a fuller understanding of what their lives can look like after an HSV diagnosis.

Knowing that something I went through became a source of healing for someone else is one of the things I’m most proud of. I didn’t just survive my experiences. I found a way to make them useful.

Is there a message, quote, lesson, or reminder you’d like to share with others who may be struggling along their healing journey?

If you’re struggling right now, I want you to remember that the version of your life you can see from this moment is not the only version available to you.

I’ve lived through some seasons where I genuinely could not imagine getting to the other side. I’ve experienced loss, homelessness, heartbreak, abuse, single motherhood, stigma, discrimination, and moments where I didn’t want to be here anymore. And somehow, I’m still here. Not because everything magically got better, but because I kept giving myself another opportunity to experience something different.

Healing is not linear. Some days you will feel strong, and other days you may feel like you’re starting over. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means you’re human.

Give yourself permission to take your healing one day at a time. You don't have to have the whole path figured out. Just don't make a permanent decision based on a temporary version of your life.

And please remember this: what happened to you may be part of your story, but it does not get to write the ending.

You are still becoming. There is still more life for you to experience, more love for you to receive, more of yourself for you to discover, and more impact for you to make.

Keep going. Your story is not finished.


Do you have any projects you're working on that you'd like to highlight?

Right now, I’m most interested in continuing to grow the work I’ve already created through Hey Cousins.

Hey Cousins is a resource hub and community for people navigating life with herpes, with a focus on moving beyond the diagnosis and doing the deeper work of healing, self-worth, relationships, wellness, and acceptance.

I’ve also written my book, Outbreak Free: Your Guide to Living HSV Outbreak Free, created years of educational content and resources, hosted support groups and workshops, and built a community where people can have honest conversations about living with HSV without shame being at the center of the conversation.

What I’m most proud of is that these aren’t just projects sitting on a shelf. They’re resources people are actively using to learn, process, connect, and heal. I want to continue expanding the reach of what I’ve already built and make sure more people know that an HSV diagnosis does not have to be the end of their story.

 

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