Something clicked if he had been more open about his diagnosis, he thought, maybe his relative would have been encouraged to take her medications. At around the same time the group fell apart, he learned a family member was ill with complications of HIV infection. Scott-Walker was himself living with HIV, but he hadn't disclosed his status widely. The most recent group had dissolved due to lack of interest, including his own. There was healing in the process, says Scott-Walker, but the groups rarely moved forward from it.
People would come to the groups to unpack each week's traumas.
'They were just, like, really sad,' he explains. His friend raised the question in 2015, and by that point, the 35-year-old HIV program manager had accumulated over a decade's worth of experience working in the HIV field, first in Baltimore and then in Atlanta, often leading such support groups. When asked to start a support group for gay black men living with HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, Larry Scott-Walker said no thanks. Larry Scott-Walker and Daniel Driffin, two of Thrive SS' co-founders, at this year's gay pride parade in Atlanta.
