I have always been a writer

CW: sexual assault. If you require support after reading this, please reach out to one of the phone numbers listed here.

JUVENESCENCE

October 2003. I have just started Kindergarten, and I LOVE show and tell. One day of the month, I get to speak my mind to a classroom of attentive listeners, and it is my most favourite thing.

I also love to read the newspaper. Each morning before school, I sit on my mom’s lap and learn about the world with her. People say newspapers are for grown-ups, but they are wrong because I can read big words too.

Sure, I like comics, but it is everything else that grabs my attention. I read about the weather, and crimes, and classified advertisements, and am engrossed by it all. I decide that at the next show and tell, I will come ready to educate my classmates about what’s going wrong in the world.

My mother chuckles as she retells me this story. That day, I came to school and told my classmates about the murders happening in our community. My teacher called my mother, concerned for my well-being, and asked her to stop reading me the newspaper.

“She’s teaching herself to read,” retorted my mother, “Who am I to stop her?”

—

October 2008. I am in fifth grade, and my language arts teacher reveals that she has an exciting assignment for us. We are to write a short story- our only requirements are that it has to have a forest, a princess and something enchanted involved. Most of the other kids are groaning about the three pages expected of them, but I am beaming. This sounds like the most fun homework I will have, maybe ever.

I take out my favourite notebook and get to work. My story is aptly titled The Enchanted Forest. It is a gender-bending fairytale about a sword-wielding princess who trains her male love interest to fight the dragons that threaten the forest surrounding their village. In return, he shows her how to do domestic tasks. Naturally, they are a perfect match and live happily ever after. By the time I am done writing its side quests and plot twists, it becomes a twenty-page behemoth. 

When presentation day comes, I am ecstatic. The teacher has brought in a special cherry red leather armchair from the library for each of us to sit in as we read what we have written. The Enchanted Forest is a story that deserves to be remembered, so I volunteer to go last.

I read all twenty pages of my story aloud to the class. My presentation is much longer than the others- in fact, it takes a full hour to get through- but I do not care. I have never been happier, or felt more me, than I do at this moment. 

During recess, one of my bullies comes up to me. She says, “That was so long I almost fell asleep, but so interesting it kept me awake”. It is the closest thing to kindness she ever gave me.

I make my mother proud. She thinks my book should be published. As a ten-year-old, I don’t know what that means exactly, but it sounds important. The Enchanted Forest was never published, of course. But to this day, my mother brings it up whenever I’m feeling down, as proof that my writing gift has always been with me. 

—

May 2016. I am in twelfth grade, and taking second-credit literary English. My English teacher wears vintage dresses and thick-rimmed glasses and is more self-assured than I think I will ever be. She’s a hard marker, which makes me deeply want to impress her. When she gives us free rein on our final assignment, I pour every fibre of my being into it.

I write her a journal, titled Turning Seventeen. The first few pages provide an overview of key events in my life. The rest of the journal consists of “memory jar” entries, crumpled scraps of paper with details I want to remember.

As a teenager, I am convinced that my life will one day mean something important, so I write down everything. This includes my first hangover (horrendous), my friend breakups (dramatic), and the time I kissed two boys in one week (scandalous!). My English teacher grades me an A+ on my work and refuses to make eye contact with me ever again.

Looking back at this assignment, I am both horrified and amused with myself. I am sure my English teacher and her husband (my art teacher) ate up my exposé on everyone in my grade and everything that happened that year. 

I would never write something so scathing now. But I do think it is the purest example of myself creating with abandon, and proof that I was meant to be a memoirist.

ADOLESCENCE 

November 2018. I am in my third year of my undergraduate degree, the worst year of my life. Three months before that night, I was sexually assaulted by my best friend. Now, I am getting on stage for the first time to speak out about what happened to my body that night.

Every year, the Women’s Centre puts on an event called Survivors Speak. It is a brave space, built into a cozy campus cafe, that invites survivors of sexual violence to share their experiences with listening ears. I have not written much since high school, so the idea of sharing my writing on a topic this vulnerable scares me. But since I am fighting a sexual assault investigation that continually invalidates me, I desperately yearn to be heard. I decide that I would write something, just this once.

I get to work on my piece, a seven-minute monologue of the sexual assaults I experienced at ages five, eighteen, and twenty years old. I describe them happening to three of my friends - Taylor, Alyssa, and Jade- and tie them together by clarifying that I am Taylor Alyssa Jade in my conclusion. I speak back to victim-blaming culture, punctuating my last sentence with the words “fuck no”. It feels powerful.

Because I have never been to a poetry event, I assume that memorizing the poem is mandatory. I recite mine with no notes and do not miss a word. My audience responds with a standing ovation, hugs, and hand squeezes. The speaker after me says, “I don’t know how to top that”. My work is so well-received that the Women’s Centre invites me back for years to follow.

I perform at more coffeehouses, join a local poetry collective, and slowly start to believe my voice has something to say. While words cannot return my stolen body back to me, I am grateful that they found me in time to pull me through my darkest days.

—

November 2021. I live in Vancouver now, as far as I can geographically get from home without my mother wrangling me in. I’ve long graduated, and just started a job as a policy analyst; after a year in the emergency management sector, I no longer crave a work-fuelled adrenaline rush.

It’s been a while since I had time to spend with my own thoughts, so I am eager to get back into writing. I decided to build my own website, a little corner of the world where I can freely put social justice in creative terms. The problem is, I am not quite sure who to write for.

That’s when Haley’s newsletter finds me. Haley, a bossy, Brooklyn-based, bi gemini who writes boldly about mental health, sex, and trauma, is the coolest person I have never met.

Haley is starting a course called “Writing With Confidence”. We are challenged to show up every Tuesday evening to write, in the company of other budding creatives. The intent of this class is to boost our confidence and break our procrastination habits. I sign up within the hour.

Haley and her perfect blowout deliver a writing prompt to start our first class. We all share, no preambles allowed. I am soon enamoured with the creative brains of my classmates. 

A few weeks into the course, I submit a ten-page submission for editing. I hold my breath the entire week, forgetting I am in safe hands. There are nothing but kind, constructive comments left on my work.

The course gives me lifelong friends, whom I later fly out to see in New York. My newfound community instils in me a belief in my own abilities, strong enough that I whisper aloud to myself: I am not just someone who writes, I am a writer.

—

September 2022. I am back in university, this time to get a Master’s degree in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. On orientation day, my and I cohort are squished into a small classroom. Our professors have prepared presentations to welcome us into the program.

Two women take their seats at a table facing us. The first to speak shares words of knowing comfort. 

“You belong here”, she declares. 

Speaking to a room filled with people of colour, she intimately knows that we have all already experienced academic exclusion. I feel at home, knowing someone cares enough to rectify it. 

Detailing vignettes of her career, she drops a detail that I audibly gasp at: she is writing a memoir and has a contract with Penguin Random House to do it. She is personified proof of my dream. It takes everything in me not to raise my hand and beg her to tell me everything. 

I decide, bravely, to email her later the following day:

“I learned a lot yesterday, and I would love to learn more from you. I imagine you are incredibly busy as both a professor and MFA student, but if you can make time in the next month to discuss memoir writing and the publishing world, I would be delighted to listen.”

She replies back:

“I am more than happy to share with you my own story of acquiring an agent and also about how I got the publishing contract. I would also be happy to share with you an introduction to an amazing agent – this seems to be the all-important key to acquiring a book deal!” 

I immediately call my closest friends, crying tears of joy about even the slightest chance at this newfound opportunity. For the first time in my life, my goal is within reach. I may be a writer now, but one day, I will be an author too.

ADULTHOOD

December 2023. I have just finished my Masters degree. It was laborious, but flew in the blink of an eye. I fast tracked my degree and finished it in sixteen months. I teeter between excitement and nervousness over what comes next.

I know one day I’ll want to go back to school- whether for a PhD or a JD, I’m not certain yet. But for now, all I want is to write.

It is risky, taking time away from the workforce to pour into myself rather than fulfill someone else’s agenda. Money is tighter than I would like, but I consider myself lucky. I live in London, England, with the love of my life, and since he has a full-ride Masters scholarship, neither of us will have to worry about rent for the next few months. 

I have the capacity, finally, to focus entirely on completing the first draft of my first book. I have an agent in mind- the one my professor helped me find all those months ago- and cannot wait for them to fall in love with Brave Thing. My memoir has been six years in the making; like an overstuffed animal, my story is bursting at the seams, ready to spill its inner workings onto the page. Thankfully, I journaled that entire year, so my memories remained intact; it’s like I knew my words would mean something important one day.

On the days where it is hard to write, to revisit that worst year of my life, I remember who I have to lean on. My mother. Past teachers. The poetry collective. My Writing With Confidence classmates. Haley. My graduate school friends. My professor. My partner.

I feel grateful, knowing these people will be with me, throughout this process. I can’t wait to have them in the audience of my book tour, responding with standing ovations, hugs, and hand squeezes. 

—

November 2025. I am an author, holding my published memoir in my hands. Every time I pick up a copy of Brave Thing, the surreality of this accomplishment sets in, and my eyes well up with gratitude again. 

Writing this book was an arduous process; there is no triumph without preceding struggle, a mentor once reminded me. I did what I needed to push myself through: I diligently went to therapy, took breaks that grounded me in the present, and cried on the shoulders that could support me. 

My book is a powerful thing. It looks my rapist in the eyes, names what he did to my body, details the unjust burden of winning a sexual assault investigation and delivers social commentary on the wider issues illuminated by my case. The publishing team at Penguin Random House says this book has the power to reignite social discourse about sexual violence not seen since #metoo went viral. It might even make it onto the New York Times bestseller list, they tell me. 

Tonight is the first night of my book tour. The buzz outside my changeroom tells me the venue is already packed. I may be nervous to share something so vulnerable so publicly, but I know my entire life has prepared me for this moment. 

I step onto the stage in a gorgeous gown, receive a standing ovation, take my seat in a cherry-red leather armchair, and captivate the room.