Shame, identity, imposter syndrome
I recently had the pleasure of travelling to Victoria as part of the LEVEL Youth Policy Program 2022 cohort. It was an incredible opportunity; one that exposed me to the world of Indigenous and Canadian governance and connected me with BIPOC policymakers who are as committed to systems change as I am.
The trip also dug up some deep-rooted identity imposter syndrome.
We began our day at the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. The Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ erasure was palpable; while the grounds of the legislature were once home to these nations, today they have been forced to the outskirts of the city. Their presence is memorialised by a single totem pole on the property’s lawn.
We came to the legislature to attend Question Period. The set up of the Legislative Chamber, imprinted from the colonial British era, positioned the MLAs’ desks in rows. The government and opposition parties faced one another as if prepared for battle.
This session opened with introductions and discussions of important events happening throughout the province. Coming up was the one-year anniversary since Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc announced that 215 children went to residential school and never returned home. It was the first of many unmarked gravesites to be found across the country, an unveiling of “Canada’s” shameful past and present.
The week it happened, I visited Tk'emlúps as a show of solidarity. Collective grief and trauma hovered over the school grounds like a thick cloud of fog, evidence of the devastation this news left in its wake. Even as a guest to the territories, I left feeling dispirited, and angry with the government for its attempts to extinguish the bloodlines of my Indigenous kin across the country.
So when the topic of residential schools came up during the question period, I was expecting it to be handled gently, and sensitively. It was not. The MLAs spoke about the topic with no trigger warning or regard for the Indigenous youth sitting in their gallery. They described awful human rights abuses as trauma porn, forgetting that the harm they described had happened to our living relatives.
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Following that, the MLAs moved on to discuss the parliamentary issues at hand. Up first was a debate on British Columbians’ wait times for and lack of access to family doctors. It was a serious topic, one that warranted a fulsome, collaborative discussion.
Unfortunately, the way the issue was presented was unproductive and combative. The impetus used by the Liberal Party of British Columbia to argue for funding more doctors was that the British Columbian government needed to stop funding its “billion-dollar vanity project”, otherwise known as upgrades to the Royal BC Museum.* This was posed as a question to the Minister of Health; the problem is, the “vanity project” in question falls under the purview of the Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport.
Wondering who that might be? it’s the Honourable HLI HAYKWHL ẂII XSGAAK Melanie Mark, British Columbia’s first Indigenous woman elected as MLA, as well as the province’s only First Nation woman to serve in cabinet. She was never given an opportunity to answer.
It deeply frustrated me. The last thing the British Columbian government needed after finally getting one First Nations woman in the room was the opposition party silencing her.
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In the afternoon, our group headed over to the Esquimalt Wellness Centre to learn from Jessica Wood, Assistant Deputy Minister of Reconciliation. Jessica presented her efforts to implement the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, but what struck me most was what she had to say about her role in her community.
“Here I may be regarded as an expert,” she said, “But back home, I would be told to help care for babies and clean fish jars. I’m seen as a baby there because I have so much to learn about my culture, spirituality and language”.
Her statement hit like a gut punch; I was reminded of how disconnected I feel from my own Anishinaabe nation.
My great-grandmother was fluent in Anishinaabemowin. Colonialism crept into our family quickly; none of my relatives have fluently spoken our language in generations, and I only know a brief introduction in my language.
I’ve never learned to hunt, trap, gather, pick medicines, or bead. I wouldn’t have a clue how to survive in the bush, even though my ancestors lived intimately with these lands.
At that moment, I felt like a baby to my community too. That feeling of failure, of shame, of imposter syndrome, came crashing over me. I excused myself from the session and had a long, hard cry outside.
One of our program facilitators, a mixed Nehiyaw woman, followed after me.
“I get it,” she said, “Sometimes I feel too Indigenous in white spaces, and too white in Indigenous spaces. Let me remind you though, you are welcome here”.
I wiped my tears, calmed myself, and headed back inside to continue the reclamation work.
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You may be wondering where my sense of feeling “too white” to be Indigenous comes from. I know that Indigenous peoples are not a monolith and come in all skin shades. My family is evidence of that. However, to this day I still struggle with imposter syndrome.
I remember learning it in the fourth grade. I was in social studies learning about cultural identity for the first time. I went to a school where the majority was so white that the students of colour could be counted with one hand.
“Raise your hand if you are English”.
10 hands.
“Raise your hand if you are Ukrainian”.
7 hands.
“Raise your hands if you are Aboriginal”*.
3 hands. Myself and two other students, both of whom had darker skin than I did. Both of whom were bullied badly by our peers. Both of whom I felt as though I could separate myself from if I stopped saying I was Aboriginal and started saying I was European.
It was there I learned to be ashamed of who I was. That shame kept me from connecting with my Ojibwe roots until I was in university; a decade-long gap in knowledge that could have been spent becoming rooted in my identity.
Instead, I internalised a sense of imposter syndrome I haven’t been able to shake; despite writing my thesis on the harms of the Indian Act, despite assisting 11 First Nations across the country navigate humanitarian crises, despite my nonprofit work to promote Indigenous women’s reclamation of the outdoors industry, despite writing a report to petition the government to better support Indigenous youth, despite being accepted graduate school to write a thesis addressing reconciliation.
I know that I am Anishinaabe, and that nothing I do will ever change that. However, I also know that maintaining cultural, spiritual and linguistic ties is essential to our resistance to colonialism and our continuity as Nations. Without a strong cultural and spiritual identity myself, I have never felt as though I’ve done enough to be considered a “real” Anishinaabekwe.
When I was younger, I was ashamed of my Indigeneity. Now that I’m an adult, I’m ashamed to admit that I walk through the colonial and the Indigenous worlds, never feeling like I fit perfectly into either.
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The larger takeaway here is that modern-day colonialism is not about smallpox blankets. It’s about how we are silenced, erased, and removed from our communities. It’s about how we’re made to forget who we are and where we come from.
Today’s colonial methodology may be more insidious, but it is surely just as destructive. The British Columbian government having one First Nations woman in history and then silencing her is proof of that. So is my family line’s disconnection from who we have been for thousands of years in the span of one lifetime.
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Note: As this post was written, the government of British Columbia halted its plans to invest $800 million into redeveloping the Royal BC Museum, over allegations that doing so was irresponsible in the midst of a doctor shortage, an increasing cost of living and other critical issues coming out of the pandemic. I agree with the decision, and I still don’t think the Honourable HLI HAYKWHL ẂII XSGAAK Melanie Mark should have been silenced.
Note: I used Aboriginal here because it was a term I grew up hearing used to refer to Indigenous peoples; however it is outdated now, so please stick to Indigenous or better yet, the individual Nation you’re referring to.
What do we do about Canada Day?
This July 1st, Vancouver titled its Canada Day Celebrations ‘Canada Together’ and worked collaboratively with representatives from the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations to build an event that includes a Coast Salish welcoming ceremony, storytelling workshops, and a performance by Eagle Song Dancers.
Halifax re-envisioned its festivities as ‘KANA’TA: Canada Day 2022’ in partnership with the Mi’kmaw Nation, and chose to include an Indigenous Cultural Village, including bannock tacos, craft making and live performances.
And in Winnipeg, organizers at the Forks have opted to reimagine ‘A New Day’, foregoing their fireworks celebration in favour of a powwow, pipe ceremonies, tobacco tie workshops and other cultural programming.
To be on the right side of history is to be intentional about co-designing events on Turtle Island in partnership with its original inhabitants. As an Anishinaabe kwe whose family has been directly harmed by Indian Day schools, I welcome cities’ commitments to change for the better.
At the same time, I worry that events like these may be another form of lip service to Indigenous communities, or worse, examples of tokenism that suppress our real calls to action.
Think about it: initiatives to re-centre the original inhabitants of this land on Canada Day have only started very recently, even though we’ve been here since time immemorial. It’s only recently that the holiday was even called Canada Day; before 1982, the holiday was called ‘Dominion Day’, and intended to celebrate confederation and Canada’s connection to the British empire’s imperialist project. Does changing the name of the holiday really change its true intent?
In 2021, Indigenous communities across Turtle Island were rocked by news of the discovery of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Since that first announcement, more than 1300* potential unmarked gravesites have been found, with many more yet to be uncovered.
Following these uncoverings, Idle No More and grassroots Indigenous folks organized protests against the celebration of a country built on attempted genocide and stolen land. In response, 80+ cities and towns across 10 provinces and territories decided to cancel their Canada Day events out of respect for First Nations. Even the pope offered an apology for the Catholic church’s role in organizing the residential school system.
Do cities cancelling their fireworks celebrations change anything for Indigenous people? In a tangible sense, no. Cancelling fireworks celebrations will not directly impact First Nations communities experiencing boil water advisories, the overdose epidemic taking the lives of our family members, or the disproportionate rates of violence faced by our women, girls and two-spirit community members.
However, it’s still important that they do. When cities choose to validate and stand with the struggles happening within our communities, it keeps Canada’s true past in people’s minds, instead of promoting the myth of Canadian exceptionalism. That spurs change and gives me hope that a reconciliatory, decolonial future is possible.
Now that a year has passed and the buzz around residential schools has quieted, I worry that we have collectively forgotten. I don’t want you to forget. I want you to continue to show up in solidarity with us.
You may be wondering: Isn’t Canada Day all about celebrating multiculturalism? What’s so bad about throwing a Canada Day party, or watching the fireworks, to celebrate that?
To that, I urge you to consider the irony of upholding Canadian multiculturalism at the expense of Indigenous peoples. Pre-colonization, there were as many as 2 million Indigenous peoples across what is now Canada; by 1867, disease, starvation and warfare reduced our population numbers to 100,000. We have built our population nearly back up to pre-colonization numbers (reaching 1.67 million people today), but even that only comprises 4.9% of the overall Canadian population. Furthermore, while there are more than 50 Indigenous Nations and 70 distinct languages (that’s more than Europe) across Turtle Island, only 15.6% of Indigenous peoples can conduct a conversation in an Aboriginal language, and most Indigenous languages in Canada are at risk of going extinct.
How can we celebrate Canada’s multiculturalism today when the country was founded on European colonial assimilation and genocide? How can we throw parties, knowing that we are still uncovering Indigenous children’s bodies at the sites of residential schools intended to ‘kill the Indian’ in them? How can we idly watch fireworks celebrating Canada’s multiculturalism, when the original multiculturalism of Turtle Island is at risk of being lost forever?
Personally, I don’t think we can. So if you don’t want to celebrate Canada Day, here are ten things you can do, as an ally, to show up in solidarity for Indigenous peoples:
Begin taking a course to more deeply understand Indigenous peoples, such as this free, online one offered by the University of Alberta;
Source your news about Indigenous peoples from Indigenous publications, such as APTN;
Spend time consuming Indigenous creatives’ content on social media, television, podcasts and music;
Read the TRC and MMIWG reports to better understand the historical challenges and current realities Indigenous peoples are facing today;
Pay an Indigenous speaker and/or performer to attend an upcoming event you are planning;
Contact your local elected officials and ask them how they are working to implement the 94 Calls to Action;
Support Indigenous entrepreneurs by purchasing goods from their businesses;
Volunteer your time to an Indigenous charity or nonprofit;
Donate to Indigenous peoples’ GoFundMe pages and mutual aid requests;
Advocate for the protection of the lands and waters we share.
Notes:
*The numbers are not what matters. As Dr. James A Makokis (@drmakokis) tweeted, “No matter what the numbers are, there are not supposed to be graveyards at schools, ever”.
Student organizing against gender-based violence
Excerpt from my interview with the Canadian Women’s Foundation (CWF) and the IMPACTS Team.
Overview:
Across Canada, students are mobilizing to end gender-based violence in their schools. Students of all ages are organizing in their high schools, CEGEPs, colleges, and universities to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of gender-based violence on campus, to support those who experience this violence, and to call for policy change to end it.
I spoke as part of a roundtable discussion with student organizers about the shape of student activism: what it’s like to organize online, the challenges of sustaining student-led movements, and their current campaigns and calls to action.
Q: How did you get involved in organizing around gender-based violence on your campus?
A: I got involved in organizing around gender-based violence through student politics. In the second year of my undergraduate degree, I ran to become a representative on my university’s Board of Governors.
I included advocating for a better sexual violence policy in my platform because of my own experiences with sexual violence growing up, and because I had heard about the work that OurTurn (now Students for Consent Culture) was doing.
When I joined the Board of Governors and brought the issue forward to one of my more experienced colleagues, he said “This is not a board priority, and I don’t see it becoming one unless there is a major crisis”. Three weeks later, I was sexually assaulted. I began my advocacy in the gender-based violence space at the same time I began navigating my own sexual assault case.
Q: What are the key issues you’re dealing with on your campus related to GBV and organizing within your institution?
A: My university’s sexual violence policy was survivor-centric in theory, but not always in implementation. Many survivors felt disincentivized to come forward because of the revictimization and barriers they experienced when coming forward.
Some issues with our policy included:
Perpetrators were able to find out many personal details about the survivors’ lives.
Survivors are forced to interact with their abusers and hear “their side” of what happened.
Survivors not knowing their perpetrator’s consequences following a completed investigation.
Interim measures and consequences are not being upheld by the administration.
Furthermore, the university administration wasn’t targeting every demographic it needed to in order to effectively implement prevention efforts. This allowed rape culture to remain pervasive throughout the student body.
Q: How did you tackle those issues, and what kind of institutional response did you receive?
A: I tackled gender-based violence through a variety of means, including:
Representing the student body in advocating for changes to the sexual violence policy as a Board member;
Speaking at large-scale public engagements, such as the United Nations 16 Day Campaign to End Gender-Based Violence;
Sharing my lived experiences at Survivors Speaks events put on by our university’s Women’s Center;
Helping my program put on fundraising events for sexual assault support centres in our community;
Meeting directly with the administration staff to raise concerns I had about how the university was perpetuating rape culture and failing to support survivors.
The institutional response I received was, for the most part, discouraging. I think that while there were individual staff willing to hear the student body out, the university administration as a whole was more intent on protecting their legal reputation than they were on creating a survivor-centric policy.
However, my one positive exception to this happened while I was reviewing the sexual violence policy at a Board meeting. I spoke up and raised concerns about some of the amended language they were proposing because it came across as victim-blaming. I knew the language they used throughout the policy could make or break whether survivors felt comfortable to come forward. I advocated for the language to change. And the administration agreed to it! It made me grateful to be in the right place at such an important time.
Q: We see lots of conversation online right now about gendered violence, like with the Depp v Heard trial, though some folks don't realize these conversations are tied to a broader structure of rape culture. How do you think social media is impacting the movement to end gendered violence on campus? Do you think social media has made it so that people are more aware of GBV as a systemic issue?
A: When I was in university, social media was a major tool to raise awareness about gender-based violence. There were the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, Chanel Miller’s victim impact statement went viral, some big abusers in Hollywood were being held accountable, and while the Trump era spewed misogyny, it also sparked the Women’s March, the largest single-day protest in U.S history.
Because youth are so receptive to change, and because my generation was raised so closely with the internet, these events spilled over into conversations about ending gender-based violence on campus. So I do think that while I was in university, social media was a powerful tool that made people more aware of gender-based violence as a systemic issue.
I am nervous about the way that the movement to end gender-based violence is going, both in terms of the upswing in violence against women, girls and gender non-conforming people throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the recent sensationalization of abusive relationships in media (Kanye/Kim, Johnny/Amber, etc.).
However, if my social media echo chamber is anywhere near reflective of the younger Gen Z, I firmly believe they have been able to bring forth feminist talking points that are far more nuanced and insightful than what I saw during the era of millennial pink, #girlboss feminism. That brings me hope.
Q: Though GBV is covered in the news and taken up by school administrators more than in the past, some activists have pointed out how an intersectional framework is often missing in efforts to address GBV. Are there any key concerns you see around a lack of an intersectional framework for how issues related to campus GBV are addressed?
A: My university’s current sexual violence policy is sparse in how it addresses intersectionality; it acknowledges that those in equity-seeking groups who experience intersecting forms of disadvantage may be disproportionately affected by sexual violence, but it doesn’t include an intersectional framework to address these issues.
The policy may aim to “combat broader societal attitudes regarding gender, sex and sexuality that normalize sexual violence and undermine equality in addition to recognizing systemic forms of oppression”, but it does not state how, or how someone within the university community may hold the institution accountable when it fails to do so.
It’s so important that we feel seen and cared for by those we go to for support. When those people can relate to our life experiences, it makes it much easier to open up. Without an intersectional lens and framework applied in policy and its implementation, survivors miss out on the support best suited to their unique needs.
Q: GBV is not the only issue or concern for students on campus. To what extent are you connected with other social justice organisations on your campus? How do you see these issues fitting together?
A: I was fortunate as a student politician to have an overview of everything going on on campus. I assisted my university in progress in many areas, such as adopting a new mental health framework, supporting our accessibility strategy and contributing to Carleton’s Indigenous strategy and calls to action.
However, in hindsight, I wish I had involved more of the student body, especially those with lived experience unlike mine, in organizing around gender-based violence to see where these issues could have fit together.
Q: As students doing this work, do you feel like you are part of a broader feminist movement? Have you been able to find allies outside of your post-secondary institution? Are you connected to the movement to end gender-based violence in your community or more broadly?
A: Being in university while a feminist wave was crashing over the internet, I absolutely felt connected to a wider movement. When Students for Consent Culture graded various universities across Canada on their sexual violence policies, it was discouraging to see how low the grades were across the board; but it was encouraging to know that students at other universities across the country were speaking out.
I’ve also been fortunate to carry on the work I started within the university to my workplaces after it- I’ve run trainings at my workplace about 2SMMIWG, and I’m currently writing a report about the priorities of First Nations women, gender-diverse and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people in British Columbia, and my next project is a policy brief advocating for sex education reform.
Q: By its very nature, student activism is time-limited. Students graduate out, move on to different institutions or roles in life. In contrast, systems change - whether it’s changing systems within post-secondary institutions or within government - can take a long time. How are student activists thinking about passing down knowledge to incoming students? Are there ways you think we can collaborate with off-campus feminist organizations to help prevent that loss of institutional knowledge?
A: My situation is unique in that I graduated early on in the pandemic, when everything, from the way we learned to the way we did activism, had transitioned online. Additionally, I graduated feeling extremely burnt out. I needed a break from the gender-based violence activism space in order to recover.
As a result, when I moved away from Ottawa, I didn’t think about the importance of passing down knowledge to incoming students. I wish I had because students’ memory of the activists who came before them is usually limited to 1-3 years older than their own efforts.
I absolutely see a role in collaborating with both on and off-campus feminist organizations in order to ensure that knowledge is able to be passed down. For example, women’s centres on campus could conduct outreach to the student activists they know in order to collect their policy recommendations, then pass these on to groups like Students for Consent Culture for campaigning purposes. We need stories of hope from those who came before us in order to keep us pushing forward.
Q: What kind of self-care considerations should student activists be thinking about, especially for those working in a gender-based violence space? What advice can you offer for balancing the stresses and possibly triggering or vicarious trauma of working on these issues with academic pressures, financial pressures, etc. that come with student life? What does it look like to take care of yourself and your community?
A: Living through Carleton’s sexual violence policy at the same time that it was up for revision meant that on one hand, I could share my lived experiences during a meaningful window of opportunity. On the other hand, I wish I could go back in time to when I was sexually assaulted and tell myself to take better care of myself.
When I was navigating my assault, I was a full-time student trying to remain on the Dean’s list, learn the world of student politics, partake in extracurricular activities, work part-time and maintain a ‘normal’ social life. It was an impossible balance, one that came at the expense of my mental health. Yet even though I knew I was navigating PTSD and depression, I never gave myself more than a week off of my work. I felt as though I had to stay involved in student politics in order to prove to my abuser’s circle of friends that they couldn’t silence me.
As a result, I hit a mental health rock bottom, one that if it weren’t for my therapist intervening, could have taken my life. I regret not giving myself time to heal and rest earlier. I didn’t listen to my mental health cues or body, and I’m lucky that people were around me when I was at rock bottom. Others might not be so lucky. It’s vital to have a support network, but you shouldn’t have to overextend yourself before leaning on them.
Therefore, my advice to those balancing advocacy in the gender-based violence space with the other demands of student life, especially for those with lived experience, is to be honest with yourself about what you have the capacity to take on and stay within your limits. Be gentle with yourself, because it may take years to recover if not.
You don’t have to change the world, or even your campus, in the short time you are there because there will always be brave folks willing to carry this work forward. Healing is such an important part of the work. I think about Micaela Coel’s Emmy speech, when she says, “Do not be afraid to disappear, from it, from us, for a while, and see what comes to you in the silence”. You are allowed to heal quietly and speak loudly about it later.
Q: What has been your biggest “win” as a student activist? Are you working on any specific campaigns now that we should know about?
A: This year, I’ve joined the Vancouver Foundation’s LEVEL Policy Program cohort. We’re working on putting together policy proposals on topics of our choosing so that they can be presented to the government. I’ve chosen to conduct my project on reforming British Columbia’s sex education system so that it has a stronger focus on consent, boundaries, healthy relationships and marginalized communities’ experiences of sexuality, such as those who are disabled or part of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community.
Last month, I visited parliamentarians at the BC Legislative Assembly, and the Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity mentioned my idea in conversation before I even had a chance to share it. So I’m incredibly hopeful that my policy ask will be taken well and will lead to change.
The wins we receive in this space are too often hard-fought, but they are possible. So if I can leave folks with one parting remark, it’s don’t give up the fight.
15 reminders for Indigenous peoples x Pride month
Ah June, my favourite month to celebrate all of who I am. I put together this list in honour of both Indigenous Peoples and Pride Month - take a number that suits you.
Pride started as a riot, spearheaded by trans women of colour. We owe everything to them.
After generations of colonization devaluing their wisdom, we have an imperative to restore the inclusion of Two-Spirit individuals into the 2SLGBTQQIA+ acronym.
Land acknowledgments and Indigenous representation should be present at every Pride celebration.
Police presence, on the other hand...
Indigenous conceptions of gender and sexuality are far more expansive than the western world can ever hope to be. Our terms, in our languages, deserve to be revitalized and upheld.
Not everyone gets to access our ‘coming out’ stories, our ‘queer awakening’ stories, our intergenerational trauma or our ceremonial stories for free. Pay your queer and Indigenous storytellers who are willing to share.
On that note, allies: please dedicate your time (yes, your paid holidays) and your financial resources to learning from and supporting us.
It’s best practice to lead conversations with your pronouns and ask everyone to join in.
Yes, you are “queer enough”. Even if you are early in your transition, even if you are in a straight passing relationship, even if you’re in the closet, even if you’ve never been to Pride.
Fluidity is a sacred and gorgeous thing.
Yes, you are “Indigenous enough”. Even if you don’t know your language yet, even if you grew up urban, even if you’re mixed, even if finding your way back to community is challenging.
Intersectionality at the centre, always. Our Indigiqueer kin have so much to say.
Indigenous youth, especially Two-Spirit and queer youth, deserve better mental health services, including identity-affirming spaces, traditional teachings and access to our lands.
Indigenous and trans women suffer rates of sexual assault three to four times higher than their settler and/or cisgender counterparts; we need systemic solutions that keep us all safe.
When we remain resilient in the face of institutions constantly working to erase us, we honour the generations of ancestors who strove before us, and our future ancestors to come.
Life lessons for twenty-somethings, vol. 1
Hug your friends and tell them you love them embarrassingly often. You never know when you’ll see them next.
You are the main character in every story you create. Do not revolve your world around making others comfortable.
Setting and maintaining your boundaries is necessary for self-preservation. You have to set the bar for how you want to be treated, or someone else will set it for you.
Despite what our egos tell us, it is actually a very good thing to be a beginner at something. Doing so allows us opportunities to play with childlike wonder.
None of us are free until all of us are free to live in a dignified and just world. We all have more anti-racist work to do.
Our decision making is affected more by the environments we find ourselves in than we consciously know.
When you finally live a life you love, you will stop looking for ways to escape it.
Life is too short to be lived in the closet. Yes, I mean that in terms of sexuality (pending safety concerns of course), but I also mean that life is too short to minimise yourself, and obscure who you really are from the world.
Some people will say they don’t know what they’re looking for in a relationship. This is them trying to let you down easily. Move on to someone who is sure they want you.
When it comes to the good and the bad, it won’t always be this way.
In defence of solo romance
Valentine’s Day is my absolute favourite holiday, but I can understand that most folks don’t feel the same.
Perhaps you see it as capitalistic bullshit. Perhaps you feel disappointed by a partner who consistently does nothing for you (dump them). If you’re single, perhaps it stings with the loneliness of not feeling “chosen” by someone else.
The good news is, you can always choose yourself!!
Here’s my pro tip if you want to actually enjoy the day: take yourself on a date.
The older I get, the more I LOVE a good solo date. Nothing makes me feel as powerful as looking a restaurant host in the eye and letting them know that “I’d like a table for one, please”.
I credit my love of self dates to a tradition I started in the eighth grade. Every year, I made my friends dress up with me so that our moms (and later ourselves) could take us out for heart-shaped pizza. I didn’t have any meaningful men in my life at the time, so I saw February 14th as a celebration for the girls.
Last year, I had just moved to a new city and hadn’t yet made any friends. I’d been keeping Galentines Day going since 2012, and I refused to give up on the holiday tradition I’d started.
I ordered pizza, watched my favourite guilty pleasure movie, played my “4 Shawty” playlist, and reminded myself how much I loved my own company.
And honestly? It was one of my favourite days of the whole year.
This year and every year after, I’m going to prioritise finding ways to romance myself.
The “feeling”
The “feeling” is akin to a girl crush: you know you are absolutely enamoured with someone, only you can’t tell whether you want to be them, be their best friend or be dating them.
The first time I felt the “feeling” was in seventh grade. I could have sworn the sun revolved around one of my then-friends because all I wanted to do was bask in her presence. One day I thought to myself, “Wait, does this make me a lesbian?”, and my life was forever changed.
Just kidding. I wish figuring it all out had been that straightforward. Instead, it took ten years of navigating internalized homophobia, compulsive heteronormativity, “girl crushes”, actual girl crushes and a range of experiences with different genders to figure out that I wasn’t a lesbian, but that I sure wasn’t straight either.
I spent a decade trying to hate the queer out of myself, but the “feeling” kept stubbornly popping up, insistent like a wildflower that grows between cracks in the sidewalk.
It finally dawned on me that the “feeling” wasn’t going anywhere at 22. When I decided to finally embrace it, I learned that my bisexuality was a superpower. Why?
Because in spite of a world that demanded I “pick a side”, my sexuality eschewed rigidity and simply bloomed.
Wait, what AM I doing here?
In the summer of 2020, I spontaneously took a road trip to British Columbia by myself to spend a week with friends. One week became two. Two became three. Three became indefinitely. To sum up how I was feeling at the time:
“Holy shit. I’m actually doing this. Wait, what AM I doing here?”
If there’s one thing life in British Columbia has taught me so far, it’s that there is beauty in taking in adventures and opportunities as they come. When the opportunity to live close to the ocean and mountains found me, I jumped into the deep end and said yes. Not knowing what I would be doing there was nerve-wracking, and for weeks afterwards, I wondered if I had made the “right” decision.
Sometimes there is no right decision other than to make one. This brings me to the following quote I started living by that season. Perhaps it’ll resonate with you too:
“If you obsess over whether you are making the right decision, you are assuming that the universe will reward you for one thing and punish you for another. The universe has no fixed agenda. Once you make any decision, it works around that decision. There is no right or wrong, only a series of possibilities that shift with each thought, feeling, and action you experience.”
I may not know what the future holds, but that won’t stop me from getting excited about the possibilities anyway.
You never know what magic you could find
I find my purpose in policy and my magic in creativity.
I bring smiles to every stranger I walk past and goofy dance moves to every party I attend.
I get really excited when I think about the future, and equally so about the nostalgia of snail mail, pinky promises, and vinyl records.
I love spectacle and sparkly dresses, but I also like staying in to listen to your stories.
I keep my closet in chronological order and thrive on list making, but I am the clumsiest person you’ll ever meet.
In short: I am a walking contradiction.
Some might call that two-faced, but I like to think we’re all multidimensional. I’ve been pondering over humans lately, and how quickly we use one-word descriptives when we label others. It’s easier to think of people that way. It streamlines our lives, makes it faster for us to scroll through our newsfeeds.
But I think we miss out on truly understanding people until we notice the little bit of everything that exists in them.
If you feel like you have to suppress parts of yourself to please other people, know this: In embracing all the sides of who you are, you may feel misunderstood by some (maybe even the majority), but your people can only find you once you’re brave enough to put the real you out there.
And if you’re someone quick to judge, try to listen a little more closely to the stories around you - you never know what magic you could find.
The fist-in-the-air moment I never got
I always thought the end of university would feel triumphant. A fist-in-the-air moment, confirmation that these really were “the best four years of your life”.
Truth be told, my university experience was a rollercoaster with pretty steep drops. In my final year, things finally felt like they were turning in my favour. When I heard the announcement “we are prepared to shut down” in lecture hall the day before isolation, I couldn’t believe it. Nothing was going to ruin the movie reel in my head, right? Not when things were finally getting good?
What followed was a flurry of adjusting to social distancing, somber trips to the grocery store and a tough decision to move home. I’d promised myself that I would get out of Ottawa as soon as I graduated. When that day came, I expected it to be a grandiose going away party, not a handful of goodbyes I never got to say.
The first few months of the pandemic, I felt as though my world was upside down, with no idea when things would be right side up again.
And yet, it was comforting, the thought that I wasn’t the only one feeling this way.
While the pandemic made us more physically isolated than ever, I like to think that in some sense, it has also made us closer than ever before.
From mass applause for health care workers to community balcony dance parties, to elderly-only hours at supermarkets, to declining air pollution, there is proof everywhere of good news, even amidst newsreel heartbreak.
Surely this will not make up for the fear or the loss of the crisis. What it has done is show us the importance of life-saving science, the value of our essential workers, and the shortcomings of our social systems.
My hope is that we use COVID-19 as a catalyst for unprecedented cooperation in the face of future global challenges. That we use it to always be grateful and to never take the good news for granted. Above all, I hope that we treat every encounter we come across in our daily lives as though it’s a long-awaited reunion in an airport terminal.
This will end, even if we don’t know how or when. We have to keep reminding ourselves of that. And when it does, it will be a triumphant one, far better than the movie reel in my head was supposed to be.
Proost!
I went on my first solo backpacking trip in 2019.
Traveling alone around the Netherlands felt vulnerable. I spent my first few days hyper aware of my surroundings. My concerns were real, but as I familiarized myself, I became more comfortable saying yes.
One ‘yes moment’ I had was befriending a local. It ended up being the best decision I made.
My host and I bonded over folk music and our free-spirited adventures. He taught me of hidden gems in Europe, which I added to my travel bucket list. We toured a windmill, visited a coffeeshop and drank beer in a church-turned-brewery.
Together, we experienced life as Dutch as it could be - or so I thought.
There was one thing I hadn't yet done: spend a night out on the town.
I spent a short while in Spain, and when I returned, my newfound friend welcomed me with open arms.
We met up with the rest of his floormates to head for the club. I thought we were catching an Uber, but I was wrong.
Instead, everyone unlocked their bicycles.
“Hop on my handlebars!” my friend exclaimed, and so I did.
A fleet of fifteen of us cycled to a pub, laughed, sang and danced the night away. The evening was silly and strange, whimsical and fun; which is exactly how I would describe the Netherlands as a whole.
To new friends, new adventures, and to seeing the world in a new light: Proost!
Kicking down doors
“What makes you happy?”
My mentor Jay asks me over a macadamia nut latte and a fresh baked donut.
I was looking for a job at the time, so I told him I was pretty good at administrative work.
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he said, “tell me what you’re passionate about.”
I then told him about sharing my poetry with the world. He got goosebumps when I spoke.
“You haven’t stopped smiling since you started talking. Not once did you mention how difficult it was to do that.”
We agreed that it is being truthful and vulnerable that makes us great.
We then discussed the importance of looking in the mirror.
“What if your situation had given him a mirror to look at why he did this? Something probably hurt him as a kid that he never properly healed from. We have to change the perpetrators, because if we don’t, they will continue to do this.”
When I think of sexual violence, I’m angry. Rightfully so, given what I and so many others have been through. Anger provides great impetus for taking action.
But in that moment, I realized that if I really wanted to be a great leader, if I really wanted to make a difference in this world, then I needed to meet my anger with empathy too.
That day, Jay called me a “compassionate warrior”. It is hands down the best compliment I’ve ever received.
“What does a compassionate warrior do?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “in your case, it means you’re going to kick down doors and shatter glass ceilings.”
The earth does not belong to us
“Are you looking for the best snorkelling spot?”
A local asks me, thickly smeared layer of sunscreen across his nose. This point is where he checks the weather conditions every day.
“I’ll tell ya, you picked a good day to go. Park a little further down the road, enter the bay there and you might even spot a sea turtle.”
I follow his instructions like they are the coordinates to finding gold.
I slip into the ocean and kick my flippers, watching schools of fish change their course of direction beneath me. Words I’ve only heard in elementary spelling tests - amethyst, azure, cerise, chartreuse - come to life in the hues of the coral and wildlife. I’m busy taking it all in when I feel a burst of movement directly below.
A giant sea turtle. It passes underneath my belly, completely uninhibited by my presence, even within my arms’ reach. Its lack of fear catches me off guard until I realize:
We belong to this earth. It does not belong to us.
A man once complained to me that the ban the straws campaign was blown way out of proportion; but if the reduction of straws is equal to one less turtle choking on our waste, then it is a worthwhile measure to take.
I don’t want to contribute to a world that causes the wild to fear us. If that means becoming conscious of every little piece of plastic I use until I learn not to use it, so be it.
Ocean degradation is a problem requiring system-level shifts, but I still have a responsibility to be better.
We all do.
What’s in a name?
It all begins with an idea.
According to my parents, a lot.
After a painfully long twenty-seven-and-a-half hours of labour, I was finally introduced to the world on July 30th, 1998.
My mother was exhausted. She told the doctors she wouldn’t have the energy to hold me until after she caught up on sleep, so I was passed off to my father and shown around town.
The first question anyone had for him was, “What’s the baby’s name?”
“Taylor” my father confidently replied.
There was one problem with this: my parents hadn’t come to a consensus on my name. Taylor had been my father’s first choice and my mother’s third. So when she heard the news, she was pissed.
Since it was too late to change it, my father’s executive decision on my first and last name stuck. My mother, however, fuelled by egalitarianism and spite, decided I was getting not one, but two middle names: Alyssa and Jade.
My middle names have stuck with me, as a reminder of the indignant power held by the matriarchs of my family. Naming this website in their honour is a reminder that everything I am able to do is because of the indignant power they passed onto me.