By Douglas College Student Life

“When I first came out, all of my best friends decided to cut me off. I started to notice that this happened a lot in my high school: someone would realize they were queer and everyone would abandon them. I decided I wasn’t going to let that stop me from being who I am. My best friend and I decided to start up a pride club at our school, we built an LGBTQ community on campus and we even had lessons. The first lesson I got to teach I went absolutely bonkers about gender, and everyone loved it! I actually teared up at the end because people around me started to accept that being trans is real. That was when I realized I wanted to become a teacher.”

“I went to East Van poetry slams every week during the summer. One of the poems I performed was a response to a letter I had written to myself two years ago; it was a lot about being myself and not changing who I am, but taking down the parts that I was using to disguise myself. I then decided to cut off all my hair, change the way that I dressed, and now here I am. I changed things, but it was really about the real me coming through. This is who I really am.”