I found my voice in an unexpected place: along my uncle’s bar counter on Christmas Eve, 12 years ago.

Our annual Christmas Eve gathering is often shrouded in hilarious, wine-fuelled chaos: think melted chocolate flying onto walls, ceilings, and holiday sweaters, and elbows knocking for space on the meat-lined hot plates in the centre of the table.

And most recently, TikTok-inspired Christmas games like the one where you waddle around with a candy cane dangling between your legs, as you try to collect other candy canes out of a cup—which has proven to be far more engaging than the yearly new multiplayer story-based boardgame addition that my cousin insists we play, which takes a minimum of 20 minutes to explain. You can hear his sighs of frustration growing louder with each pour of wine as we all become more distracted and difficult to wrangle. Yet, he keeps trying! Our family is nothing if not tenacious!

I’ve brought each of my partners to this night over the years—a test of sorts—to see how they can hang with the family. Will they be a willing participant in the chocolate fondue frenzy? How will they act when my aunt has a couple of glasses too many and starts licking her plate?
Will they show interest in my uncle’s lengthy description of the (many?) notes of his aged scotch?
Can they keep up with the quips that fly across the table between my cousins, my mom and any unsuspecting victim? Will they jump to extinguish the small fire that lights up the front of my mom’s shirt and humour her when she brings it up every year thereafter?!

All of these moments have become the colours that paint a night that we have each grown to love and look forward to as a family.
But not every year was jolly—particularly the first one.

We started this tradition in 2013. My mom, older brother, boyfriend at the time, and I packed up my mom’s famous broccoli and cheese dish—lovingly nicknamed “broccoli thing,” and made our way to my aunt and uncle’s home.
No matter the occasion, going there felt special. I was enamoured by the house and all it contained; their grand piano, the big yard, and of course, the Martha Stewart-worthy holiday spreads my aunt would prepare.

That night, we were greeted by Christmas tree lights and the scent of honeyed carrots and turkey roasting in the oven.
Ever the hosts, boards of fancy cheese, crackers and jams lined the bar counter with a couple of $50 Pinot noirs open and decanting.
The chocolate was slowly melting in its little pot, surrounded by fresh strawberries and raspberries.
And the night took off as it would for years to come: Christmas tunes playing in the background amid crackers crunching and the belly laughter of cousins sitting along the bar counter with a beer or a wine glass in hand.

The adults lingered around us in the kitchen, eager to hear the latest:
“It’s been ages! Too long!”
“How’s school been going?”
“What about work?”
“What have you been up to?”
“Are you dating anyone?”

Mmm. That last one.

My aunt and uncle like to drink. They are big wine people—the kind that have monthly memberships to their favourite wineries and always have a bottle open and ready to share. So when my uncle directed this last question at my brother, he was certainly a few glasses deep: his face a little red, his voice a little louder.

My brother had been single for a while after a devastating breakup. A fairly private and non-confrontational person, he brushed off the question with a casual, “I’m not looking for anything right now.”
My uncle pressed him further. “What do you mean, a strapping guy like you? No girlfriend?”
“Nope, no girlfriend.”
“Well, I think we know what’s really happening then.”
Silence, around the bar table.
My uncle laughed boisterously, “Well, it’s obvious, you must be gay, right?”
My brother, very straight and clearly uncomfortable, just said, “No, I’m not. I’m just single right now.”
But my uncle kept pressing. The tension in the room was a living thing that seemed to grow with each passing second. Eyes shifted but no one uttered a word, giving all the air to my uncle as he laughed, his scotch tilting in its cup, while he continued on this completely inappropriate and brazen tirade he started and couldn’t seem to stop, he sounded off like an unreachable stove top kettle screeching on its red hot element as proceeded to list all of the supposed signs and reasons why my brother must be—

“THAT’S ENOUGH.”

Each head and neck darted to my seat at the island bar. My small, 21-year-old frame quivered with anger, and I joined their wide-eyed surprise that those deep, guttural two words had come from me.

“Can’t you see that you are making him—and everyone else—uncomfortable? That’s enough now. Stop.”
My uncle stared at me, jaw slack in disbelief, as he seemed to almost come-to—or rather, come back down onto planet earth where the rest of us were living.
“Wow, I didn’t know you had that in you,” he said to me.
“Yeah, well…” (Truthfully, neither did I).

The subject changed, the night continued on, but that interaction cut all of us. A wound, surely, but it also cut us open—it eventually forced us to reflect in a way that became healing. And looking back, I know how truly important that night was.

Families are swollen with untalked-about power dynamics and histories, aren’t they?
And although our dynamic was inherent and conditioned, both my uncle and I (and likely everyone else in the room) were surprised that night by the forced assessment of our roles in the family. I didn’t think of myself as a role-breaker, but saying those two words gave me confidence that I could be. I don’t actually have to fit myself uncomfortably inside other people’s expectations of me. If I stand up for what’s right, I might be heard. If I speak up, someone might listen.

In the end, my uncle did.

He apologized then, and has apologized since. That incident was the catalyst for years of deeper conversations in our family—and I believe laid the foundation for the support, understanding and care that those same family members, including my uncle, have given me since I came out and married my soulmate (who just happens to be gender non-conforming—turns out, unbeknownst to me at the time, that I was the gay one in the room!).

Although uncomfortable, I am grateful for that night being part of my story. It taught me that finding your voice doesn’t always happen in grand moments; sometimes it happens in smaller ones, in the middle of a crowded kitchen, uttering two words aloud that surprises even you.

I didn’t know it then, but that moment was the beginning of something much bigger. It was the first time I realized that care and love sound like courage—not silence. That it’s not enough to simply know the difference between right and wrong; love lives in saying the truth out loud, with your whole chest—and often to the biggest person in the room.

That lesson has followed me into many more dinners and many more hard conversations with people I love and strangers alike. Speaking up with compassion for those who haven’t found their voice quite yet, or whose voice often goes ignored or dismissed.

So finding my voice didn’t end in that one moment—it began there. And now that I’ve found it? Good luck trying to shut me up.