Tag: sapphic Vancouver

Breaking Out: Phi’s Story

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Four months before my wedding, I was in full planning mode. Seating charts, handmade invitations, handmade ceremony programs, finalizing caterers and place settings, the works.

One evening, my fiancée, the man of my… parents’ dreams, was scrolling the TIVO, looking for the next show we should watch. He said, “Hey, what about this show? You heard of it? The L Word?”

My insides burned. “Sure,” I managed to say aloud.

I did not tell him I had already seen the series.

I did not tell him I knew The L Word inside out, that certain scenes were burned into the folds of my brain.

You see, long before living with him in Silicon Valley, I had lived in another valley, Lynn Valley, with my parents and sisters.

One of my sisters had brought a pirated copy of the whole DVD set back from China after a year of teaching abroad. One afternoon, sitting in our parents’ basement, I was thumbing through her giant folder of DVDs, and found this show.

With the first sex scene, my entire body responded. All the kissing. Touching. Fucking. Back then, I wasn’t registering the problematic parts of this series: how most of the actors playing lesbians were straight. White. How the sex scenes were so hetero-performative. I just saw boobs. And I liked it. I found myself sliding my hand down my pants and touching myself. Right there in the family basement. Afterwards, I was flooded with shame.

And then I pressed play and kept watching. I wondered how my sister had watched this show with her two roommates, wouldn’t it have turned them all on like it did me?

In the next episode came the next sex scene. And so did I.

Each scene whether it was sex, touching, a glimpse of something, gave me such massive, full-bodied orgasms, that getting through just one episode was quite exhausting.

All this flashed through my mind as my fiancee loaded up the show. I was anxious as shit. How was I supposed to navigate this situation? What would happen when we started watching this show and it started doing to me what I knew it had done before?

As far as anyone knew, including myself, I was straight. The fact that I’d been binging the L Word on loop since my mid-20s was not something I dwelled on.
The fact that I’d been binging sapphic erotica since my late teens in that same basement didn’t even make a dent in my mind.
Everyone had their secrets, I figured. I never once questioned my sexuality. I just locked it all away in the closet that I didn’t know I had back there.

When my fiancee hit play and the first episode showed the first sex scene, things worked out in my favor. With that first sex scene, he kinda did that straight guy thing of “ohhh” at the sight of two women having sex.
He looked at me and I probably made a face like “____” like a desperate attempt to match his turn-on without betraying the depth of my own.

After the episode ended, he began to touch me and I was all too ready to comply. I jumped onto him and came so hard and so fast it left us both shocked. I had had roughly one to two orgasms with this man in the three years we’d been together. But this too, I put away.

The next day, I went back to wedding planning. I stood in the ribbon aisle at Michael’s, contemplating ribbons for the ceremony programs that I was hand-making. Snippets of the night before came unwanted to my mind, right there in the tubelit aisle at Michael’s.

I drilled down harder: lace or satin? I could not go there. Cream or white? More flashes of the night before, the intensity of my orgasm: nope. Not going there.
I knew what I needed to do: more sequins for my invitations. And off to the next aisle I went.

That night, we watched the next episode of the L Word. Same turn on, same raging orgasm.
Night after night, we watched, I came. And the following day, back to the crafting project that was my wedding.

Finally, my fiancee asked the question I did not ask myself. “Have you ever been with a woman? Have you ever wanted to?”

I caved inward. Memories of all those years of my basement self-pleasurings burned inside me and I fought with Herculean effort to say, “Nah,” and try to sound normal about it. And then neither of us knew what to say. So we just watched the next episode.

One afternoon, back at Michael’s, I studied the cardstock: plain or textured? The question came:
“Phi,” a voice inside said, “These nightly sex romps are great and all, but should we talk about what this means?”

But here was where that vast black void kind of clouded my vision. I didn’t know how to examine this. Or who to examine it with. Everyone I knew was straight. Everyone I knew was getting married or was already married.

But each time I asked myself, “Should we examine what’s going on here?” I would think, “Welll, it’s four months till the wedding. People have already bought their plane tickets. It would be rude to cancel.”

This was the actual thought that would go through my head: you can’t cancel a wedding. I have to get married because you can’t cancel a wedding. Back then, I lived by these rules. The you can’ts and you musts and you shoulds.

But the deeper truth, the truth that I would not piece together until years and years later, was this: the idea of listening to my body, the idea of following my desire, at that time in my life, four months before my wedding to the perfect straight brown man, uh uh. I couldn’t.

Because to listen to my body, to follow my desires would make me different. And different was bad. I was already way too different: being a writer, a traveler, wanting to birth novels instead of babies. I was nearly 30 and try as I might, I was not doing a great job at following the script that everyone around me seemed to just slip into so easily. Now my body wanted to add queerness to the list? Queerness was definitely not part of the script.

But getting married? That meant I could fit in. That I would belong. That I had finally done something right. It was all right there within reach. And at that time, I needed to belong, to be like everyone else, more than I needed to be my true self.

We can intellectualize our lust, we can tell ourselves “everyone reacts to the L Word that way”, we can talk ourselves out of what we desire, but sometimes, the body gives it all away. And you can still shove that shit down, and that’s okay too.

It would be years before I would leave my marriage, before I would come out and come in to my full queer self.

It would be years before I would see QUEER community with my own eyes. People who were queer and trans and poly and kinky and thriving.

But that day did come. Literally the same day I left my marriage, I came out. To the person who would become my best friend and my greatest unrequited love. I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

He was stir-frying broccoli for our dinner and I burst out with: “I think I like … girls.”

He nodded, fully accepting of this news. Over the following weeks, he guided me on my great coming out journey, starting with queer films I had to see.

“Hey, have you seen Blue is the Warmest Color?” he asked, naming an extremely sapphic film.
“Ummm… yes.”

Shame crept up my neck and into my cheeks. But he just laughed and said, “Oh friend, you’re so gay.” Not in a shaming way. In a way that felt like, “I get you, welcome home.”

Breaking Out: Sarah’s Story

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It’s six pm on a rainy Saturday in January and I’m driving alone up Mount Seymour in the dark. My heater is on full blast but even so my windows keep fogging up. My windshield wipers fight furiously against the rain that turns to wet snow as I drive higher. 

When I’d signed up for this event, I thought a full moon hike sounded like a lovely, romantic idea. It was my first outing with a hiking group I’d dared myself to join – an antidote to scrolling through dating apps or missing the ex who had recently broken my heart.

Immediately after signing up, panic washed over me. Willingly going out with a group of strangers is as far out of my comfort zone as, I don’t know, kissing an octopus. 

But I knew I needed something different. My life as a single mom in the suburbs felt small, limited, and I was starting to feel small with it. 

So I cobbled together a hiking outfit, packed a backpack with the things I thought I might need, and said yes.   

In the weeks leading up to the hike my anxiety came in waves. I almost cancelled a dozen times. I worried about pretty much everything – would my raincoat look cute? Would the other hikers be boring? What if I was stuck for hours with annoying people? What if they thought I was boring? I scrolled through their tiny photos looking for clues of compatibility.

I hadn’t even thought to consider practical things like, for example, the weather. 

So of course, the morning of the hike dawned rainy. With that Vancouver winter rain, ceaseless and daunting. It just kept coming down.

From my couch I alternated between refreshing the weather report and refreshing the event listing. As the day went on, the attendee list dropped from 12 to 8 to 6. I wondered if the hike would be cancelled, if I should pull out. 

The more it seemed like it might not happen, the more I realized I really wanted it to. 

“Fuck it,” I said, my backpack into the trunk.  

As I pull into the parking lot, there might as well not be a parking lot – it’s just a wall of fog. Doubt crowds my mind. Am I the only one stupid enough to actually show up? Why did I think this was a good idea? 

Finally, near the end of the lot I spot another vehicle. I pull up beside it and roll down my window. “I’m here for the full moon hike?” I say, cautiously, ridiculously, as wet snow pelts down. 

Three women climb out of the car. One, a few years older than me approaches with a welcoming smile and an outstretched hand. Cute braids stick out from under her toque. I like her already. 

“I’m Linda,” she says. “This is Joy, that’s Gina.” I recognized them from the photos, but here they were for real, organizing things in their backpacks, pulling on layers. 

“You’ve got your ten essentials?” she asks.

I smile and nod like I know what that means. 

I feel like such a fraud. Not knowing what to wear, I wore everything. A long sleeve shirt covered by a fleece covered by a down jacket with a raincoat over top.

I try to look like I know what I’m doing. I pull my Value Village rainpaints from the trunk and layer them over my sweatpants. 

These women seem effortlessly technical – they have those backpacks with the water hoses to drink from, and Gortex jackets, and carabiners that rattle from their bags like Christmas ornaments. I guess it takes a certain kind of person to come out in these conditions. 

I slide my feet into my old hiking boots, tighten the laces over two pairs of socks. 

We throw our backpacks on, adjust our headlamps, and head out into the dark night. For awhile there’s nothing but the crunch of our feet on the snow and the wind whistling through the tall trees.

They’ve all met before, chat easily together, and I feel the familiar self-consciousness creep over me. Do I have anything to say?  

A little way up the trail, we stop to put our microspikes on over our boots for traction. I pull mine out  – cheap ones I bought on Amazon, with little grippy dots. Theirs have big metal teeth. Where they walk, I slide. 

Have I mentioned that this is my first hike in months, if not years? That in all of my excitement to get out of my comfort zone and have an adventure, I forgot I’d be lugging my body along with me? You know that expression ‘your eyes were bigger than your stomach”, when you put more food on your plate than you can eat? 

This was that, but adventure was the food and the limit was my neglected muscles. 

Before long I am huffing and puffing, sweat pouring down inside my many layers. 

When they ask about me, it dawns on me that I’m meeting people who didn’t know me before I came out. People who haven’t witnessed my transition from being partnered with a man to becoming comfortable as a queer woman. 

I’ve gotten used to defining myself by what I felt I’d failed at – a marriage, keeping my family together. 

But here, and now, I can be whoever I want. 

The further we climb, the easier conversation flows. One of the women just got back from a trip to to Peru and tells us about her hikes there. I talk about the time I spent living in Chiang Mai in my twenties, and as I do memories come rushing back. Not just memories of tuktuks and pad thai, but of who I was then, independent, confident, curious. 

A woman with a taste for adventure. 

Near the top we stop in a sheltered valley to discuss our options. We’d planned to climb to Pump Peak to have our snack at the viewpoint. The snow is coming down hard now and visibility is next to nothing. Maybe we should turn back. “But we’re here,” I say, surprising even myself. “Let’s go for it.”  

So the four of us, like trekkers on the ascent to Mount Everest, set off up the icy bank for the climb towards the peak. There’s no path, just a sheet of white and shadow under the beam of our headlamps. We are comical, occasionally losing our balance and knocking each other over as we slip backwards.  

Finally we make it. The wind whips around us and we search in all directions for a glimpse of the elusive moon.

Instead, it’s almost as though the clouds thicken – we howl with laughter at this epic failure. 

I pull out my granola bar, thinking that will suffice as a hiking snack. Not with these ladies. Joy whips out a stove and manages to light it in spite of the wind and rain. She finds her pot and starts cooking gnocchi, of all things. Linda makes hot chocolate and someone produces a bottle of whiskey. Gina lays a tarp on the snow for us to sit on. 

I feel like a kid, giddy with the novelty, the make-your-own-fun of it. 

This is so much better than a mediocre first date on Commerical drive. 

I’ll be honest – originally I joined the group because thought I might meet a woman. 

Instead, I met women. Strong, independent women who climb mountains in the dark for fun. Women who see terrible weather not as a reason to stay home, but as part of the adventure.

On the way back down, certain sections of the trail are perfect for sliding and so we do – our feet up in the air like kids. Our screams and laughter echo across the valley, up to the dark sky. 

Driving home that night, I am soaked, exhausted, grinning and eager for more.

The moon never appeared that night. 

But I felt something else come into view: a version of myself that was still growing, still exploring, still willing to say yes to things that scared me. That night, somewhere between the parking lot and the summit, something had shifted. 

For the first time in a long time, my life felt bigger than the boundaries I’d been living inside.

A few months later we returned to Pump Peak for the Strawberry Moon – a larger group this time, the fairweather hikers – and we were treated to a spectacular moonrise over the mountains. This time I brought my newly purchased hiking stove, my backpack with a waterhose. This time I was the one greeting newcomers with a smile and an outstretched hand. 

Beauty: Robyn’s Story

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It’s not a beautiful dog park.
That’s the first thing to understand.

There’s no charming fence or wildflowers or benches. The grass is mostly dirt. The mud never fully dries. Someone has zip tied a broken gate shut in a way that feels unsafe and sincere. The sign says CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR DOG, clearly replaced too many times.

And yet.

Every morning, we arrive like a loose congregation. Names learned accidentally, through repetition, through dogs yelling them across the field.

My dog drags me in, nails clicking, vibrating with the promise of chaos. She does not care that I am tired or half inside yesterday. She believes in the dog park with a devotion I haven’t felt since my early twenties. Her faith is absolute.

Beauty shows up first as sound.

A chorus of barks, each one a dialect. The deep woof of the older shepherd patrolling the perimeter. The shrill yelps of a tiny dog who has no business being this brave. The breathless scream of my dog when she sees her best friend, a grey Frenchie with the face of a warm croissant that grew opinions. Love is loud.

Humans trail behind, holding coffee, leashes, grief, the last threads of sleep. We look worse than our dogs. This feels important.

At the dog park, no one asks the questions I am used to answering. My haircut, my clothes, the way I move through the world—none of it requires translation. I am simply the person with this dog.

There’s a woman with a shaved head who always wears the same hoodie. She throws a tennis ball perfectly. There’s a couple who move in orbit. An older man talks to every dog like they’re his nephew.
No one blinks at anyone else. Bodies arrive as they are.

And then there’s the person I notice every day.
They arrive late, jogging a little, apologetic. Their dog is a disaster, ears too big, body shaped like a comma, heart outside their ribcage. The leash is always tangled. The dog park hums when they arrive.
They are not beautiful in the way magazines understand. Their hair is often wrong. Their clothes are practical. They move through the gate with the posture of someone who has learned how to take up space carefully.

I recognize that posture.
I have practiced it.

But beauty does not care about permission.
It shows up when they kneel to untangle the leash. When their face softens as the dog barrels into another body and they wince, not with embarrassment, but with awe. You’re alive, that wince says.

Dogs do not perform gender. They do not care if you are hot, impressive, healed, or legible. They smell you. They decide. Relief settles into my shoulders when I unclip the leash.

I do not have to be careful.
I do not have to be palatable.

I watch my dog play with a three-legged husky who runs like the wind learned a new rule. Beauty, right there, without a lesson attached.

A trans kid, maybe seventeen, maybe twenty, comes sometimes with their family’s dog. The dog wears a rainbow collar. The kid keeps their hands in pockets, shoulders tight, chin tucked, bracing for impact that never comes.
Their dog barrels back, mud streaked and ecstatic, and stops inches from their knees. The kid flinches, like they are used to being collided with in ways that do not feel like love.

But this is love.

The dog sits, trembling with joy, tail sweeping the dirt. The kid hesitates, then kneels. Both knees in the mud. They bury their hands in the dog’s fur and press their forehead there like it is an altar.
The sound that comes out is not careful. Not small. A laugh that breaks open and turns into something softer, almost a sob, almost relief. No one stares.

When they stand, their shoulders have dropped an inch. 
Beauty, sometimes, is that inch.

Someone always brings too many treats. Someone always forgets bags. Someone always steps in something and says a word they regret. We forgive each other constantly, in ways that do not make the news.

I realize, standing with mud on my cuffs and my dog’s leash wrapped around my wrist, that this might be the only place in my day where my queerness is irrelevant. Not erased, just unremarkable. Just another fact, like the weather.

The person I do not stare at sits on the cold bench and scrolls their phone. Their eyes follow every movement. When the dog comes back, muddy and triumphant, they open their arms without hesitation.

And I see it, before I mean to.
Their dog does not leap or demand. It circles, then presses its side against their shins, leaning its full weight there as if gravity has chosen them.
They crouch slowly, and the dog tucks its head beneath their chin like it has found the exact place it belongs. No spectacle. No audience. Just contact.
Their hand moves along the dog’s back. Tension leaves their shoulders. Their face softens. They close their eyes.

And that is it.

No performance. No apology. Just a body leaning into another body and staying there.
Beauty is not loud in this moment. It is steady. The choice not to pull away.

The moment lasts maybe three seconds. Someone calls a dog’s name. A fight almost starts and does not. A tennis ball sails overhead. The world resumes its ordinary chaos.
But something has shifted in me.

I think about all the places I have been told beauty lives. Mirrors, approval, before and after photos, the quiet violence of almost. How often queer people are taught to earn beauty, to present it correctly, to make it legible so it does not scare anyone.

And here, in a muddy, imperfect dog park, beauty is unbothered.
It rolls in dirt. It drools. 
It shows up late. It loves badly and openly.

When we leave, my dog is exhausted, happy, ruined. The sun has crept higher. People wave. The person I do not stare at meets my eye for a second and smiles, not performance, just recognition.

On the way out, my dog pulls back toward the gate, unwilling to leave this temporary, holy mess. I let her pause. I always do.
Because beauty does not live in perfection.
It lives in places where bodies are allowed to be what they are.

Even here.
Especially here.

Beauty: Lou’s Story

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It’s been an exhausting day of travel and emotional upheaval to make it to the musky back seat of a stranger’s used minivan in the parking lot of the massive hub that is the Cleveland Airport. It’s 2013, I’m 19 years old, going into my third year of college, and I just completed my first solo flight. Well, technically, first two solo flights, if you include the short little jaunt to my neighbouring Province and then the connecting international flight to the States. I’ve been preparing for months and months for this day.

Every early morning shift at the pool, every denied invite to go out, every bring-your-own-lunch-to-school dollar has been saved to get me here. Here, now rolling along Ohio’s highways, letting the bare landscape whizz on by. The sky is bright and expansive, the emotional forecast… not so much. In the time that it took for me to sprint from my first flight to my connecting flight, the terrifying turbulence that had even my phased-by-nothing seat mate gasping, and now this backseat’s “eau de B.O.” sitting with 4 other strangers who have come from God knows where, has me convinced me I do not want to be here. I want to be the opposite of here. I want to be home. I want home. I am so far from home.

The barren rolling hills start to turn green as we drive through forests that look nothing like the dense and mighty cedars of the Northwest Coast. Sunlight streams through the branches with ease and everything within looks aglow. Somehow this is both mesmerizing and multiplying my aching homesickness. The roads wind as the minutes tick on by. Small talk has arisen amongst us strangers as we share where we are coming from and how we first heard about this retreat. People seem nice. Polite.
Typical church personalities. I know this type well. I am this type. My Christian resume is thorough. Take a look at my contributions to its contents from the last week: I have five scribbled prayers in my notebook from the two boarding lines I have waited in today. I have checked off my communication responsibilities to schedule someone back home to cover my spot on the church Praise Team for the Sunday services. I am fully backed by the leadership of my Presbyterian roots after seeking the blessing of my pastor, his wife, a Christian mentor, and a member of session… just to cover my basis. And I have whole-heartedly believed that this, this one-week International Prayer Retreat, this is the path that God himself has made for me. And if it wasn’t for this divine calling, this clear conviction, that tenacious little flame of faith I have been fanning for the last 6 years, I would have already been on my third flight of the day, my flight home.
These strangers are my people, and I know how to “people” well. I know how to present myself and hide myself at the same time. I am so good at it, that I genuinely can enjoy the connection despite the storm I keep at bay inside. But today, these whiffs of a middle-aged man’s unwashed workout gear resting in the confines of a tightly packed automobile, these foreign roads with their foreign colours of green in their foreign sunlit forests, and the choppiest of internal waters, the crashing waves start to pool at the corners of my. smiling eyes and I am not sure how long that smile of mine will convince these strangers that I belong here.
In actuality, this minivan commute is just under an hour, a fraction of time amongst my travel day, but within those 57minutes I have entertained the fear that drives almost all that I do; I DO NOT belong here. But if I don’t belong here, if I don’t hear from God, if I don’t get answers and nothing changes, if I don’t change, if I leave just as broken as I have arrived… I won’t belong back home either. Not in my church, not in my family, not in my circles, not in myself. And if I don’t belong at home, I do not have a place of belonging. The truth will become loud and clear… I DO NOT belong.

I’ve only let a few silent tears leak down my cheeks. Subtle enough to wipe them away like the sweat I see the elderly man named Everett in the first row of seats attempts to wipe from his brow. I have observed his leaning posture and shaky hands. His voice deep but raspy as if it held strength before his muscles atrophied. My guess is Parkinson’s, muscular dystrophy, old age? His wife, sitting beside him, fanning her also flushed face, sees his fable attempt, pulls a tissue from her bag and wipes his brow for him. God, that is all I crave and yearn for. To sit in the discomfort of it all, in any state, in all circumstances and turn to look into the eyes of my love. My person. And see my belonging. Please God, let this bravery of coming here lead me one step closer. Not one more step closer to the man I grew up thinking I was going to marry, I have prayed in the depths of this closet far too long for me to believe in this Pray the Gay Away scheme anymore. No, I desire something far more reasonable. This is my last-ditch effort to get close enough to God for him to give me the grace to not desire what I am not supposed to desire. Celibacy, a current coffin of a closet, I need desperately transformed into something I do not mourn. Please God, please won’t you do this for me. Or maybe, just maybe, could there even be a fragment of a hint of a hope that this retreat could get me one step closer to finding her?

The minivan rolls to a stop at the far end of a pull-through driveway. Through the tinted windows, amongst the towering maple trees, lay a small lodge with a trail of cabins off to the right-hand side. The main building, larger than the rest, is framed by dozens of windows, which allow me to see through to the other side, where the wrap-around deck borders the rushing river beyond it. It is stunning… and yet, its beauty does nothing to calm me. How many tears can I pass as sweat? The sliding door of the van is rolled open and we pile on out, gathering at the top of the gravel pathway that leads down to the lodge. My mind is busy. I bet that the lodge has the phone I will need to call my parents. I bet that the lodge will have the computer that I will use to search for flights home. I bet that the visa in my orange Velcro wallet will be able to cover the expenses of making my way back to my precarious belonging. Once I am home, then I can figure out some way to pay off the bill of this mistake and figure out a new way to earn God’s favour.
As we unload the trunk of all our luggage, I’ve run through my exit plan 18 times; it’s foolproof. We are instructed to meet in the lodge to meet our mentors and other fellow retreat goers, so down the path I go. I am certain I will not be meeting anyone who doesn’t have practicality in my purposed plan to skip introductions and make my leave. Before making it down the tiered steps directly in front of the lodge, my mental preparations are interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps approaching. I look up to see a mammoth of a man walking up the steps. Blue denim overalls and a buttercup yellow golf shirt that encompasses his big, round belly and wide shoulders. When I look up to see his face, I see sweet blue eyes hiding behind half-rimmed glasses and a trimmed white beard circling his beaming smile. Undenounced to me, Santa apparently lives in Ohio during the summer months.
In the smallest of moments between my observations and festive judgements, this jolly man meets my gaze, raises both arms above his head, joy radiating from his face and exclaims…

“LISA!!! YOU MADE IT!!! I AM SO HAPPY YOU ARE HERE!!!”

If ever there was a single moment that has defined who I want to be in this world, it would be the welcome I received from who I now know as my beloved friend John, endearingly known to many as Papa John. In all the wonder and awe I have found in this world, who knew a big old white guy with a certified twang from the South would become my definition of beauty. I did not call home that day. I did not book an emergency flight home. Instead, I spent a week in the bright green forests of Ohio redefining the God I thought I knew. Those seven days of prayer planted the seed of my belonging. Not to religion, not to church, not to celibacy, not within or outside the guise of rights and wrongs, my understanding of sin or the work of earning and deserving love. I began the work of believing in my own inherent belovedness, learning and leaning into the wisdom held within my body, the power of my imagination, my creativity, my goodness. I started to find belonging in myself.

Beauty came to me. Beauty showed up when bravery said, “There is a different way.” Beauty befriended me, not because my eyes were open or my heart was less hard, but because of the softness of the heart who was willing to see me. Papa John saw me. Freeing himself from expectation and norm, he chose to love with arms high above his head.
I’m 32 now. I graduated college. Moved out. Became a teacher.
Branched out with my bravery. Found queer community. Found more of me. Loved more of me. I spend my days living in the beauty of belonging to myself. I fell in love with the woman of dreams I never allowed myself to have. And our love, this love that found me, is an arms-high-above-the-head kind of love.
Beauty came to me, became part of me.

And I belong to me. To her. To a love I now endearingly know as beauty.

Beauty: Meaghan’s Story

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I want to forewarn you that this piece has been called “jarring,” so, like, prepare yourselves. Also, before I begin, I want to assure you all that I am okay, and it’s okay to laugh. 

I’ve always known that I’m pretty, but I didn’t always believe that I am beautiful. 

My philosophy in life is “when someone compliments you, believe them! And if more than one person says it, you know it’s true!” I remember the compliments about my pretty face going back as far as my memories do. How many times have people told me that I don’t need makeup? Everyone was in agreement that I was pretty. But pretty is for your face. Fat girls are allowed to be pretty, but beautiful? Now that is a full body equation, in which being fat is the ultimate negative. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that you have no worth until you are skinny.

I was always fat. I have a distinct memory of being 3 years old and my “boyfriend” telling me that if we were going to stay together I had to lose weight. I grew up in a family with people who hated their bodies more than anything (my mother hated being fat so much she went to Mexico to have experimental weight loss surgery). I’ve been put on every fad diet there was! One of them would surely lead me to the beauty I so desired.

Does anyone here remember HotorNot.com? Strangers on the internet assigning attractiveness a numerical value. That 3.8 stayed with me for over a decade. But I now know that was a skewed scale, and being a fat girl was a ticket to the bottom. There was no way a fat chick on the early internet was going to get anything but tricked and abused. Basically every man I was with before the age of 20 tried to garner my attention with generic compliments so that I would sleep with them. Sleeping with someone to feel beautiful is a trap set by men to beguile women who have been told they’re worthless their entire lives.

So how does someone whose entire being is rooted so deeply and generationally in fatphobia fall in love with their body? Enter a fetishist!

There’s something to be said for chubby chasers. They sure can make a girl feel beautiful. It was not the first time I’d been called beautiful, but it was the first time I actually believed it. Until then I thought everyone calling me beautiful was lying, blowing smoke up my ass, or trying to be nice. But this man, he was enraptured.

He also cracked the code of my autistic brain, and helped me understand myself and my beauty through quantitative data. Small true facts that cannot be refuted. My blue eyes, my smile, my giant titties, my formerly glorious ass, my hourglass shape, my blonde hair. Everything was broken down into data for my little computer mind.

I redefined the HotorNot scale. While I am more than the sum of my parts, having great parts gave me an even higher sum. There was a 1-10 scale for every body size.

And at 300lb I was a 10.

Having someone wax poetic about my body and my beauty was intoxicating. Now, remember earlier when I talked about young fat girls on the internet getting tricked and abused?….you’ll never guess what happened! I have 10 min so tldr: insidious feeding, isolating me from my friends, and I seriously think he may have still been married the entire time.

The crucial mistake he made was giving me self-worth in my own body. I took that confidence, or what my friends would describe an incredibly inflated sense of self, left that loser, and walked forward in my life never again forgetting what a bad bitch I am.

Oh wow, Meaghan loves herself so the story is over with 5 min to spare! Alas, that is not where this tale ends.

Cut to almost 3 years ago: I finally agreed to get a breast reduction to stop the crippling of my back. The bitch of it is: I don’t even want it haha. I am obsessed with my beauty and the idea of losing one of my most striking features is terrifying. But what’s less cute, is turning into Quasimodo because I’m being a dumbass. The world however is not making it easy. About 85% of people I tell that I’m getting a breast reduction go, “noooo” but a fair few of them are cishet men so their opinion doesn’t really count.

My doctor sent out the request to 3 different plastic surgeons who all returned with the same answer, “patient must be under 33 on the BMI.” 33. I was 300lbs. They need me to be 207lb.

So as you can probably spot, I am no longer 300lb. For the last two years I’ve been forced to lose weight by plastic surgeons so that they will give me medical care.

Weight loss! Extreme weight loss! The thing I was always told would change my life! It would fix all my problems! I would be truly happy! People will love me more! I will be prettier! 

Except I’m being forced to change my body against my will. I have no happy feelings associated with it. Everyone else is happy for me. Everyone around wants to celebrate me for it.

I knew it would be a frequent topic of conversation so, I decided before I would even start losing weight, that I needed a cutting line to say to people who brought it up. Because if I’m one thing, it’s a cunty bitch.

My friends and I workshopped and came up with, “I have an eating disorder thanks for bringing it up.” Which is very fun to say to people and watch their faces drop.

But, losing weight for me has sucked. I have hated the whole process. I hated having doctors tell me that the only way I’ll lose weight is by taking Ozempic. And, because I’m a cunty bitch, I said, “watch me!”

This is not my first rodeo! Do you think a girl who grew up perpetually on a diet doesn’t know how to eating disorder? You want me to take Ozempic? I choose anorexia. And guess what, it has been extremely successful.

Now it’s always fun when someone comes up to tell me that I look healthy knowing I’m making the least healthy choices I have in my entire life.

And you know what else happens when you lose weight? Your body changes. There is no way to predict how it will change and that was my biggest fear at the beginning. And some of it was well-founded.

Now, I just need to take a second to mourn my ass. It was so beautiful and bouncy and huge. And then covid happened and I stopped walking and she shrunk. And then weight loss happened and she lost heft. And now I have been downgraded to a nice ass. At least she can still clap though!

Anyway, I am in a new body that I’ve been forced into, and I no longer see the same value in my parts. I’m between normie weight and fetish weight. My body is in the liminal space where I’m at the upper end of normie stores, I am at the lower end of the plus size stores, so nothing really fits. Even in my own closet nothing fits. I can’t buy new clothes because I still have more weight to lose, so until then I just get to look frumpy.

But here I am in my new in-between body. I can still dress her up and get my daily quota of compliments. But because I no longer feel attached to my body, these compliments don’t hit quite as much as they used to. The body dysmorphia has only just begun, because I still have my big ass titties.

My therapist likes to remind me often that, “you don’t always have to be cute.” But I was raised a girl, with all the socialization that comes along with that. I do always have to be cute. Yes I have value in many other areas of my life (come on, 2 masters degrees), but it has always been my beauty that I am most obsessed with. It was something I was told I could never attain. A moment of feeling truly beautiful, and defying all the voices from my childhood, and fully loving myself.

I do recognize that while my body is changing, it is still beautiful, and all of the things that were true about me at 300lbs are all still true about me now. And I mean, being a 9 is great…unless you started as a 10.

Beauty: Kailey’s Story

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I’m floating – what feels like 100 feet above the river – suspended and looking out at its brownish winding path, lined with grassy knolls, dotted with picnicking couples, dogs sniffing the air, and work-out groups walking.

I fall – back down, the trampoline below meeting my feet for only seconds before I’m joyously flung back up to catch another glimpse of the afternoon scene in Vienna, Austria.

Years of competitive dance training never leave the toes; Mine, pointed, and experimenting with various split jumps, star jumps, and toe touches – making fun shapes in the air with each bounce – tears flowing from my eyes, but drying almost immediately as the wind pushes up and down against my cheeks with each bounce.

The ukulele mashup of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwoʻole guided me here – ‘oooo mmm ooo mm-mm-mm-mmm, oo oo oo’ – playing on loud speakers at the base of this floating water trampoline on this rather plain river.

I spent all morning taking in classically beautiful art and music – a Mozart concert, and several art galleries and museums over at the aptly named ‘Museumsplatz’ area of Vienna. It was all stunning, but somehow this day had even more beauty in store for me.

With no real itinerary, I asked a stranger what I should do with my afternoon and they said to ride the train out to this river – so I did.

I had been solo backpacking around Europe for a few weeks before this particular day. The year was 2010, I was 21, and I had refused to bring a cell phone with me on this trip. “I want to do an old school Euro trip, with pocket dictionaries, printed maps, and forced conversation with locals” I told my poor mortified mother. I was flying by the seat of my EuroRail pass, hostel hopping, and checking in with home via 10-minutes of computer time at the hostels. Smart phones hadn’t yet seized our attention as humans at the time – so I was all spongy, ready to take in what Europe had to offer. The feeling of complete freedom on this trip remains unmatched in my life since … No one really knew where I was, no one in these places knew who I was … I could be anyone to anybody, trying on a new version of me any time I wanted.

After my 2 euros ran out, my 8 minutes of glorious jumping time was done and I left the trampoline, stumbling slightly as I readjusted to the solid ground below.

“Servus!” I hear from behind the fenced-in exit area. I caught her eye. “Servus, Hallo!” she repeated. Mmmm… could she be talking to me? I checked around me before offering a wave and a meek “Me? Hello?” back. Apparently my Canadian was showing in that response as she promptly switched to English.

“Are you a cheerleader?” she asked, adding “you’re very good. I was watching you.” I assured her I was not, but that I danced a lot growing up, and appreciated the kind words. I figured that was the end of our interaction but she continued walking with me as I exited the gates. She said, “My cheerleading team is rehearsing for a competition and we’re down one girl for practice today… Can you fill in for her?”

After trying my best to convince her that I was not at all skilled in cheerleading moves, lifts, stunts or tricks, I agreed to help out for the day.

We walked along the riverside for a bit, speaking very little, before she veered off into a forested area to the side. Following her I suddenly felt a bit nervous… Was this young woman plotting to kill me? Or bring me to some cult leader? Or was she maybe hitting on me? Was this going to be the beginning of a sapphic screenplay I’d write someday?

We came to a clearing in the forest where two other girls waited. They weren’t your stereotypical Hollywood cheerleader types – they seemed a bit like a group of misfits – which made me feel immediately at ease. They taught me some lifts – I was to be a base support for the flyer. The trust they placed in me, a random stranger girl from Canada, was pretty unbelievable.

I did my best, but I honestly think I was a bit of a let down to the girl who scouted me. It was tough work! After about an hour of practice, we wrapped up. They asked about my availability for their competition in a few weeks … and I had to break it to them that I was due to be in Spain to teach drama and dance at an English summer camp. But I did for a moment consider leaving everything behind and joining this cheer team in Austria.

We snapped a crappy photo on my digital camera – one of the best shots of the day – capturing the true beauty in the real people, the real connections, in Vienna – rather than just the “beautiful” things set out for tourists’ eyes.

I never spoke to the cheer girls again… And I sometimes wonder if this magical day had happened today, how would social media and our obsessively connected world shape this memory… What are the ways in which it would become distorted? Or the ways it would be enriched? How many shots of my split jumps would I need to take before landing the perfect one for instagram? Maybe I’d still be in touch with the girls, planning visits to one another’s countries. Looking at a photo of how I was only really 5 feet in the air might crush this memory of flying. If this was just another story I posted, would it have remained interesting enough to be told here tonight?

Not being tethered to a device that summer, I’ve always stored the memory of the river trampoline and accidentally joining an Austrian cheerleading team purely, and vividly in my mind.

Jingle Tales: Sarah’s Story

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My story starts, as all good Christmas stories do, with a divorce.

Specifically, the divorce of my parents, who split up when I was six when my mom fell in love with another woman. In 1982 small-town Ontario this was a bit of a scandal, and when the homophobia proved to be too much, Mom moved to Toronto to be with her new girlfriend.

My brother and I would hop on the greyhound bus every other weekend to visit her, swapping our big house for her tiny co-op apartment in the city. I loved taking the subway, going to art exhibits, visiting the big library with books I’d never find at home. We were introduced to interesting new things like the lesbian softball league, Take Back the Night marches, and drag shows.

Mom was a vibrant, passionate woman who threw herself into this new life. I hated leaving her at the end of the weekend, and I hated that at home her gayness was still largely a secret.

Under her charismatic exterior mom was also insecure, and sometimes sad. Her new relationship was chaotic, with undercurrents and breakups I didn’t understand. As a kid, I watched helplessly as her moods rose and fell.

My story takes place during one of these break-ups, and it’s low. I was about eight, that my brother and I went to Toronto to spend the holidays with Mom. It was her first Christmas without a partner in years. In our family, Christmas had always been a bustling, cheerful affair, with turkey dinner, grandparents, cousins, the fancy silverware, tablecloths.

But that year, mom surprised us by announcing we’d be going out to a restaurant for dinner on Christmas day, just the three of us. She wanted us to be excited, but I felt disappointed that we weren’t doing our regular things.

Maybe she was trying to make new traditions, or maybe she didn’t have the energy to cook a holiday meal. I don’t know, but whatever the reason, there we were on that brutally cold Christmas day, bundling up to walk to the restaurant she’d chosen. I remember zipping our coats up to our noses and pulling our toques down almost over our eyes for the walk over.

The streets were empty – I imagined everyone else gathered around big tables with big, happy families. As the snow crunched under our feet, I missed home, my dad, my dog, the feeling of being part of something bigger. This didn’t feel like Christmas.  

Once I saw the restaurant she’d chosen, I was even more disappointed. It was a stark, low budget kind of place with metal tables and fluorescent lights. A chalkboard outside said Turkey Dinner in a messy scrawl. Inside, several sad-looking people ate alone. The smell of grease hung thick in the air. Even the Christmas music playing through the tinny speakers didn’t make it feel festive.

I nudged my brother and pointed to one of the diners – a large man with a big round belly and a long white beard, though it was kind of yellowed and dirty. He wore a thick, moth-eaten blue sweater.  “It’s Santa,” I whispered jokingly. My brother rolled his eyes. The waitress brought the guy another beer and a plate of fries. His weathered hands shook as he ate.

No question, this place was depressing. 

Still, I knew that my mom was trying to make Christmas special, and I wanted her to be happy. She said we could order whatever we wanted, which was unheard of – mom was always on a budget.

The waitress came by – an older woman with a greying ponytail. “What a special night!” she said.

We were trying.

I ordered a milkshake, then wondered if I shouldn’t have because of the cost. I built towers out of the little jam and peanut butter packets that were still on the table from breakfast.

Mom put on a smile, but behind it, she looked tired. I kept talking, telling her everything I could think of about school and my friends. My brother was quiet as usual, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

Mom lit a cigarette and smoked while we waited for the food to come. She kept opening the menu – I could see her scanning the prices, doing the math in her head.  

We drank our milkshakes, then ate our dry turkey with lumpy mashed potatoes.

Mom asked if we wanted dessert, but we both said no, not wanting to stress her out any more.

The bell over the door jingled, and I looked up to see Santa leaving, pulling his ratty plaid jacket on as he went out into the cold.

Not even Santa wants to have Christmas here, I thought.

Finally, after what felt like the longest meal of my life, mom pulled out her wallet and motioned for the check.

The waitress came over to our table and smiled. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s been taken care of.”

Mom blinked “What?”  

The server pointed to where Santa had just been sitting. “That gentleman asked if he could buy you dinner.”

Mom blinked again, tears in her eyes, still unsure of what was happening.

The server patted her hand, said “Merry Christmas hon. There’s pie on the way.”

The smile that slowly filled mom’s face brightened to a thousand watts. And with that we had her back, laughing as we devoured our pie with whipped cream.

We left the diner giddy, talking over each other about how we’d seen the real Santa that night. It was still cold, but now I noticed the holiday lights twinkling from people’s apartment balconies.

We may not have had tablecloths, or extended family, or fancy silverware, but Santa bought us dinner!

I’ve returned to the memory of that night so many times over the years. It’s like I’m looking in through the diner’s fogged-up window to see two sad blonde kids with messy hair and a mom in a thrifted red sweatshirt trying her best to make Christmas merry. And a guy with a white beard – and probably not a lot of money himself – who sees them.  

This story is a love letter to that man and his unexpected kindness.  

But it’s also a love letter to parents going through hard times.

See I feel a kinship with my mom, with who she was back then, now that I’ve spent quite a few Christmases on my own, trying to conjure magic for my kids, sometimes when I was barely holding on myself. I’ve watched my kids negotiate lost traditions and adjust to new normals. And honestly it’s been hard at times.

I wish I could tell that young version of my mom, she’s doing a great job. That it’s okay to be sad at Christmas. I wish I could tell her thank you for taking us to a restaurant, even if it’s not what I wanted at the time. Thank you for trying something new. And thank you for being brave enough to follow your heart, for falling in love and coming out, even though it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.  

You gave me the courage to do the same.

 I want to tell her it all works out in the end – her queer daughter will grow up knowing the beauty of chosen family and evolving traditions.

That her daughter will be grateful for that night, and how it reminded her to believe in miracles.

Jingle Tales: Helen’s Story

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I still remember when my sister broke the news. We were downstairs in the basement of our childhood home, watching the Simpsons. During a commercial break, my sister leaned over and said, “There’s something I need to tell you.” 

I looked at her, seriously. 

“Santa isn’t real,” she said. “It’s just mom and dad bringing down the presents.”

I said nothing, turning back to the TV. The commercial break ended, and we returned to watching The Simpsons. It was the episode where Homer is downhill skiing. He starts losing control as he picks up speed. He tries to recall what the ski instructor taught him earlier that day, but his thoughts quickly turn to having seen his neighbour Ned Flanders in a skin-tight ski suit. As he flaunts the new suit, Flanders famously says to Homer, “It feels like I’m wearing nothing at all!” 

As Homer continues to pick up speed, he can’t get the image of Flanders’ perfectly sculpted ass out of his head. He grimaces.

“Stupid sexy Flanders.”

When I looked up that episode to see when it aired, it was the year 2000, which means I was 12 years old when my sister revealed the cataclysmic life-changing news about Santa. I think we can agree that 12 is probably a little old to be believing in Santa Claus, but also that it’s kind of beautiful that my parents and my sister let me go on believing for as long as they possibly could before it became, like, really socially unacceptable.

Like, you would probably assume that having received said news, any reasonable 12 year-old would spend a few days mourning the inevitable loss of their childhood and then move on. Dear reader, this was not the case. I continued believing in Santa until I was 17 years old. 

With every passing year, I insisted that we keep the tradition alive: demanding that all of us kids sleep under the tree to see if we could catch Santa in the act, even going so far as to leave him cookies and a glass of milk (though by that time, my parents had gently suggested that Santa might enjoy a splash of Bailey’s).

I imagine that psychologists would have a field day with this particular childhood obsession, which, when I look back, feels a little embarrassing. But, then, I consider why it was I stopped at the age of 17 believing in Santa. What was happening at that time?

When I was 17, I decided to pursue a career as a pastor in a conservative Evangelical Christian denomination. While most girls my age were getting high and sneaking out to have sex with their boyfriends, I rebelled against my parents by becoming a raging fundamentalist. 

When I announced to my church friends that I wanted to become a pastor, they told me women pastors just didn’t exist. For a lot of people this lack of support and outright discrimination might kill your dreams, setting you on a different path, maybe even turn you against the career you’d been hoping to pursue. But, what my fundy friends didn’t know was that I had 17 years under my proverbial chastity belt believing in “something that didn’t exist.” I just blinked and went ahead and applied to become a pastor anyway. 

It turns out that believing in something that really probably doesn’t exist, well it turns out this is a critical skill for anyone wanting to go to seminary. After four years, I graduated from the Canadian prairie bible college known as “Bridalquest”. I was unmarried (spoiler alert, I never really had a problem with the girls dorms being separate from the boys). I went on to pursue a master’s in theology at a much more reputable and accredited university. I was ordained an Anglican priest and a year into my first parish, I came out. 

Once again, friends and mentors from my fundy days wrote to tell me being gay was nothing more than make-believe. This time, I realized that between believing in Santa Claus and believing in the God of white Chrisitan Evangelicals, that I actually had a combined 34 years of believing in “something that didn’t exist,” that is, a mythical old white man with a beard who keeps a running list of your bad behaviour. 

There’s a line from the Christmas carol, “Santa Claus is coming to town.” It goes, “He knows when you’ve been sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!” 

Is it Santa? Is it God? I mean . . . 6/7.

By sharing this story tonight, I don’t in any way want to underplay the very real discrimination that we experience as queer people both as we seek out career paths and as we make ourselves known in the world. I was blissfully naive for a lot of those years, and there were still some really shitty things that happened that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. 

I want to say, though, that there is something beautiful, something queer about believing in Santa Claus or whatever mythical story it was for you in your childhood. That something beautiful, that something queer is the ability to imagine a world, an existence for ourselves that others might not be able to or might not be willing to picture for themselves. This is our holiday magic. 

Jingle Tales: Andi’s Story

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When I travel home for the holidays, I typically fly into Winnipeg. My family picks us up and we drive two hours to an acreage in the middle of nowhere. Icy roads, snow drifts, the smell of diesel in the early mornings, curling bonspiels, New Year’s socials, and having the breath knocked out of you when you open the door to go outside. No, these are not ‘a few of my favourite things,’ but the elements that make up a typical Christmas season out in the Prairies.

But this is not that story. This story begins in a rented Villa in sunny Cabo, Mexico after my parents decided we should all meet up for Christmas somewhere warm. What we thought would be a relaxing holiday getaway didn’t exactly turn out as expected.

On the day we arrived, my parents and brother had flown in a few hours earlier, and thus, my wife and I were left with the smallest, street-facing room, while everyone else sprawled out into their king-sized pool-view rooms. “Sucks to suck!” As Graeme, my brother, would say. But we were happy to see everyone and grateful that our schedules aligned. We caught up and began planning our excursions. My dad mentioned how we should all avoid one of the bathrooms for the time being, as my mom shouted, “Because your dad plugged it up!” Awesome.

The home owner, “Rita,” would send over her handyman/boyfriend to fix the situation dad had created. “Ooof, wouldn’t wanna mess with that guy!” My Dad said. “Why?” Chalking it up to some kind of prairie ignorance. “His name, it sounds like he’s in a gang.” Graeme and I just rolled our eyes. Turns out – let’s call him “Diablo” and Rita – owned two properties and were residing in the villa next door.

Throughout the trip, my mother, a retired nurse, would warn us of ingesting unbottled water. We reminded her that we had all been to Mexico before and knew the risk. I guess it was a helpful reminder, but for the most part, I generally stick to beers on holidays. Plus, I’m a tough farm kid with a gut of steel, right?

Well, one night we decided to go out for a fancier dinner to celebrate the holiday season. We dressed in our finest travel shorts and headed down to an Italian-style restaurant. I figured that I should try to eat at least one healthy meal on vacation so while everyone else chose pasta, I opted for the salad.

Later that night I began to feel the intensity of my gut in distress. At 3 am I ran to bathroom and was reintroduced to that $45 salad. I thought “at least I’ll feel better after this, I’m probably just hungover!” I did not, in fact, feel better and by 8am I realized I was in pretty rough shape.

“Mom, do you have anything for nausea?” “No, I don’t. You don’t look too good.”

“I’ll be alright, I’m just waiting for this to pass.”

By 2pm, my mother was putting a cool cloth on my head and my wife was urging me to take a sip of some sprite. As I did, I could tell my stomach was about to reject it and within a minute I was back in the bathroom. At this point I was severely dehydrated. I leaned over the porcelain throne and everything faded to black.

“Wwweeeeeeeeooooooooo“

Here came the ambulance, letting everyone and their dog know that some dumb tourist had to be transported to the hospital!! But this was no ordinary ambulance! It was the beach ambulance labeled “Bay Watch!” The paramedics helped me into the back as I noticed Rita and Diablo stepping out of their house towards my Dad, likely to ask what was happening.

I told myself “everything’s going to be okay. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

The wheels started moving and as they began to turn faster I was made aware of how uneven the cobble stone streets were. “Give me a bucket!” I yelled as I bounced from side to side on the stretcher. As we turned on to the main road it was clear that the back window of the ambulance made my performance quite visible to the traffic behind us, but at this point I no longer cared.

At the hospital, my wife proceeded with the paper work. I was able to see a doctor immediately. After about 4 different scans I was wheeled into a state of the art hotel room… I mean hospital room. Despite feeling like death was knocking, I couldn’t help but notice how new and fancy the room was! “If I’m gonna die, at least it’ll be in luxury!”

I was given IV fluids, which made a world of difference; however, as my wife would describe it, it did not stop the extremely rigid exorcist-style dry heaving. I was getting used to the routine, but I would have preferred to be in a better state for all the blood tests I was about to be put through. I have a really hard time with needles, so we’ll skip over that part!

Of course this also meant that I would have to stay the night in the hospital to wait for the results. While I was enduring this bodily punishment I was very much aware that I was supposed to be flying out the very next day and that check out from the villa was at 11am.

The next morning I felt a bit better, I had been prescribed 3 medications and the initial scans were clear of any serious issues. A nurse brought me a lovely breakfast of which I tasted some porridge and drank a bit of water. Enough energy for me to intensly stare down the ticking clock.

Finally, at about 10:20am I was discharged. I felt like I had been hit by a train, but at least I was going home! I couldn’t wait to fall into my own bed and sleep for three days straight. Back at the villa, we rush-packed. I threw everything into my suitcase and jumped into our Uber. The 45-minute drive to the airport was very hazy, and upon arrival, I felt distracted and still very much out of it. I walked up to the check-in counter and realized I didn’t have my phone. I left it in the Uber.

Ever try to log-in to your email on a different device for it to ask for a verification code that was sent to the phone you don’t have? Well, that’s how I spent the remaining two hours in Cabo. You see, I had recently started a new phone contract, which included the phone itself. If I lost it, I’d still have to pay for it. Now, both exhausted and panicked, we boarded our flight back to Vancouver.

Five hours is a long time without a screen or a book. At 30,000 feet, all I had was my wife and my restless leg. However, she had gone to the bathroom, and I hadn’t seen her in some time… I stood up and noticed a long queue for the bathroom.

“Oh no….”

The nightmare continues. Eventually I see her slumped into the very back row. When I reached her she tells me shes very ill, but not quite in the same way I was.

The flight attendant was aware my wife was coming down with something, so when I explained that I had just come from the hospital with a similar illness, the cart service was immediately halted, and all staff began donning their masks.

“Hello ladies and gentlemen, due to an onboard emergency we will ask that you remain seated on the aircraft until the paramedics have assisted one of the passengers off the plane.”

My wife whispers to me “I don’t think I can stand.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll help you.”

“No, I think if I stand, I’m gonna pass out. Love, can you promise me something? If I pass out and happen to shit my pants can you cover me up so no one sees?”

“Yes, of course.”

I should have put that in my vows.

When the airport paramedic greeted us and I explained she couldn’t walk, we all collectively learned how to set up the aisle-sized wheelchair, as no one had ever set it up before. My wife recalls this part as the wheel of shame, as she was pushed from the back of the plane to the front for all the curious passengers to observe.

At 1am, after touching down at approximately 7pm, my wife was discharged from Richmond Hospital. We patiently waited for our Uber to take us home to the North Shore. Without my phone, without our bags, and without our dignity, we collapsed into our home and stayed in bed for the following few days.

I wish I could say the story ends here, but it does not. I ended up connecting the Uber driver with Rita to figure out a plan to get my phone back. Not only did it require a lot of translating, but due to certain laws, it could not be shipped to Canada. Eventually, a friend of Rita’s who lived in BC offered to bring it back to me. When I finally got my phone a month later, I had another big surprise! Someone had been using my phone and had synced their Google account to it. The name? Diablo.

My Dad’s instincts about Diablo would soon be proven correct as I came across multiple inappropriate messages he had been sending to random young women, photos of other people’s IDs, videos – or should I say evidence – of his affairs that I wish I could unsee. I immediately confronted Rita over text, and her response was:

“I don’t know who you’re talking about and honestly, I have no more time for this”

I felt a hot surge radiate across my face. Multiple message logs would not only prove the level of their relationship, but also the schemes they ran, the thread their financial situation was held by, and the toxicity between them. Before blocking both of them, I made sure to send her a few images of “proof” of their affiliation as well as her boyfriend’s extracurricular activities.

The following days entailed resetting and taking apart my phone to scrub it both literally and figuratively of any trace of tampering.

This all happened exactly one year ago, and only last month did I receive communication from the travel insurance company. As they often do, the company is attempting to refute my claim, stating I owe them $22,000 (it really was a fancy hospital!) As shocking as it may sound, it only comes down to a bit of missing paperwork.

This year we’re very much looking forward to a less eventful Christmas, because sometimes sticking to the familiar rhythms of the holidays and weathering the cold is a walk in the park compared to the never ending Cabo story!

And folks, I’m very proud to say that my wife successfully did not shit her pants!

Jingle Tales: Catrina’s Story

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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.