WE BEND WITH THE WIND

Some of my earliest memories are of being fascinated by the world around me—how plants and animals are interrelated. By age 12, I wanted to study viruses and loved chemistry and biology. I saw myself not with a family, but only with a career, in a lab, utterly dedicated to research. Unfortunately, the world saw me a little differently. As a mixed-race person growing up in rural Ontario, I experienced racism starting from kindergarten. I was bullied by students and some of my teachers. At best, there was indifference to the daily bullying I endured. Growing anxiety and fear led to situations in which I froze when called upon or made errors in performance as any little mistake would fuel the bullying even more—I was stupid, ugly, a n***er, a dirty sq**w. Home was no refuge; growing up with a family mired by substance abuse, I was tasked with caring for my mother and growing household duties from a young age. Eventually, I left home and school just before the age of 14. I never graduated high school. My world changed again when I became a young parent at 21 and eventually returned to my dream of becoming a scientist. I went through academic upgrading, then a HBSc, , all as a single working parent. Throughout those years, there were so many times I didn’t think I would make it through. I still cared for my alcoholic mother, who eventually battled cancer and passed in the second year of my MSc. I had to learn so much from scratch—taking calculus twice before I was able to achieve a decent grade. The more I overcame regarding academics though, the more I believed in myself, and the easier it became. Today, I am so happy with who and where I am; I still struggle with the events and situations that occurred during my formative years, but I continue to work through them. I am a college professor and a geoscientist at the Ontario Geological Survey. I work with Indigenous communities and often hear stories from youth that resonate with my own experiences. I remember how hopeless and worthless one can feel when one faces the world seemingly, alone. I want others to know and feel that situations are never static, there’s always a way forward, and there’s always hope for the future.