#facesofyeg

"I love music. I like to sing ... I knew I wasn't going to be a performer. So then I thought, "What am I going to do with music. I'm going to be a music teacher." So I started off as a music teacher ... and it means to make a difference, to influence the future ... I'm on the tail end now. It's been a good run. Boys and girls, tell Shayne what's rule number 1."

"Never ask a lady her age," the grade three class says in unison. 

“I was assaulted by someone I had known for fifteen years. Eighty percent of survivors have experienced acquaintance sexual assault, so someone they know or someone they care about. So for me, it felt important to speak out, to give a face to a lot of peoples’ experiences and then it empowers people to start talking … it makes me feel that talking about it is worth it.”

“When I initially disclosed to a social group I was close with for fifteen years, which included my brother, none of them believed me, and they all stopped speaking to me and they still hang out with the person who assaulted me. That was incredibly painful and incredibly difficult because not only was I going though this, but I was pretty much completely alone. When I saw the I Believe You Campaign, it inspired me to talk about it. I decided I wasn’t going to hang on to this because it was toxic to me to keep holding this inside of me — not speaking about it and keep shoving it down is not healthy. So I decided to post about my experience on Facebook before I went to bed and when I woke up, I was amazed at the feedback I was receiving from people, things like, ‘That’s so brave of you, thank you for sharing your story, we support you, we love you’. It was huge and I think then I started feeling more comfortable and then speaking  about it in a more public way started to feel more comfortable. It is empowering to talk about it because it takes away that shame and the secrecy that is so toxic to survivors.”

“It was scary. There was like a denial phase. I was like, ‘No way am I pregnant. I can’t be pregnant.’ I mean, yeah, I was doing everything that you can do to get pregnant. But I can’t be pregnant right? It was hard when I found out. I didn’t even want to go tell my mom. Like this was unreal. Plus I never saw teen parents anywhere. Nowhere. Just saw them on TV. After telling my mom about it, it got easier because she was a really big help ... That was scarier. I thought becoming pregnant was scary. Telling your mom that you’re pregnant is probably ten times as terrifying. I was sixteen and then I had Gabriella at sixteen. And like a week later I turned seventeen. So yeah, I got to be sixteen and pregnant.”

“I left my school when I got pregnant because I didn’t know how people would react. So I did half of a semester of grade eleven by myself and then grade twelve ... because I didn’t tell anyone—I just kept it a secret—so that’s when I got involved with Terra. They helped me get through just being isolated all the time because I never saw my friends anymore. And in grade twelve I decided to go back to my regular high school. I’m glad that I did. People were very supportive.”

“When I was six, my father stabbed my mother to death in front of me in the middle of the night and so, he went to prison and she died. And I was stuck in foster care for the rest of my youth ... a lot of people think, ‘Maybe it was so horrifying that you blocked it out.’ I’m glad that I didn’t block it out. There are already enough holes in my life that I kind of tried to fill all the time. I like knowing that I was there and that I can count on my memories.”

“I think every day I feel something's missing. No matter what, I don't think that I’ll ever feel whole in that way. I feel whole as a person and I have a really whole full life. But I think there's always ... I always know that I can’t call my mom. You know, she didn’t come to my wedding. I’m pregnant and she can’t come to see that. There's always something missing. So you have to make the most of it and you have to fill it with other things. And I think that's what makes me feel so passionate about speaking and sharing my story and helping other people up. My favourite thing in the world is helping other people up and I think that makes me feel purposeful.”

“I wrecked July 25, 1998. I was paralyzed from my neck down for three and a half months before I could even get a twitch ... When I wrecked, I got hit in the head with a duck. I was riding my Harley Davidson. I looked down and I was doing 100 k. Then when I looked up, all I could do was hold on tight because a duck blew out of the reeds, missed my wind screen and bounced off my melon. So that was like Saturday night at the cowboy bar — just an explosion of lights and pain and down in the ditch I went. There I was laying on my face with my arms crossed underneath me and paralyzed from my neck down. I had to hang out there for forty minutes until I was found ... From there, it’s been onward and upward. I’ve had lots of support from family and friends, no one would let me give up ... One door closes, another one opens, that’s all.”

“My daughters were eleven and fourteen. With my WalkAide, I was able to walk my youngest daughter down the aisle. That was in 2011 I think.”

“Playing some basketball after work, I’ve played since I was a kid back home, in the Philippines … If I go back home, everybody is playing basketball in the streets, everywhere you can see boxing, basketball. I play with my community here. We’re all Filipino playing together so we can meet other Filipinos living here in Edmonton. We have a little community here and you can make friends even if you’re out of your country. It makes me feel good.”