Dear Reader, your words have power
And can destroy lives, hearts, souls, and beings
This isn’t a story about unicorns and rainbows, heroes and villains, good and evil. It’s a story in parts of the realization that one of the last places you thought you will always feel safe and protected in this world, isn’t anymore.
The Backstory
In 2012, I became a soft-skills trainer at an inter-organizational event called Youth Trainers Academy (YTA) by Zero Generation. Since then, YTA has been my proverbial home as a trainer, an event where I kept growing year after year, was being challenged enough to learn and develop and it was a safe place to show who I am, with my flaws and strengths, be vulnerable, be me.
The World and I
Since 2012, the world has changed a lot in many ways, small and big, positive and negative. I also changed; I am not anymore the 24 year young girl that decided to become a soft-skills trainer because I used to love seeing the spark in participants’ eyes. I am 11 years older both in age, wisdom and experience. But I am also someone else. I evolved and identify as a non-binary person.
Someone might think that this is my identity and mine only and no one has to comment on it. And you are right! It’s my identity but apparently the world and its members don’t really care.
The Incident
YTA started on the 19th of November and will end this upcoming Monday on the 28th of November. This year’s generation of participants is a great group of people, coming from different ways of life, diverse in race, age, privilege, and neurodiversity.
I never thought I would encounter such an incident at YTA, my training home. However, karma is a bitch and it comes for all of us to show us that the world isn’t heavenly made.
Since the beginning of the event, a handful of the participants have been silently letting me know that YTA isn’t as safe as I thought it was; that the world outside is now inside the YTA walls by making hateful and insensitive comments.
Comments like:
“What is it? Is it a man or a woman?”
“Why do we need to be in contact with she… eh, them?”
Those comments were said loudly, I was around those people or passing by them during an innovative session where the YTA participants would be working on real-life projects, one of them being a gender-affirming summer camp I decided to put to the table.
And just like that, my world was shattered into million pieces.
It only took 30min to show me that the world is as cruel as I knew; that I am not safe anywhere in the world because I am different and decided to show people I thought were open-minded, empathic and tolerant, who I am in all my glory, vulnerability and love.
The Ocean
From that moment on, my heart, soul, and being are in pieces.
Imagine standing on a beach, trying to dip your feet in the ocean, and deciding if you want to swim. Now, one after the other, waves are coming toward me; waves of anger, rage, hurt, shame, and frustration.
Before those 30min, I was able to tame them and keep myself balanced. Now, I don’t seem to be able to. I feel alone, invisible, unseen, small, angry, pissed, unbalanced, and enraged. I want to nestle up in the corner of a couch, find a dark corner and cry for days, disappear and lick my wounds in an effort to heal the hole someone’s hateful comments left.
But I cannot. I am a trainer at this event, and I need to stand strong, I need to persevere while respecting participants’ learning process and giving them space to grow and blossom; I need to walk my talk; show them that words are powerful and, can hurt others.
To the people who uttered those comments
To you, the ones who uttered those hateful comments, I sense that the world has been cruel to you and you are paying it forward in a horrible and twisted way. If you are reading these words, then please don’t. You are a trainer too, you came to YTA, to learn and ultimately become a great trainer. This type of behavior doesn’t fit with what YTA is and what we are working to create within its community.
Remember that your words matter and can shatter someone’s life in minutes. It did mine.
