Rediscovering Shawn | Shawn & Shaiya
In Barbados, where anything outside of the cis-hetero norm is frowned upon (at best), Shawn learned to put on a mask to hide his true self. Moving to Canada was an opportunity for him to free himself from the expectations of others, and to become the person that he always wanted to be. But how? Shawn met Shaiya at school and, coming from similar backgrounds, they clicked. After years of suppressing his true, authentic self, coming out to Shaiya was hard but she listened without judgement and was nothing but supportive. Shawn remembers, “That was mind blowing to me to just have someone being there to listen about my life, and my experiences. It was actually very healing for me to be able to talk about it.”