Embracing Your True Self: Global Quest for Authenticity | Quinten Sheriff

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And he told me, don't worry about it. You might think that you're a caterpillar right now and all spiky and not interesting. And you might feel like you have to camouflage yourself and hide away, but there's going to come some metamorphosis and some change and there is this butterfly inside you. And I mean, that's not the thing you say to a 17 or 18 year old boy. I was like, oh my

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Gold butterfly, good lord. But I cannot tell you how many times I have thought back to that little phrase and thought someone sees a butterfly in me. Okay, there's work to be done, there's changes to be made, and let's see what comes of it. And that was very hopeful.

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My guest this week is Quinten Sheriff. Quinten shares a story in really two pivotal moments. One that we kind of discovered during our conversation. And I say discovered because I'm not sure that we originally decided to talk about that. But he talks about the brave decision to leave his home and his family in search of a place where really he could live his truth. And then another life-shifting moment in his seventh grade class in which his teacher did some things that really showed him that...

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His path forward was going to have to be different and he wanted to treat people differently. And since those moments, his journey's really taken him across six different countries and each of these little places that he's landed has contributed to his unique perspective on life and adversity and his personal growth. Throughout the episode, Quinten candidly shares his experiences, from the challenges of growing up in a conservative Christian family to the liberating experience of embracing his identity and really living authentically.

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Quinten's journey is not just about geographical borders. It's a journey across the boundaries of self-discovery, acceptance, and personal transformation. This is a conversation that will challenge you, enlighten you, and hopefully inspire you, and remind you that all of us have the power of resilience, the courage it takes to be authentic, and the importance of the human connection in our lives. Before we get into this episode, I wanted to thank

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my Patreon members. Specifically, I want to shout out Traci for sponsoring two episodes every single month. Traci is my best friend and we have been friends for a long time and she has chosen to help support this show and I am so grateful. She also listens every week. So hello Traci. Also want to thank all my other Patreon supporters. If you're interested in directly supporting the show, please head to patreon.com slash the life shift podcast and you can see

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all the different tiers that are there, and you can enter into the t-shirt giveaway. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Quinten Sheriff.

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I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is the Life Shift, candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

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Hello, my friends. Welcome to the LifeShift Podcast. I am here with my friend Quinton. Hello, Quinton. Hey, Matt, how are you doing today? I'm good. We had a little chat before, a little behind the scenes. This is early January that we're recording this, and this is the first recording that I've done of 2024. So welcome to whatever.

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transpires. I had the pleasure of speaking with you and your co-host of your podcast a couple months ago or a month ago now. Can you tell us a little bit about the Connectors podcast? Because I love promoting other podcasters while we're here early in the beginning of the story. Yeah, no worries. Absolutely. So I started the Connectors podcast with my co-host, Jo, and she's based in London, Ontario, and I'm in Montreal in Canada. And we...

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got together because we decided that the social disconnection, the social anxiety, all of the isolation and loneliness issues that we noticed during the pandemic really became exacerbated. And so we wanted to do something about that. So we've been collecting all these amazing guests who are great connectors in their own way. And we spoke with you because you're an amazing podcast host and you've

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Like, as you said, you've already released 104 episodes, which is crazily productive and is just a testament at how good of a human connect that you are. So we're trying to make a difference in our own little way. Well, thank you. I appreciate those comments. I am bad at taking compliments in a way, but I think you probably feel the same way. I never really thought that I would have this opportunity or this platform or even imagined.

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even when I knew about podcasts, that I would be someone that would be talking to strangers about personal stories or things in their lives that totally shifted. And so every day I'm just like, wow, like what is this journey that is unfolding ahead of me? And so I am excited to see where you guys take yours. Cause how long have you guys been doing this podcast? End of February, we will start our second year. So.

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We're almost at year two, almost at the end of this. Yeah. And you reached out a while ago, and then somehow in all of the emails or something, our paths did not recross, even though I thought I responded and you never got it. And so here we are finally being able to share how you got to be the human that you are today. And I think I will be able to relate to a lot of the ideas or the...

05:54
unless you change it on me, I can relate to some of the story that you're gonna share today and how things transpired and why we get to the place that we are and why we feel the way we do. So before you get into the backstory kind of leading us up to that, maybe you can just tell us a little bit about who you are at this moment without giving away too much. Sure, absolutely. I am a global citizen. I have lived in six different countries. I...

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have been very fortunate that I have immersed myself in all sorts of different cultures. I was originally born in Zimbabwe in Africa and lived for a few years in Asia, lived for a few years in Latin America. And then I decided to immigrate to Canada and settled here in Montreal, mostly because I speak French. So it seemed like a really good place to settle for me.

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I mean, I can't relate with that part of your life. I think it's so fascinating as an American. I feel like Americans, we like to travel, I guess. A lot of us like to travel, but the idea of living elsewhere and being brave enough, I guess, has always been so interesting to me. Like, I feel like living in four different states felt like a lot. I can't imagine with such a culture shift from all the different countries and continents that you've.

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you've lived on? I mean, what was that like? Were you searching or were you just you just wanted to meet new people, new cultures, or were you like searching for something that felt unfulfilled? You know, that's a really interesting question. So a lot of my ancestors have moved countries. They moved from Europe down to Africa, South Africa, as Germans and Dutch and

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British people after the Second World War. But Zimbabwe's not the most open-minded culture. Like growing up as a gay kid, it was really tough. You got to repress yourself a lot. It's illegal to be gay there, so you can be thrown in prison for five years without a trial. So like when I realized as a teenager, oh, I'm different, and then I realized what the environment was, I thought, oof.

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better make a plan to get out of here because it's not a place to become an adult and really develop and figure out who I am. And I clearly can't spread my wings to my full extent here. Was your family super supportive of you leaving and going other places or was this something that was like almost like an escape for you? I know this is not part of your story, but I was just curious. No, no problem. That's so interesting because I...

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I love telling stories and one of the stories that I tell is called My Escape from Home. And it's about leaving a very conservative Christian family where my father was a preacher and my mom was a good conservative Christian preacher's wife. And we had to sort of toe the line or shut up basically. And when my mom found out...

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when I was 17 about me being gay, it didn't go very well. And I basically had to make a plan of escape for when I was an adult. And yeah, she found out about it. She hid my passport for six weeks. We had many, many arguments. And then eventually at like three, four in the morning, I got my friend to pick me up.

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and we drove to Johannesburg in South Africa, and that was that, so yeah. Well, talk about a life shift. I didn't mean to uncover a different moment, but I think, I mean, that's so powerful. I'm sorry that you had to experience that, because, I mean, I've heard this story before, right? Not yours, particularly, but I think there's so many people.

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that have grown up in an environment like that in which their parents did not approve or whatever their parents thought they believed was not, you know, like did not align in a way that people have to escape from a family that doesn't quite love them fully, right? And on all the ways, I'm not putting words in your parents' mouth or anything like that, but I think that story's so relatable for a lot of people in a such unfortunate way, right? Yeah.

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Absolutely. And it's not surprising because our cultures here in North America did come from quite repressed conservative Christian values in Europe, you know, when you think of the people that migrated. So it doesn't surprise me that Canada has things like conversion therapy still in law. You know, I think it's horrific. But yeah. It's fascinating. And, you know, we look back or I look

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at you and assume, looking back at that moment, do you ever look back and go, well, look what it opened up for me in the fact that like this horrible escape and these things, and then I got to experience all these cultures and come to meet all these people and maybe hopefully find full embracement of who you are and what you like to do. So I hope you're able to look back at that moment as some kind of.

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escape that is freeing in some way. Yeah, absolutely. It was like opening a Pandora's box, but instead of all of the bad things flying out, it was like, as you said, like this big flowering and a sort of rejuvenation and the way to really grow and develop and see what worked and what didn't work in different cultures. I think they should do a long-term study of children of preachers and...

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and priests and not priests, but you know what I'm saying, pastors and preachers and whatnot, and see what the commonalities are of some of these people that maybe have escaped their parents' experiences and the way that they look at things. So I'm sorry that you had to go through that. I hope the journey to finding you and finding this comfortable space is one that you can look back on with some kind of fondness and feel like you can live in your truth wherever you are now.

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Yeah, you know, I think that a large part of it was just understanding that, you know, in the situation that I was in, I was sort of powerless and, and, and had to just sort of go along with it until I became an adult, until I figured out, you know, oh, I can do this, I can do that. This is the way that I can empower myself. And I've done a fair amount of work of looking back at young Quinton and saying, it's okay, like...

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don't worry, you can grieve that part of you. It wasn't a great time. And by going over these memories and thinking about it in an almost ritualistic way, like certain dates in the year, for example, make me think about certain things. And this helps in certain ways. Every year I notice a slight, slight difference. It's fascinating to look back on those. Today I was actually driving home from the gym and I was like thinking of...

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Like, what this 42-year-old version of me would be like had my mother not died. And like, all the people that I know now, I don't think I would know. And it's like amazing to think about how one moment can really open things up, change things. And that's, I mean, that's what the life shift is all about. It's trying to find these little...

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and thinking, okay, if something went a little bit different that way, what would happen? And when we originally started talking about you coming on the show, we didn't talk about any of these things. This was just a little bonus piece of how you got to be who you are and happy to talk about that. But I don't know, maybe you want to kind of lead us up to what you originally want to talk about or we can talk about the other thing. I mean, whatever you're feeling like today, I think it's important because either story

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people are going to relate to, people are going to feel an understanding too, but this is your platform. So this is where you get to decide the direction that we go and whichever one, maybe you wanna lead us up to that and kind of tell us what life was like. Absolutely. You're putting me on the spot, Matt. Ha ha ha ha. You know, I think either one is important and maybe both are important. I think that...

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Life is really hard and your original conversation was a hard moment too. And it was something that lit you up in a way that similarly probably to escaping lit you up. But just a different, you know, different line in your life that lit you up. So, I mean, share what feels most authentic in this moment. Totally. You know what? I will start with the original idea just because it's earlier chronologically.

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and then we'll see how it develops. The life shift that I wanted to talk about was my grade seven teacher, Mrs. Robinson, and how she really affected my life and it wasn't in the positive. So in Zimbabwe, we do a lot of British type exams and British curriculum. And at the end of grade seven, you do these end of junior school exams and then you go into form one.

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And so it's a big thing. Depending on your grade seven exams, that depends on what sort of schools you're gonna get into for middle and high school. And my sister went into Mrs. Robinson's class a year ahead of me. And for some reason, things didn't go well. And maybe because my sister is quite a forthright person and she would say what was on her mind, even as a very young person.

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and Mrs Robinson didn't like that so she would pick on her and generally not have, my sister would come home very upset and it all came to a head when Mrs Robinson threw all of her class books in the bin two weeks before the grade seven exams and this was horrific and it sort of

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The bad decision was that I had to go into Mrs. Robinson's class because she was the top teacher of the sex in school. So if you wanted the best chance, you had to go into a class. And from day one, she recognized my name and who I was and that I was the brother of Kira and started this year long bullying against me as an 11 year old kid. And it was awful.

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I would go home and I would cry and my mom would say, what can we do? We can move the school, we can do this, we can do that. But it was never, at the time, with our money and resources and all that, there was nothing that could be done. And I had to get through that year and move on to middle school. And she was awful. She was like a six foot tall woman. She would...

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Skulk around the classroom with her thin, bony hands, wringing her hands all the time with these massive rings on them. She'd carry a wooden ruler. And if you weren't doing something, she'd whack the desk right next to you. If you weren't working on things, she would press up her ringed fingers into the side of your head and punch you. She was a really awful person. She sounds like you were Matilda.

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and she was the teacher in Matilda. Like, is this, I'm picturing this, is this kind of like what that experience was like? She was a total Mrs. Trunchbull, yeah. I love Roald Dahl, he's an amazing writer, and he could see the negative sides to being a child. He really illustrated that so well. She was very similar to that, except she was thin and scrawny and looked like she sucked on lemons all the time.

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But yeah, the crux of that story is that it was very clear to me that I didn't have power in that situation. I had to get through it. And I realized that, oh, wow, sometimes there are these people that will just hold something over you for no reason, except they just dislike something about you. Or...

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It doesn't even necessarily need to be you. It can be your family or where you came from or your culture or the language or the religion that you have. So like really, really young, I sort of realized, wow, okay, whatever I choose in life, it's gotta be different. It's gotta be some way that I'll never make a person feel like they're small and...

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shut away in a corner and I will never torment them and throw their books in the bin a couple of weeks before. All important exams. I'm sorry if I keep bringing this up, but does it feel like there was a lot of parallels between that experience in school and the way you felt as an older teenager at home? Because it feels like there was this experience in which you weren't able to do.

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or be who you were or do what you want to do, whether you were in seventh grade or whether you were a teenager kind of trying to live your own life. And there was always someone above you, if you will, saying, no, that's like not the way. You can't do it that way. I'm in charge. Your life is mine. Your role as a child or a student is mine. Do you see a lot of, or did you always connect those two kind of experiences like that and feel that way?

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never did connect them. It's interesting that you pinpoint the lack of power as like a parallel, because I could definitely see that and definitely with woman over me seem to have like this weird power thing. And sometimes it's middle-aged woman or older. And I don't know what it is. Well, if I venture to think that, it's related to your mother.

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and to trying to win the approval of someone. I can relate personally and I can relate to that in a different way. Losing my mother as an eight year old, I was always on the hunt for another mother figure, whether that was a woman teacher, whether that was my friend's mother's, whether that was some motherly figure. I was always looking for that placeholder, if you will. And it...

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It kind of makes sense, even as an adult, I do this. Like, this is something I do. And so if you see other women that are in that kind of age bracket that's a little bit more than you in a teacher role or a mother role, I could see how there's this connection of, like, I just want to make her happy. I just want to get the approval. I just want it. But it's scary, because you know the experience of your teacher kind of shutting you down every time that you were trying to do something right.

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or trying to just be a kid or trying to perform at your best, same thing with your mom. I can see all those relations and I think that's so relatable as a human. I think that we are seeking the things that we don't have or we're trying to fill these pieces and sometimes it becomes this fear or becomes something like that. And so, I'm sorry that you had to go through that or still maybe dealing with that. But I see such a connection of how

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those two women or those two experiences kind of can trigger something in a positive way, right? Because you're always seeking to like do better or do something new or do something you weren't able to do before. And it sounds like this childhood experience in school was like, you can't ever win. There's got to be something better than this. Like, does everyone have this experience? Did you feel like you were the only one having this experience or everyone was kind of getting that same treatment?

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Definitely not everyone was getting that same treatment. There was definitely something going on with my family and my parents got divorced the year before. We were excommunicated from our church, but my father stayed in the church community. It was very messy and nasty. There was probably some sort of overspill of that into the school, if I'm honest with you. And some sort of...

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Bizarre rumor going around that made no sense or anything. And then she just took it out on you. I definitely also see. Yeah, exactly. Whereas it's like my mom and her would scream at each other or write nasty letters, but you know, I'd have the bad day. I also don't think that it was a general experience because when you were just talking about seeking approval from these.

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you know, rather stern, distant women that make you always try to run to catch up. I remember that I would stay weekends and, you know, have sleepovers at friends' houses. And the feeling in the home and the feeling with their moms was very, very different and very open and relaxed. And yeah, you could just be yourself. Did you feel a jealousy? Yeah, definitely, definitely.

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Yeah, I got to I've spoken can relate. Yeah, totally. I spoke to one of my best friends about it in December, you know, because I would go and hang out with him a lot and uh his brothers and his mom and dad Yeah, it was a very different sort of Saturday and sunday were great. You're like long for that Yeah, yeah, I can understand that was there something that your your teacher like was there like a

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like a main event that was like, this moment is changing how I see things moving forward. Yeah, so it was again the run up to the exams. We had like mock exams to prepare for stuff and I was getting things ready. I had all my stuff with me and she came past.

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And this is how vindictive she was. She whacked the wooden ruler on my left hand and I left-handed, I write with my left hand. And it was so sore that I could barely write my mock exams. And I remember my mom again, finding out about that and coming to the school and having a go at her. And I basically left the school for a couple of weeks until the final exams and then went into the exam hall.

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wrote the exams and that was the end of my junior school experience. But it was very clear that at that point that there was something systemic going on and the school wasn't supporting me and my mom just took it upon herself I guess to pull me out of school for a couple of weeks.

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That's... Is that allowed? Like, I feel like it's so, I mean, I guess maybe... This is like Zimbabwe back in the 80s. Corporal punishment was allowed. You could beat a child. Without excuse. Yeah. Because you probably weren't doing anything, right? There was a student in school. Like, I was, and for her, I was on best behavior. Why would I act out? I'd be picked on anyway, so I might as well just like...

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fly under the radar and try and escape as quickly as possible. My sister was the one who sort of pressed the buttons and pushed the boundaries and that sort of thing. Yeah. And so she was like, I'm going to keep this kid in line because his sister was too much to handle. And I took care of that one. So I'm going to keep him in line. How did that experience of shutting you down so often and feeling like you just could not?

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perform to any standard in school. How did that change your perspective? Or what did that change in you as you moved past her and away from her?

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I think that I am very patient and accepting of people where they are right now. And it's in large part because of her, because she was so rigid and everything was a no and everything was wrong. That when I became a teacher and went and studied education and...

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started teaching in international schools. I found myself going towards inquiry-based systems, which are sort of very open curriculum, such as this one that's called the International Baccalaureate, and it's this worldwide system. And you start out with these questions and the learners work with you, and you create the learning materials and you go along.

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with these project-based, inquiry-based interventions. And it's a very good way of.

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figuring out where people are and what they can do with what they have and their resources around them. Instead of forcing everyone into the same mold, all 30 young people in front of you, you can separate them into four or five groups and have everyone working on different things that interest them and that are going to push them and challenge them. And you as the teacher, you're managing the education more than in the front of the class, the talk and talk sort of style.

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Before you had that experience with that teacher, did you always want to get into education or was this something that was like, you always wanted to be a teacher? No, I never wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be a vet. I was like, I was not interested in hanging out with human beings. I had a menagerie at home. Like my mom was always going, what are you bringing home now? Cause I grew up in Africa. So like we're like, like I had a snake.

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and I had chickens and I had a couple of parrots and we had dogs and cats and I had a fish tank and someone brought an owl with a damaged wing and you know all sorts of animals came through our house so no I wanted to be a vet, I wanted to look after the animals and human beings could just deal with themselves.

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And did that change when you escaped? Or when did you, like, when did all that shift? Because it feels like that's a big difference from being like, I don't want to deal with people at all, to I want to help people grow and learn. And, you know, like, I feel like those are like on opposite sides. Where did that shift happen? Yeah, that's another good one. So I did these really good literature courses for my bachelor's degree. And...

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One of them was called protest, satire and subversion. And it taught me that you can have your own way of speaking and saying things that can be very strong and succinct. And that it's not necessary to go with the mainstream. Be yourself, do your thing. Don't worry too much about others. And then another course that really made me reflect deeply on myself was

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course on intersectionality and it was a course from a South African university. They had just come out of apartheid and Nelson Mandela had been freed two years beforehand. He was leading the country as the new president and the university brought out all of these new types of courses. The intersectionality one was amazing because South Africa's got like

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16 different tribes and 11 national languages. So everyone is very used to the idea of being a complex person in the rainbow nation. It was also the sixth country in the world that legalized gay marriage. And so like it's one of the very forward thinking countries in Africa at the time. So yeah, doing courses like that was really good for my.

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exercise my thoughts and what I wanted to do and to figure out that okay actually going into the corners and away from the mass of the people and seeking out the interesting side stories or side quests or it's always going to be a valuable thing and good use of my time and energy.

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So that was, you were like, no more animals. I'm gonna deal with people now because I feel validated. I feel like everything that I was told that I couldn't do or couldn't be or wasn't, I am. And I am okay with that and I am good and people love me for that. And therefore, maybe I do like people again. Yeah, I did have to go through the second escape to get to that point.

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And maybe that's, yeah, so I said at the beginning of the conversation how I grew up in a really conservative family. My parents divorced when I was nine. When I was 17, my mom found out that I was gay and she sent me to conversion therapy, which listeners don't know. It means that you go every week or...

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very often to a Christian counselor, and they will go through the Bible and Bible verses. And you have to write down your thoughts and your feelings in a daily journal about how you feel about certain things in relation to the Bible, and quotes that they keep pushing on you. And my mom said that if you don't want to go for conversion therapy, that's fine. You can pack your bags and you can leave.

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And I was 17, I was a minor, I didn't have a choice. So I stayed, I went through it for two years until I was strong enough and by that point over 18. And I could say to her, look, you're the person who needs the mental health counseling. I'm actually okay, I'm like, I've figured out that there's gazillions of us out there and I'm not this despicable.

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that needs to, you know, aim for purity and cut out every interesting, different little part of myself just to conform to some sheepish ideal that's absolutely impossible in any case. My mom didn't take that very well, and that's when I started like staying at other friends' houses a bit more and sort of becoming a young adult.

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I started dating this guy and things were going well between him and I. And as the, as the situation in Zimbabwe was getting worse economically and politically with Robert Mugabe, he was a president who was more of a dictator than a president. He was in power for 37 years. So like during all of this time, my partner at the time, he was like, okay, I'm

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I've got South African citizenship. I'm going to move down to Johannesburg and move my business and my office and everything. Do you want to come with and transfer your university studies and finish university in South Africa? So I was like, Oh my God, yeah, this is my opportunity. Thanks. Let's go. Let's do it. So processed everything, transferred myself over, found myself a college in South Africa. And then my mom found out.

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and through something that was posted to me and she opened my mail and freaked out and suddenly I couldn't find some of my documents including my passport and obviously I had to put plans on hold and you know spoke to my partner and he stuck around and like I would have to literally wait for her to leave the house. She worked from home, she was a beauty therapist so she was always in one wing of the house.

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and I'd have to wait for her to go out and go to the groceries or the pharmacy or something. And I started meticulously searching the house one room at a time and finally found it in the attic and got hold of the guy I was dating and I was like, I got the passport, come pick it up, come pick up a suitcase of clothes. And I got some stuff out and then we organized a day and a time.

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You know, my alarm woke me at three in the morning and I had to sneak out of the house and we had sort of like security gates and things. My mom heard and she came out and started causing a huge scene in the garden.

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Wow, it's like a movie. It's like a, like a... Crazy. An escape movie that you can't imagine. And I'm sorry that you had to deal with this with your family because around you in your country, they were already like, no, this is illegal. You can't be who you are and what you wanna do in your life. You have to conform to our rules. But also now at home, you also must be exactly like I tell you to be. But...

37:28
I tell you, you must leave, but when you go to leave, you can't leave because it's not under her permission. It's not her rule, right? Yeah, exactly. And at that point... So did you get out, though? So at that point, yeah, I was 18. I had my passport. I was enrolled in this college. My boyfriend picked me up outside the gate. We were screaming at each other. I saw the car lights swing around and shine under the gate, and I just ran for it.

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jumped in the car and he's I just I just said to him drive drive drive and he started driving off and my mom ran out into the road and I could sort of see a running behind the car and by that time we'd turned the corner and we were on our 11-hour journey down to the South African border and then I didn't speak with her for many many many months yeah

38:27
I gave some information to my sister so that my sister knew I was okay and all that sort of stuff, but cut contact for two years. Did you feel like you were kind of saving yourself? I absolutely was saving myself because yeah, by the time I'd done two years of conversion therapy, my mind was a little bit messed up about who I was and what was okay and what wasn't okay. I was not.

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kind to myself in many, many, many ways. I was harmful to myself. I think that's understandable. I mean, I think that if you're going through, I mean, that's as much as they like to call it conversion therapy, I think it's more traumatic and more trauma based that they're trying to inflict trauma on you in particular there. And this escape is so...

39:24
I think for a lot of us listening, you're like, you had to essentially cut ties with your family, with your bloodline, you know, like, so that you could be safe, so that you could be the person that you wanted to be in that moment in life. And that's a really big, hard decision, and kudos to you for putting yourself first and putting, you know, your life above others. Because I think that sometimes we get so selfless and we do things for other people.

39:53
So it's really commendable that you had to force yourself through this extra trauma to get to a place in which you could feel like you. How long did it take for you to get to a place in which you felt like you could breathe? Like you could just exist and not feel like you have Miss Trench Bowl or whatever her name is, Miss Robinson, which is my family name, or.

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My mom's family's name. I don't think it was that part of that family But you know how long did it take to get to a place where you didn't feel like you were looking over the shoulder for your Teacher or this shoulder for your mom, but just were kind of existing in a space that was comfortable

40:38
I'd have to say it took a good four or five years after that because even in South Africa, they were echoes of this conservatism and this nationalism. You know, like I remark sometimes with my friends here in North America about how Pride festivals and Pride months are celebratory and show a really nice kaleidoscope of colors.

41:07
and different cultures under the LGBT spectrum. But when I was in Johannesburg, it was, I think, the second prize that South Africa had ever held. And there were a few thousand LGBT, and there were like tens of thousands of Christians behind metal barricades, and then a line of police.

41:36
And then they were us marching and it was a very protest filled. No, we're here. We're insisting that we're a part of you all. And now we're written into the constitution. Gay marriage is written into this. We have equal rights and we will work for this. So it was definitely much like a march for rights and they got ugly at times and yeah. So you were still fighting. You were still fighting.

42:04
the system to just exist, to just be who you wanted or were. You know, like whoever you wanted to be should be allowed. It was allowed for every other person that was around you, you know, outside of those metal barricades, why not for you? And so years of that. And did that lead to you wanting to go to other places? Like maybe that next place would be more home or?

42:30
you know, Asia would be more home or Latin America would be more home. And then finally, Canada, like, is that why you jumped kind of feeling like, where do I go? Yeah, for sure. That was a large part of the excitement to explore. And it gave me the energy to go through these big changes. Cause it's a lot like, as you say, moving from state to state is already enough. And that's within one country, you know, like,

42:58
I actually think of the US as 50 different countries, because every state is massive and in its own way is interesting and different, but governed by one language and one la la la la. But yeah, definitely, definitely wanted to travel and see different things. But that was 50% because the other 50% was, okay, well, I'm in exile, rarely. I can't go home to my home country for various reasons. Maybe I haven't been.

43:28
singled out by the government now, because I'm a journalist or whatever and I'm writing against the government. But in some time, I will be on some government lists. So I might as well get out now and stay away. So you say like 50% of it was just trying to find home, but like, is there a home to you? Like where do you feel home?

43:54
Or do you? I mean... It's such a toughie. I... I feel home when I'm...

44:06
in the present moment meditating, just connecting with whatever's around me, feeling who I am and my emotions and whatever I'm going through at that time.

44:22
And you're able to do that now. I'm able to do that now. I think where I feel most human is where I am connecting with other people on the margins, other people of intersectionality, and I'm sharing stories and helping them with something that they've got to get some assistance on. And that answers the call of my purpose.

44:52
how I feel very good working with them.

44:55
So home isn't a place. I think a lot of us assign home to a place, but for you it's more of a situation. It's not a location, but like a space, if you will, around people. It's me, myself, connecting with myself, or it's a shared meaning, connecting with others, and when you see yourself in their eyes, and...

45:25
They see themselves in your eyes, even though we're from vastly different areas and stories, et cetera. If we can connect on these shared moments, that feels very natural to me and very special. Do you feel that these interactions with people, do you feel that those conversations are helping to validate you as a human and validate your experiences as totally valid because...

45:53
the early part of your life, you were seeking that validation and no one was, or the important people, quote unquote important people, were not validating who you were. And now you're able to do that and that's why it feels like home. Yeah, I definitely think that that's part of it. And it's listening to people who echo back to me that I am welcome, I'm accepted, I'm...

46:22
just great for being who I am. And it's coming from me recognizing that I've got all of this global experience and that's a huge richness of diversity. And I can bring people into a deep conversation that might have been unsettling for both of us. But yeah, I definitely think that that's part of me being a podcast host as well, because like,

46:52
I remember Joe and I had several conversations about what topics were off the table. And a year ago, I wasn't ready to talk about being gay and conversion therapy. And slowly over a year and a bunch of wonderful guests and a bunch of wonderful conversations, I've also realized, okay, no, it's okay. I can, I can be myself on the podcast as well. Yeah. That's good. Yeah.

47:22
Yeah, how long did it take in your journey? Or at what point in your journey did you believe the people around you when they said you were welcome in their space, when you were part of them, or they saw themselves reflected in you? Because I could imagine that our natural human instinct is to protect ourselves. And after so much fear-based experiences that you had, did you have any of that experience where you just

47:50
I don't know if I believe you yet, kind of moments with people and connecting with them. Was that something that you experienced? I did have those hesitant moments. And in retrospect, I think it was a lot of me putting my arms out and keeping a distance. And this is- Safety. Yeah, it's a safety thing. It's okay. I accept it. I still do it. I-

48:19
just am more aware and I tell people about it now. And I'm like, oh, you might see this and this and this, but don't worry. And it's just me doing stuff. I think it's important. I think it is. I think that it's important. I think sharing that, like, here's my trauma. Not be like, here's my trauma, but like, here's my trauma. Like, this is how I exist in the world and here's why. Here are the reasons that I do the things that I do because of all the experiences that I have.

48:48
It makes us such layered interesting humans, despite the terrible experiences that we may have gone through, you know, and so kudos to you for being open about that to them, because I think that's super important, probably for your relationships with the people around you. Definitely for the close relationships. Yeah. But there was also like, yeah, I mean, I don't go to the supermarket and start blabbing. And yeah, we're not influencers yet.

49:17
But definitely- I don't wanna be a trauma-based influencer. God, can you imagine? You get in trouble quick. I think definitely there was an external side as well that like when I was living in Thailand, it was just such a different open community and environment that it was very surprising. I had the students in my class, you know, openly asking me-

49:47
Oh, well, do you date a man or a woman? Oh, you date a man. What's his name? Oh, he's Thai. Oh my God. You got to bring him to the next concert. And then I didn't bring him to the next concert for whatever reason. And they were like, you said you'd bring him. Come on. So then he came to the next concert and everyone was super happy and everyone treated us as partners and like that was crazy validation, but you don't.

50:16
get in many schools ever. But yeah, to have Thai people, the Buddhist culture, it's very just let the water flow and let things carry on and nothing is so dramatic that you have to cause such a huge scene.

50:35
But also, we're all human, and we're just trying to live our lives in the way that feels most authentic to ourselves. And so if I'm going to extend my grace to so-and-so across the street for what they do, then why can't we get it? You know, like it just... We're all just trying to do the best we can. And, you know, I think everyone...

50:58
needs to have that validation. And I'm glad that you found a space in which you have that validation, hopefully on a regular basis. And now with your podcast, The Connectors, it makes 100% sense why you have that podcast and why that you gravitate towards that and why you want to keep it going. Thank you for what you guys are putting into the world. It's just so many layers that I didn't expect in this conversation. And thank you for allowing us to go there and me to.

51:26
project and ask questions and thank you for just being you. No worries. Thank you so much for your time, Matt. It was a really surprising conversation, but there were some really awesome nuggets of wisdom and interesting stories. I'm wondering, you know, I think I like to kind of bring these conversations kind of to a close with a question and I'm wondering if...

51:55
You could go back to the version of Quinton that it was in conversion therapy and being forced into this. And knowing now all these experiences that you've had, all these cultures that you've experienced, the people around you, the love that you feel on a regular basis, is there anything that you would wanna tell that broken teenager that was being forced into a box that just was not the box you were meant to be in?

52:29
This brings up a whole bunch of other stories, but I was very fortunate to have two older male mentors in my life. And one of them was a gay priest, Roman Catholic priest. And he told me.

52:52
Don't worry about it. You might think that you're a caterpillar right now and all spiky and not interesting and might feel like you have to camouflage yourself and hide away, but there's going to come some metamorphosis and some change and there is this butterfly inside you. And I mean, that's not the thing you say to a 17 or 18 year old boy. I was like, oh my

53:20
Gold butterfly, good lord. But I cannot tell you how many times I have thought back to that little phrase and thought, someone sees a butterfly in me. Okay, there's work to be done, there's changes to be made, and let's see what comes of it. And that was very hopeful.

53:46
I mean, it's a really great metaphor for this entire conversation of how you really, like, until you left and spread your wings with no puns intended there, like, you really didn't start living. You really didn't start doing the things that brought you joy and comfort and safety and validation and all the things until you had to escape. You like had to, whether that was from school, you had to escape from your teacher, get away from her.

54:15
but also get away from an environment that should have been safe, that should have been something that you could go home and be comforted in, and you had to escape that and do things that no one else, a lot of other people could not imagine doing. So I'm most taken by the fact that you believed so much in yourself and you had so much love for yourself.

54:41
that you were willing to risk the things that many people are not willing to risk to take care of yourself. So thank you for that inspiration. Thank you, Matt. And thank you so much for the time to share my story with you today on the Life Shift. I appreciate it. I never know where these conversations are going to go and yours was definitely not one that was on the form. And that's what I love about it. I think it's important. I think these are human stories that need to be shared because guess what?

55:11
You're not the only one that's experienced these things, right? And I think if we can help one other person listening to this episode right now, that kind of feels like they were alone in their circumstance and they hear something you said and they're like, oh, my experience is valid as well. Like, I'm not the only one that's gone through this. And look what he's doing now. Look what he's done. Speaking of that, if people want to, like, connect with you, get in your orbit, like, what's the best way to...

55:37
to become part of your circle, maybe a wider circle, because you don't want them too close. You can always reach out to me on LinkedIn, Quinton Ferre. Also manage the Design Co-op, so you can email me at Quinton at thedesigncoop.ca. And if the story has resonated with you, then please do think of reaching out to me. I would really love to hear your perspectives.

56:06
I appreciate it. And I do encourage you listeners to reach out if any part of Quentin's story has touched you in a certain way or made you think of your own experiences. I know for certain that he would love to just have a side conversation with you or just chat about those experiences and how connected we are, whether we believe it or not. So thank you for that. We'll keep all that information or we'll put all that information in the show notes so that they can easily reach out to you and connect with you.

56:36
If you are listening and you think that you know someone that might need to hear Quinton's story, we'd love it if you took this episode and sent it to a friend or sent it to that person and said, hey, just listen to this. And I thought of you. That's really, as an indie podcaster, that's like the best we can ask for is the word of mouth and sharing these stories. Cause I do truly believe that they are important to share. So thank you for your time, Quinton. I really appreciate you and everyone else. I will be back next week with a brand new episode.

57:06
Thanks again.