0:03 We're your hosts. I'm Michelle song, 0:05 I’m Krizia Ramos and this is Growing Pains. 0:19 Nope, not the TV show. I don't see Leonardo DiCaprio here and he's like, what like 40 now? 0:27 I think. This is actually Growing p{ains the podcast, the podcast where we share some struggles and some inspiring stories of young people. 0:37 Life as a third culture individual hasn't been easy for Jade. She never really knew where she belonged. But while traveling and doing some self reflection, she was determined to answer some questions. Here's Jade. 0:52 As an immigrant, I've always struggled with the concept of belonging and finding a home. I was born in South Africa, but moved to Scotland aged 9, years later, I left for Toronto on a four month exchange. I've never truly felt like I belonged anywhere. My mom is a proud Scot never losing her accent even though she spent more than 30 years in South Africa. My dad is a South Africa trying to be Scottish. I doubt he'll ever get used to the cold. But I don't have an accent. It's best described as neutral. I don't have any particular features that define my roots, except for a popular South African surname. I'm not proud of my South African heritage, because I've grown to resent the country. If it was safer, I wouldn't have left and then I could have had a normal childhood. And I don't feel like I've ever truly belonged in Scotland, maybe more so than South Africa. But I still feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. I'd always felt like I had to choose between the two countries, like it had to be a country that I belong to. So when I found myself traveling and soul searching, I came to this dilemma again. But this time, I wasn't alone. Being an exchange means I'm surrounded by diverse people from around the globe, so I sat down with a fellow exchange student had a good old natter over a Scottish drink, Irn Bru, which I never thought I'd find in Toronto. 2:25 Hi, I'm Luca Del Fabbro. I'm Italian and Scottish, and I study at Stirling University. 2:32 What Luca didn't mention was that he'd actually lived in Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Scotland. But he's currently found himself in Toronto on exchange. With this constant wonderlust I decided he must know something that I don't. 2:46 I don't think I belong anywhere or I belong wherever I want to I guess if that's not too selfish, I guess. I don't think any one place I can belong to any one place. I don't have any particular attachment to one place. I don't think a place accepts you. I think it's you that accepts the place or for me anyways, it's always been about me accepting and integrating with the place I was in. I feel kind of embarrassed to say that I'm Scottish sometimes due to the fact that I don't sound Scottish and I don't look Scottish. So I find in my name is Italian look at it fabro, but Toronto, I guess is slightly more international. And yeah, ethnically diverse than Scotland or Sterling anyways, where I go to university. So I suppose that worked out pretty well for me, where my family is, I'll find some form of belonging to that place, I suppose. But it's less about the country and more about the people and I can't say I feel patriotic for any one country at all, so. 3:43 What Luca is saying makes sense. I shouldn't feel like I have to belong to a country. It's not a necessity. Especially not when I live in Toronto one of the most multicultural cities in the world. But there's something that still niggles at me because I do feel something. I just don't know what it is that keeps pulling me back to this idea of belonging. Something keeps bringing me back to Scotland, so thought it fitting to talk to another exchange student, except this time she's a born and raised Scot. 4:12 Hi, I'm Jessica Conan and I'm from a town called Dumfries in Scotland. Yeah, I've always lived in Scotland and I moved to Edinburgh for university 3 years ago, and I've lived there since. I have all my like family and friends living in Scotland, so I guess that makes me feel like I belong to Scotland and just because I've lived there all my life. I feel like that makes me belong to the country. Yeah, living in Scotland does make me feel patriotic. I probably will end up in Scotland but I feel like I could live in Toronto. I found a butchers that sells haggis, so that meant that I could celebrate Robert Burns day the same way I would back home in Toronto. 5:00 Being in Toronto and meeting with Luca and Jessica has made me realize that I don't need a place to belong. It's not a necessity. The thing that drags me back to Scotland is family. I know that my parents will always understand and accept me, whether I'm cracking a Scottish joke, or using my South African accent. And Jessica helps me realize this. I just need to be happy where I am and at the moment, that's in Toronto. It's the perfect mix of international. But I think I'll always find myself drawn to where my parents are, even if it is just a few weeks at a time between travels. As Rabbie Burns said, at the end of Auld Lang Syne, but sees between us broad have roared, since all auld lang syne. I might not belong in Scotland, but there will always be that little pullback to the bonnie hills of the Highlands, and my memories with my parents. In Toronto, I'm Jade Dupree. 6:05 Thanks for your story, Jade. You know Krizia, I'm actually an immigrant myself. 6:10 Wait, really? I actually didn't know that from where? 6:14 I was actually born in South Korea. And I moved here with my family when I was really little. You know, I think for every immigrant, there is a feeling of lack of belonging, so I can really relate to Jade. But for our next story, we have something a little bit heavier. So Krizia, do you want to tell us more about your story? 6:31 Yeah, I met with a student who has been through ups and extreme downs. We know university is hard and we all go through an issue with stress that affects our mental health. For 18 year old student, Fatima Khawaja, her mental health and well being has taken a toll for five years now. Eventually, she was diagnosed with a mental illness. Here's her story. 6:54 When I was in grade eight, that's when it began. Now I'm first year student, so it's been a while. 7:09 I've been suffering from depression and anxiety for about, like five years now. And I've seen it, like progressively get worse, as the years went on. Like, I'll wake up in the morning and I'll feel like, I'll be really depressed. I'll be really upset and very unmotivated. I don't want to do anything. I don't want to get out of bed. Sometimes I'll like just cry, or I'll think like, what's the point? I'll get ready and I usually won't eat either, so I'll just like maybe make like an iced cap or something. 7:59 And then I'm a commuter, so then, like one and a half hours I'll get here to downtown, Then I'll attend my classes and then after that, I usually don't want to go home for some reason. And it's not like there's anything bad, I just like, I also have this thing where it's like time's running out all the time. So I wanted to spend time with like all these friends and do all these different things, because I feel like there's no time. Anxiety, it really messes me up in like different settings, because I like actually identify myself as a very outgoing person and like, people wouldn't think I do suffer from it. There are times when like, I thought it was getting better, or I felt like happier. It would kind of be like extreme highs and extreme lows. So it'd be like, I get euphoric, and then I'd be like, oh I'm like cured and like I don't need treatment. I don't need therapy. And I would tell my friends I'd be like, oh I'm like better like don't have to worry about me and everything. And then like a week later, I'm like, back to the same thing. Like high school there was like the guidance counselors would help me out. And then I went into like a more professional setting. I took like stomach pills because my eating got all messed up. And then like I used to overdose on pills, so then it like, it really messed up my stomach, because I would take like expired pills. There are times like I attempted suicide so I was hospitalized. Whenever I'm really really sad and like especially suicidal, I completely isolate myself. I'll shut down and I won't not let people know like, oh I was self harming or trying to kill myself until later on. I went to see some counselors, but that didn't last very long, because I did not like to set up. I think it's weird if you, you know, you're like suicidal, but you only go see somebody once a week, for one hour. It's like, okay, what am I doing the rest of the time, you know, I didn't find it like good practice, I didn't like the way it was so structured. But there was a lot of things I had to kind of like, let go of. Like, there's like a group of high school friends that I decided to leave when I went to university and that was like, a hard and long process. It was necessary for my mental health. I met like a lot of different people in university and engaged in like new events and different communities. So I found like, people were more accepting here, and not as judgmental. 11:06 So my name is Enugh Simony and I'm a third year nursing student here at Ryerson. I'm also the president of SMASH, which is students mental awareness of support and health. And that's a student group run by students, for students to promote wellness and mental health care on campus. For me, one of the biggest, biggest factors of my wellness was having support in my family and my friends. So essentially having that peer support. So that's what really drove me to have a passion to create not to create an organization, but to sustain an organization that focuses on peer support. This is my story is an intentional platform where we share lived experiences. So our lived experience essentially, is anything that you've gone through. And I've learned so much about, not just the functionalities of this organization, but also about self care and empathy and pure support. And I've learned that through connecting and collaborating with others. And based on the feedback that I received from these amazing students is that they've also had that effect. 12:06 Do you think it's just great to have like, an area where like, you can speak to somebody because there's so many people who lack like support systems. 12:21 You can overcome it, it's not that you can. And I think people, even if they're struggling, like they can still learn to love themselves with their mental illness. You can also just be more grateful, like, sometimes I'll be really low and I'll, but then when I become like, stabilized, I'll become so grateful. 12:55 Wow, she is a really strong person. 12:58 Absolutely. Usually people with mental illnesses and mental health they don't feel comfortable talking about their story, but she had no problem telling me hers. And it was really eye opening to hear her talk about her struggles. 13:12 Well, on the topic of mental illness, we actually have a story by our very own Teresa Donato. Every university student has felt the pressure of school at some point in their lives. Thrive RU is a new program at Ryerson University to help everyone, especially students, learn how to bounce back after the pressures of a difficult situation. Ann Ruhala, Ryerson Journalism professor, witnesses this first hand. 13:39 I think it's pretty clear to anybody who's paying attention at all, that there is a rising need for all of us to understand how we can manage the stress in our own lives. And all of those stressors that affect everyone affect students at the university level, for sure. Students are facing situations where they feel uncertainty about the future. They feel uncertainty about their own ability to adapt to the changes that are coming. They may have very real practical concerns, such as paying the rent and getting enough hours at their part time job. And let's also keep in mind that being between 18 and 25 isn't the easiest part of anybody's life ever, even at the best of times. And so the more information we can give them about that the better, I think. I was on this exploration on my own trying to address what I saw was the suffering of students. I see students suffering. I see them stressed out, and it It hurts me to see them struggling. So I started looking at meditation started investigating ways of teaching people new skills and that's when I sort of heard about but Diana I was doing. I approached her and I when I heard about her approach that it was Ryerson based that she has a solid years of experience working at counseling, that it was fact based. Everything she recommends has been demonstrated in a scholarly setting to work. The beauty of Thrive RU is that it focuses on building on people's strengths, strengths they already have. It isn't a system designed to diagnose people with mental illness or save people who are on the brink of collapse. It is designed to help students figure out how they bounce back and help them to draw on those talents and skills and personality traits so that they can bounce back. 15:51 So my name is Diana Breacher. I'm a clinical psychologist and I've been working at Ryerson in the Counseling Center for many years. But in July, I started to work on the Thrive RU initiative, I developed a model of resilience that I call the five factor model of resilience and that's mindfulness, gratitude, optimism, self compassion, and grit. And the program is basically we focus mindfulness every week and then for the first four weeks, it's on gratitude, optimism, self compassion, and grit. And then the fifth session is how do you integrate all of this into your work. So the first four, I'm doing more teaching in the last session, people kind of bring in how they've been inspired by different ideas and how they'll bring that into their work. In a sense, the jury's out on a massive evaluation of the program. But what people are saying in their individual feedback sessions, when I get you know I collect the actual feedback forms, is, you know, very highly regarded very impactful, talking about how they want to incorporate this into their lives. 16:59 My name is Jen Gonzalez and I'm the Director of Student Life at Ryerson University. And so thrive are you for me is conversation about how we can gain skills with each other, which I think is a very powerful tool. So in community in order for all of us to kind of thrive and be flourishing in our in our roles. I just lost my mom Unfortunately, this summer to this past summer to the cancer. Sumething I took personally was kind of the the optimism skills that I needed to kind of reengage in, as I was going through my grief process, it was the most challenging thing I've ever done or experienced. And certainly that optimism piece of cultivating optimism surrounding myself by optimistic people. And in being community I did my my training with people who work with me, with students who work in our area, because we all had the common language, the same language and the same experience. When they saw me having a bad day or a low time, they could ask me a question that could change me from not optimistic to optimistic. And I think that's super exciting. 18:01 All of us want to feel happy. We all want to be our best. We want to feel that we're supported and acknowledged and that really is what thriving is all about. It's taking control over the aspects of our life over which we do have control. We set our happiness set point. So there's research done on life satisfaction, which suggests that about 50% of our life satisfaction or happiness is based on our genetics, we're born into it about 10% is circumstantial, and 40% is under our control. So the Thrive RU program is designed to address that 40%. How change in attitude and behavior that's consistent with kind of healthy living and thriving lifestyle will actually bring about a much higher sense of life satisfaction. Resilience, it's the capacity to bounce back in hard times. So there's always going to be challenges that we face, but the issue is how long do they stop us in our tracks? How long do they remain an obstacle to whatever our goals are? And the way to be resilient is to be mindful. It's being grateful for the good things that we have in our lives. It's being optimistic in good times and in bad times. It's being self compassionat, and also persevering despite obstacles. So if we can engage in those five activities, we're much better positioned to manage the challenges that are there. It's kind of an invitation for them to increase their life satisfaction through things that are under their control and I think that's an invitation that most people would want to kind of take you up on. 19:43 I'm really glad that Ryerson students have a place they can rely on like Thrive RU. 19:48 Well, speaking of Ryerson programs, Kayla actually mentions another Ryerson program when talking about university dropouts. 19:55 They say that high school will prepare you for the future. But does it really prepare you that way it should? More and more students have said that high school doesn't prepare you for the changes and things you will face in college and university. Many even say that asking a 17 year old to decide what they want to do for the rest of their life is unreasonable. 20:29 My name is Natalie, I'm 20 years old and I'm recently a university dropout. 20:34 Natalie Susa, like many other students that rush into university is a drop out. Not because she didn't care, but because she was unprepared for the harsh realities of what university is really like. 20:47 If we flashback to high school, basically, it's very overwhelming. I went to kind of small high school, so you really hear everything, every program everyone's applying to what schools they're applying to sort of thing. There's a lot of pressure, not just from your teachers and stuff like that. But there's pressure on you from your parents, from your friends, because you want to make sure you make the right decision. Everyone makes it seem like if you don't go to university, it's the end of your life sort of thing. I ended up choosing Trent for one of their teaching programs. 21:18 Students are under an enormous amount of pressure in high school when trying to decide what they want to do for the rest of their life. For Natalie, not only were her teachers a big pressure, but her parents and friends were as well. 21:30 I think it would have been nice yes, to have pressure to say you know what, try to be the best that you can be. Try to figure out what it is exactly you like, but not oh, you have to do this for university. You have to write this essay for university. You have to get a 90 for university. There's just so much stress on that specifically, that your options aren't really open to anything else and it just puts a huge amount of pressure. I let too much of other people's opinions influence my decision, where I think it should have been, like 100% my decision without people influencing them. 22:04 Once Natalie got to university, she realized just how different it was from high school. 22:10 You really don't get tested and when I say tested, I mean challenged well in high school. I don't feel like you have to work really hard to do well and then once you go to university, it kind of changes on you. And you really do have to put 110% to make sure you're succeeding. You can't miss something or anything, like a lecture miss two lectures or don't do a reading and you're falling behind in the class. The problem with high school is there are certain credits that you need to meet, which is fine. That's what everyone has to meet. It doesn't give you too much room to grow and figure out what you like to do. 22:50 Alysa Martinez is the current mentoring facilitator for Ryerson University's tri-mentoring program. 22:57 The tri-mentoring program is a student transition support program for incoming first year students. Our main focus is to make sure that they have an easy transition from high school into university or whatever pathways they're deciding to come to university from. So some students are mature students who have already done post secondary at another institution and have switched into Ryerson. Wherever they're coming from, we just want to make sure that they get support as they come in. I think a lot of students come in thinking that they did really well in in high school, and they think they're going to do the exact same in university. And I think half of it is figuring out what you're experiencing in your transition. So is that that you don't have any friends here and you don't feel like you know anybody? Or is it that you have to figure out your way of studying ? Or you are all of a sudden experiencing feelings that you've never really had in high school and maybe you need counseling and don't know how to access that. So it's really just pinpointing like what they actually need and admitting that they may need support, and then kind of directing them to the right resources here. A lot of our resources are usually like one to one mentoring. So we offer that for incoming first year students, they get matched with an upper your student in the same program. So anyone who's in second year or above can be a peer mentor and they support that student overall in terms of providing resources providing support. It isn't academic support, like we make sure that our mentors aren't providing tutoring, but we want to make sure that they provide overall support to that student. 24:23 Like Natalie, Alysa mentions that not all high schools are able to prepare students for the transition to university. 24:31 That's a hard question. I feel like it depends on the high school you go to. I had some friends who went to a high school that was set up in a way where it was almost like university where there was a lot of independent learning, independent work and independent studying I would say. Where some high schools are still set up in the in the way where it's, it doesn't give you the same I guess experience or it just depends on the programs they have in place. 24:53 Now that Natalie has taken a year off to figure out what she wants to do with her life. She feels ready to go back to school. 24:58 Recently is when I've been giving away more thought as to what I want to do in terms of going back to school. I've completely decided on a college program. The other thing was, these past three years, I have lived about two hours away from home. I think it probably beneficial for me to go back to my parents house, get a job there, and then commute to one of the closer colleges. I'll end up saving more money being happier, because I'm with my family and my friends and doing a program that is way more hands on that I like. 25:28 When asked what high schools could do to start preparing students more for the transition into university, both Natalie and the Alysa had similar advice. 25:37 A big part, I think, would be encouraging their students to even just go to the campus, even for the campus tours, which I think some students may not think are that helpful. But just getting a feel for what the campus is like in the culture that's there, I think would be really helpful. Because I think if I knew that, then I probably would have visited a lot more universities to see the kind of vibe that I wanted. 25:54 Don't commit to something unless you are 100% sure that that's something you want to do. 26:01 So if you've found the school that you think you want to go to and the program, you want to go to, talk to the professor's there, research about the program. Ask students who are in the program in years above you get in contact and see what they think about the program and what classes you have to take. Because it's nice to get ahead and find out what it is really you're going to get yourself into. You might think, oh, this is so interesting, when really oh, this is so boring, or this is so not exactly what I thought it would be. 26:54 See, there's so many programs on Ryerson campus to help students with whatever they're going through. 26:59 Yeah, I really think that students should really take advantage of them, but not many people even know they exist. 27:06 And now Michelle, you also have a compelling story for us today. Can you tell us a little more about it? 27:10 Yeah, it's about homelessness actually. Homelessness is a major issue here in Toronto. And people who live on the streets are constantly being brushed aside and stigmatized. Laura Hess is working towards changing that stigma, one t-shirt at a time. 27:25 In 2013, there were about 3000 people reported to be homeless in Toronto. Among those people, Doug Hess was one of them. None of his family members knew why he ended up on the streets and they didn't even know that he was homeless at all. But eventually, his daughter Laura found out the truth. A year later, Doug was found dead in a motel room. 28:12 Police officer came to my door and he told me that they found my dad's body. And it was something that I sort of expected, but it was really also so shocking, because I knew for about a year that he was homeless. And it gave me that like really bad anxiety because I was constantly worried about him, constant thinking about him. Is he eating as well? Is he healthy. Is he, you know are people being violent towards him is like, is he begging for change on the street? It was like every day I would wake up and every single person on the street would trigger me heavily. So when he when I got that police officer coming to my door that was an equal amount of like devastation and relief and just I can't describe it. 28:52 Although she's still grieves over her father's death, Laura was inspired to do more for people like Doug. She started the t-shirt company Inclusive Love Apparel, to help spread a more positive and inclusive message on homelessness. Her shirts say Toronto loves everybody. 29:10 It was a play on the peace collective Toronto vs. Everybody shirts. I just really didn't agree with the messag and I thought that that's just didn't represent Toronto. Sometimes when I when I try to describe the shirts somebody and why they matter, it's because if you if you really break down what everybody means, when you say Toronto versus everybody, break it down, say everybody means LGBTQ groups. It means homeless groups. It means people of color, it means everything. It means your whole community. So when you're saying Toronto versus everybody, it's literally you saying Toronto does not accept this and does not accept these groups. It's those subtle messages that we need to actually pay attention to because those matter. 29:48 Majority of the proceeds from each shirt goes to Eva's Initiatives, a foundation that provides a safe space for 123 homeless youth every night. Laura decided to partner with Eva's after another clothing brand called Homeless Toronto exploited the organization. 30:09 They basically made clothes that looked like what homeless people would wear on the streets, so it was ripped and ragged shirts, they were dirty and bleached. There was tin cup mugs that said change please. There was shirts that said homeless on it. It was really, really, really insulting and they had claimed that they were giving all their proceeds to Eva's Initiatives, which is a youth shelter. And they weren't because Eva's came out and they came forward. They said, we have no idea what what they're talking about because we would never align ourselves with a brand that was so stigmatic towards homeless people and feeding into the culture that we are trying to prevent. When I saw that I was really, really, really upset and really angry. But then I was like, how can I turn the situation into a positive one? So I reached out to Eva's Initiatives and I was like, how can I help? So I'm trying to like, see how many clothing companies and stores out there I can get to, to sell my shirts and then not take any profit to see if I could? 31:15 Inclusive Love Apparel is slowly growing and gaining more attention, but Laura never forgets why she started it all. 31:24 I keep my dad in the back of my mind every single day. And with every single decision that I make is like what I make my father proud? What I make, you know would I shame him or what I bring, you know, how would my father feel because he's a very proud man, you know? And it's not that people living on the street just all of a sudden don't have pride. You know, they're human beings. So how can we bring pride to people that are in just in a situation where it's hard to be proud of it. 31:50 Although the shirts are designed specifically to Toronto, Laura hopes to spread her message all over Canada. One day, she hopes to sell a shirt that says Vancouver loves everybody. 32:04 I want to expand. I've already, you know, trademarked a bunch of different major places in Canada that I want to go to. And I have started with like I have, you know, friends that have clothing companies in let's say, Vancouver, and Calgary, Saskatchewan, those places. And I would really love to go into those populations where you know, especially Vancouver where there is a high high high population of homeless people and addicts, I would really love to expand over there and to push that over there. So that's my next move is expanding within Canada and focusing on other cities basically that have these same kind of issues. 32:41 Today, Laura is only 26 years old and showing no signs of slowing down. She helps to promote love and positivity, not only through her company, but through everything she does in her day to day life. 33:04 Who knew there were so many people here with growing pains? 33:09 Well, that's all we have for today. 33:10 I'm Michelle song. 33:11 And I'm Krizia Ramos and this was Growing Pains. 33:15 Thanks for listening. See you next time.