Within these pages lie some of the essays that have shaped the contours of my life—words born from moments of struggle, hope, and quiet revelation. These are the stories that have stitched together my understanding of the world, whispers of experience and truth that still echo in me today.
I invite you to wander through these reflections—not just to know me, but to meet the parts of myself that continue to unfold with each line. Let these writings be a lantern on your own journey, guiding you deeper into the stories that live here.
But this is only a doorway. Beyond it, the full tapestry of my work awaits—raw, unfiltered, and waiting to be discovered.
If these words find a home in your heart, consider subscribing. It’s free for now, but come autumn 2025, much of what I create will be shared with subscribers only. Join me, and be part of what’s yet to come.
Thank you for stepping inside.
I DIDN’T PLAN TO BECOME A TEACHER: The Students Who Made Me Stay
I didn’t become a teacher because I planned to. I became one because I stayed. Because I said yes often enough. Because students like Alex and Clare taught me that education is not merely academic—it is relational, fragile, and profoundly human.
RAISED BY PLACES UNSEEN: The Quiet Way Borneo Found Me
I arrived in Kota Kinabalu under a veil of night. The airport was modest, its walls carrying a patina of age that felt unexpectedly comforting. It didn’t strive to impress; it felt lived-in, a doorway used by generations of travellers before me.
PART 3 – NO PERMISSION NEEDED: What Was Once Shame Has Become Pride
What began as innocent play, the joy of dressing up and pretending, soon curdled into confusion and punishment. My parents’ gentle corrections hardened into anger, their voices faltering with something more akin to unrelenting impatience. My pleas — small, wordless, desperate — were dismissed as misbehaviour. How could I have explained, at four or five…
PART 2 – SHAPE OF BECOMING: Grief, Legacy, and Inheriting Her Echo
Grief is a complex journey, shaping identity through loss and memory. Sabrina reflects on her relationship with her mother, navigating absence, longing, and legacy. While struggling to inherit her traits, they ultimately find strength and validation in her mother’s enduring voice, guiding them towards self-acceptance and growth.
PART 1 – UNFOLDING: A Trans Woman’s Search for Self and Sanctuary
In Canada, before I left, I moved through the world like a ghost—trapped in the wrong name, the wrong body, the wrong silence. In Korea, in this unexpected corner of Asia where cities shed memory as quickly as the seasons change, I found a stillness that held me. Through my camera lens, through hours of…
THEY DEMANDED MY DEADNAME: Why I’m Taking the Niagara Regional Police Service to the Human Rights Tribunal
While filming a documentary in public, I was detained and pressured by Niagara Police to disclose my deadname—a name that no longer belongs to me. It was degrading, unlawful, and discriminatory. I’m fighting back through the Human Rights Tribunal to demand justice and dignity for all trans people.
STILL ME AND OTHER PRIVATE THOUGHTS: Finding Motivation, Living Authentically, and Letting Go of Regrets
I can vividly recall the moment when I first started to grapple with my gender identity, a realization that exposed the stark contrast between how I saw myself and how others perceived me. From a young age, I instinctively understood the need to mould myself into the version others desired, striving to keep the peace…
NAVIGATING THE JOURNEY OF TRANSITIONING: Embracing Change, Challenges, and Growth
I was the oldest, the firstborn on one side of my family, long ahead of the gaggle of distant cousins that would come years later. This made me the centrepiece, a doughy bounty for overly doting grandparents and grateful, neophyte parents. “Here’s my baby boy!” my Nana would colourfully cry out, hued with a faint…
FINDING BRAVERY THROUGH TRAUMA: A Trans Journey
It’s strange how the slightest paths converging, literally for seconds, can leave a lasting mark on who we are, what we do, how we might see ourselves, or how we envision others seeing us.
EMPOWERING VOICES IN NIAGARA: The Role of Advisory Committees
As one does, after my term ended as Chair, I reflected back on my brief tenure. I looked back and asked myself ‘what I could have done differently.’ what keeps me up occasionally is that I didn’t direct the agenda with a little more charge. Or, more plainly, I didn’t encourage enough of the other members to put…
Honouring My Mother Through Political Activism
A lot can be done when we work together as a community and exercise humility, empathy, and generosity.
UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE AGAINST TRANS WOMEN: Rita Hester’s Story
Rita Hester, a murdered transgender woman, symbolizes the violence faced by the trans community. Her death prompted the Transgender Day of Remembrance, established to honor victims of transphobia. Rita’s murder remains unsolved, underscoring ongoing issues of violence against BIPOC trans individuals. Various organizations advocate for remembrance and support through community events.
FRACTURED UNDER THE WEIGHT OF ONE TRUTH: Fragments of Forgiveness
Transition is hardest in the beginning: those first weeks and months when everything is tender and terrifying, when reassurance is oxygen and support is salvation. And yet that is often when it is least available.
(10 Years Later) THE SHAPE OF ME: In the Days Before I Recognized Her
Before I began hormones, there was another version of me: a half-formed creature with one foot hovering above the water, always testing but never brave enough to submerge. I have felt inadequate for as long as I can remember—like someone dipping a tentative toe into a pool whose depth threatened to swallow me whole. Despite…
(10 Years Later) WHERE THE CITY SOFTENS: The First Week of Becoming Her
Sitting atop the highest hill in my district, near the top of the building, I could see so much of Ansan spread out beneath me. And in the early days of HRT, when the cool, damp air from the West Sea met the warm currents rolling down from the Gyeonggi mountains, a gentle fog would…
(10 YEARS LATER) THE QUIET BEFORE BECOMING: My First Steps in Transition
In May, I had completed the required psychological evaluation affirming that I was mentally sound and fit for hormone therapy. And yet, despite having the permission I had once ached for, I froze. Anxiety built a quiet cage around me. One afternoon, while procrastinating at work, I watched videos of another woman celebrating her transition…
EXPLORING THE NIGHT IN PAJU: A Tale of Two Koreas
Just five-hundred meters across this veiled river, existing in the persistent blackness of the rogue nation to the North, a town with no name settles into night. An eerie silence lingers – like the low notes of a classical piano sonata. And as the sun sets over the village, she blithely cloaks herself; her collective…
THE ATROPHIED LIVES OF ORDINARY MEN: The Glory of Willful Homelessness
The author reflects on a life spent resisting conventional paths, using travel as an escape from a confining upbringing. Disillusioned by the modernity of Seoul, which contrasts sharply with her childhood dreams of an exotic East, she discovers fragments of Korea’s past in its rural areas. This duality evokes both love and resentment.
WADING THROUGH SHALLOW WATERS: From North Korea to Freedom in the South
A child walks along a barren countryside road in North Korea — not more than a few dozen kilometres from the Demilitarized Zone. A forest on her left has long been pillaged for fuel and an empty rice field on the right is bone dry from years of economic and agricultural mismanagement. She stumbles across…
THE RISE OF PUNK: An Interview with Whang, Bo-Ryung of Smacksoft
With the IMF Crisis stirring up young Koreans’ fears and discontent, a cultural shift began to occur. In Seoul, an angry class of under- or unemployed high school and college grads began to express themselves in a way often unseen in the glossy veneer of Korea’s capital. In clubs with colourful names hidden in the…
- I DIDN’T PLAN TO BECOME A TEACHER: The Students Who Made Me Stay
- JUSTICE ENDS WHERE POLICING BEGINS: The Shameful History of Policing The Gay and Trans Community in Canada
- RAISED BY PLACES UNSEEN: The Quiet Way Borneo Found Me
- ALONE AGAINST THE SYSTEM: Fighting Police Misconduct in Ontario Means Surviving It
- PART 3 – NO PERMISSION NEEDED: What Was Once Shame Has Become Pride
Sabrina Constance 