“I went to an alternative high school. One of the youth workers there was so amazing. I struggled from a lot of anxiety and holding onto a lot of negative thoughts and low self-esteem. She taught me to focus on myself and let go of all the negative shit. I really admire her and she does so much amazing work for kids and disadvantaged people.

“Therapy helped a lot. I change[d] my outlook where I used to feel so beat down and like everyone is against me. I thought “I’m gonna do what’s in front of me right now.” I’m a lot happier right now…[but] I still have times where I’m really struggling. And there’s a voice in the back of my mind that feels like it’s so easy to slip back into that. I just have to stop and ground myself and say “No, do what’s been working for you. And it’s been working up until now so keep doing that.” And usually I can get myself back.

“It was interesting actually because it was an alternative school in a really rich area of Vancouver. There are a lot of contradictions where you have kids who are really struggling with mental health, they’re going through lots of very serious issues but you’re surrounded by all of this wealth and this perfection. You look around and you think all these people are so rich and there’s so much affluence here that these people have never struggled with mental health or drug addiction or broken families…but it’s still there. I think the fact that it’s not visible makes it harder for people to understand it.”

“What would you tell the rich people?”

“Have compassion for people. It doesn’t mean you always have to like someone or agree with someone. When you see people who are struggling or maybe they’ve done bad things. It’s usually not because they’re a bad person, it's because there’s so many things that people struggle with that you can’t see on the outside.”