JA: So, growing up, I think I was probably one of those typical quiet kids. Like, that’s what people always said about me. I was born in Perth and I grew up in a very big family. So my dad’s side of the family is Burmese and my Mum’s is almost all English. All of our extended family were living there in Perth. I remember at Christmas time, or Christmas Eve we always spent it with my dad’s family having curry and there were like more people than I could count. My dad was once of six kids, you know I had aunts and uncles and cousins, I can’t even tell you how many cousins I had.

And then Christmas Dad, we would always start with my mum’s family and same thing. We’re living in this tiny three-bedroom house on Celebration Street in Beckingham. But it was packed to the rafters with people on Christmas Day. So I think that was a part of that because I think if you grow up in a big family, you can get kind of lost in the rabble of it all. And then my parents moved me and my four siblings to Kalgoorlie when I was about seven years old, and they did it because we were struggling financially and they needed to pay for five children, which was understandable, but that was the other part of it, because I’d been taken away from all of my friends of my family and I was in a new place and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like Kalgoorlie.

And I remember once we to do these school holiday trips from Kalgoorlie back to Perth to see our family and I remember once we were driving back and Mum said to me, she said to all of us very clearly to all of us in the car, very clearly: “This is the last stop you have to go to the bathroom before we get to Perth. And I didn’t have to pee at the time, but I think because Mum had said very clearly, this is your last chance to pee, I sat there for ages I needing to pay, I sat there quietly.

Until it got to a point where I was like, I really need to pay. And she was like bloody hell, here we go. So she had to pull over on the side of the road to let me pee. And that was just the kid that I was. I was always really quiet and things did not get better.

I think probably one of the first memories I have of Kalgoorlie, I was 12 years old and I was Catholic on both sides of my family. So I was doing confirmation. if you know what confirmation is, it’s one of those rituals, you go to church, blah blah blah.. But what happened was my grandma came down to confirmation and brought me a watch as a gift to celebrate being confirmed into the church. And so, she gives me the watch and all of these little boys and girls and dressed up in like the best thing that they can wear. I’m wearing my flashy new watch and I’m thinking I’m a million bucks until one of the boys in my class, saying man that watch is really gay. And I remember I think that was really the first time that I can remember thinking, okay, so gay is something that is really bad.

And that was years in Kagloorlie for me growing up. And I just I think I just learnt that gay is wrong, don’t be gay, right? So it was it was a struggle over those years as well as to the point where, you know, I didn’t really, I thought it would be easier if I just didn’t exist because I think coming up to that time in my life, I was like, you know… coming out as gay, I could lose my family. I could lose my friends. And wouldn’t it just easier if I was just gone.

I finished high school, uh, and I guess I started to find my voice a little bit, so on a random night, I was doing a gap year in Kalgoorlie, working at IGA to save up enough to move to Perth. One random night I was just driving around with my best friend and we get to this park in Kalgoorlie, we’re lying on grass, and I remember it so clearly, like the grass was itchy on my skin and I could see all these stars in the sky. We were lying, looking up, and I just told her: I’m gay. And I felt like I was holding my breath for about a thousand years. But eventually she said, I think something like, I don’t care. I’ve loved you as a friend and I’ll keep loving you as a friend. And that was the first time that I found love and acceptance. And I after that, I came out to all of my family, all of my friends, and it wasn’t always the easiest thing, you know, I lost people who I couldn’t, um, love and accept me for who I am. But, eventually I left Kalgoorlie and I came to Perth.

I came to Perth to study a Bachelor of Arts and Curtin University, and it was during my Bachelor of Arts that I found Centre for Stories and it was really, it almost feels like it was all meant to be, right? Because when that, during that time when they were trying to find placements for all of us, they were a bit stuck because there’s not really enough opportunities in Perth for people doing writing degrees to find internships.

And then at the very last minute my supervisor said to me, I’ve heard of this place called the Centre for stories, I don’t know much about them, but why don’t you go see what they’ve got to offer? So I came to the Centre for Stories and I met Caroline Woods, who is the CEO of Centre for Stories, and I started working there as an intern.

And I think she just said to me one day, what’s your story? And I think that was really one of the first times anyone has ever asked me what my story is. So I told her about bits and pieces of it. And somewhere along the way this project was created and she put me in charge of it, which was… I don’t know if you know what to doing.

And so I start working on this project to get young LGBT people to tell stories about their experiences in regional and rural areas of Western Australia. And you know, at this point I’m not even a part of the project. I’ve taken like a step back. And gradually Caroline said to me, why don’t you tell your story, Jay, why don’t you tell your story? I’m like hell no, I don’t want to be a part of all that.

But I did. And I can’t even tell you how empowering it was that night six years ago to stand up here and tell people what it had been like for me. So, the Centre for Stories decided after that they would hire me and I worked here for a really long time, six, seven years, I think. And over that time, I was lucky enough to meet with so many different people here, hear so many different stories. And I know that it was the work at the Centre for Stories that led me to the next chapter of my life, because a part of what the Centre for Stories does in the way that they teach people to tell stories is that they keep people safe.

So, one of the key principles that they use is that we tell stories from our scars and not our wounds, and that means that people have to be ready to tell a story about those painful parts of themselves. And I guess when I was here, I started to think about, well, what about all those people whose scars haven’t healed, whose wounds haven’t turned to scars yet? So, I decided to become a social worker. And, you know, it feels like it all happened really, really fast. I remember my first placement as a social worker. I was already using all of the things that I learned here at the Centre for Stories in my practice, because we were doing informal counselling and during one of those informal counselling sessions, I was working with a young trans woman who told me about… She opened up about some really painful parts of her experiences, and she told me that she had never told anyone about any of those things before. And then, on my second placement, when I started working in Justice Reintegration, one of my colleagues came in one day and she was fuming basically, because essentially she’d been racially profiled at this gas station.

So, we were talking about it back and forth, back and forth. And we decided to put in a complaint together and she was like, you know, you’re much better with all that writing stuff, so why don’t you write a letter? And I was very happy to do so. So, we wrote this letter and it got really feisty too, like if you don’t take this seriously, then we’re going to take this to the media, we’re going to seek legal recourse, blah, blah, blah.

So, we send this letter off and then they come back to us like, ooh… what do you guys want out of this? And we didn’t know what we’re doing. So almost as a joke, we were like, give her free fuel for a year. And that’s exactly what that petrol station did. It ended up being like $4,000 saved for the year. And she said to me, any time you need your tank fueled, I got you. And I have lots of stories like that.

You know, a lot has changed for me in the past six years. But, you know, in my role as a social worker, I guess I use those storytelling skills to advocate on behalf of my clients. I try to build capacity in my clients to advocate for themselves as well, whether that’s in the department of corrections or department of housing or department of communities or any of the other departments. And I still I still do lots of storytelling work for the Centre because I don’t think they’ll ever get rid of me, truly.

And recently I did a school’s program and one of the students I was working with came out to me and they told me I was only the second person they’d ever come out to. I have, yeah, I have so many stories about all of the wonderful, all these wonderful moments of people doing storytelling I’ve worked with. Yeah. So, I think the Centre for Stories helped me find my voice and it gave me a platform. And now I get to do that for other people.