Hello Everyone, I have realized that it has been awhile since my last blog post. I have been keeping really busy lately now that my memoir has been published. I was recently in Toronto Canada for a symposium held by my dear friend Kim Samuel. I am truly grateful that I have been invited to her symposiums. This was my third one that I have been honoured to be invited too. This years symposium was called Bridges to Belonging. This year’s Symposium took place on October 14-October 17. They changed the name of their organization. The original name used to be called The Samuel Centre For Social Connectedness now they are called the Belonging Forum.
I was one of the panelist on one of the days. Which I have never gotten to do that before. I was so touched that Kim has asked me to be apart of this symposium. The reason why I got to be one of the panelist this year was because Kim and her team had been planning for a little while now to make their own publishing house called Belonging Press. I was so excited and honoured that Kim had asked me about my memoir being apart of her new publishing house. A long with one of my other friends Ben Haack who is also writing a book and his will also be apart of the Belonging Press. Our panel session was on the first day at the very end of the day. We were interviewed by Matthew Bishop. Matthew is also an author. He went back in fourth between Ben and I asking us each questions about our books.
It was such an incredible experience. Everyone who attended the symposium got a free copy of my book. Getting to see my own book on the table for everyone was such an emotional experience for me. I had a moment where I started crying happy tears as I was signing copies of my book. It ‘s still surreal when someone asks me to sign my book for them. It makes it so worth it now with all of the hard work that I have put into my memoir. I was so touched by all of the responses that I was receiving.
There was so many wonderful panelist for this years Symposium. It’s hard to pick my favourites. All of the panelist each had something special to bring to the table. Even our break out group discussions were all great. It’s always so nice to be around people that have similar values. We might not all agree with everyone but it was nice to be able to have conversations where everyone was valued and heard. It’s sad to say that in today’s world it’s hard to have conversations with people that don’t want to hear other people’s views without hurting their feelings. If everyone could just remember that we are all aloud to have our own views and opinions. Maybe everyone could realize that we all belong and we could be a lot nicer and not always judge people. The world would be such a better place for everyone to belong.
One thing that I was very excited about was finding out that we would get to see and listen to Margaret Atwood have a conversation with our dear friend Kim Samuel. I never thought that I would get to have an opportunity like this ever. Margaret Atwood was nothing like I was expecting and to be honest I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. She was very soft spoken and she wasn’t afraid to be herself. Margaret was also straight to the point with the conversations. Somehow they managed to talk about witches and zombies. I really have no idea how that managed to come up in conversations but it sure made it even more interesting.
It was great to see a lot of similar faces from the past Symposiums and even nicer to meet lots of new people that have never been to the symposiums before. Kim and her team always do a wonderful job. They always make the Symposiums feel like a safe place to be at. You are never judged for who you are and they make it feel like it’s a family. I just want to take this moment to thank Kim and her team for putting on an other wonderful Symposium. They always do such a fantastic job.
Here’s a few photos from this years Symposium
~Crystal~
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