Pride Month Post 2: Trans And Disabled Dominick Evans

Last month my friend sent me this link and told me to read it but told me anything else so today I listened to the whole interview. I knew that I wanted my readers to meet Dominick Evans and understand that people with disabilities can still be transgender.

The first ever blog post that ever wrote was based on this subject. My endocrinologist came up with a lot of excuses because he saw that I’m a wheelchair user, so for me to Dominick Evans’s story is very important not only to show the massive strength that transgender community has but that we are unique like everyone else. Dominick is a non-binary transgender who was born with a condition called spinal muscular atrophy that forced him to live in a wheelchair by the age of 16.

Having said that doesn’t mean that his dysphoria stopped as he says in his interview. Dominick couldn’t have his hormone therapy because he had no way of transportation and the doctors didn’t help him when at last after years of trying he found an endocrinologist who gave him testosterone so that he could live life as his authentic self. He was severely bullied, and when he came out at age 16, things didn’t get better.

However, he didn’t give up later on in life he returned to WSU in 2010, where he completed his BFA in Motion Pictures Production inspiring him to become a filmmaker. In 2015, he won IndieFEST Award of Recognition with his first film Trip. If my research is correct, he lives with Ashtyn Law and his son Robert Law

Alex

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Downlights Candles🕯🕯

I was surfing the web and stumbled upon this video titled “My Perfect Family: Candle Dad”, and it got me interested. It starts with the dad cooking breakfast for his family, who lives in Beachland, Auckland, New Zealand. From the first few minutes in the video Tony, the dad introduces us to Nicki and Emma Sykes, who are only 13 months between each other but what makes them unique is that the sisters both have downs syndrome hence the name downlights that I’ll get to in a minute.

When Emma finished school at age 21, her dad Tony tried to find a job for her, and he asked a variety of businesses that he knew since he had his own business. Sadly no one wanted to give her a job, so they started their own business making candles. They always had candles at home, and Emma really likes them, so the dad thought let’s make candles. However, he soon figured out that making candles it’s not as easy as it seems, so he asked help from his friends and one of them introduced him to Jennifer Del Bel who already had her candle making company.

She offered Tony and Emma to use her manufactured facility to produce their own candles while she taught them those tips and tricks that she picked out along the years. In the beginning, Tony had a small selection of fragrances that he would sell at the market, and that’s what lead to the media picking up the story and talk about it which helped them sell a candle a minute for two days after they appeared on TV. Which help the brand Downlights get on its feet, and I think you already why the name downlights and that’s because both girls have downs syndrome.

The independence in Emma has grown since the start of the business, which is really amazing to see. To see the changes for a better life that this job gave her makes me go speechless! Tony hopes that as the business grows, he can employ more people with downs syndrome so that they too can have a better life.

Downlights Information :

Facebook

Website

Instagram

Best of luck Downlights,

Alex

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Firsts Lines Fridays

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book

Lines

Social functions weren’t really Max Saddler’s thing. In truth, she would have rather spent the next hour in a dentist’s chair, or riding public transportation, or better yet, she’d rather stay in her dorm and watch Netflix. But she promised her best friend, Mira, that she would try to be more social and make a few additional friends in grad school, and so here she was.

Tonight was her first official night of the program, not counting orientation and the day she came to the library just to wander around and familiarize herself with all of the classrooms, and her first class was scheduled to start in an hour and a half. First, though, there was the meeting that she swore to Mira she would attend.

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The Book Is…

The Rules of Love (Rulebook, #1) — The Rules of Love
(Rulebook #1)
by Cara Malone

(Goodreads in the caption)

Alex

Bump by Matthew J. Metzger

This book talks about being a transgender man and getting pregnant. Let me make one thing clear it’s rare for a trans guy on testosterone to get a cycle because of a hormone imbalance will have to occur that happens when the dose of testosterone is changed.

David is a transgender guy who fell in love Ryan who is a wheelchair user. I don’t think there is a better book to showcase my life. I get told a lot that if I ‘choose’ to be a guy, I should give up on having my own biological child which isn’t fair, but like David, I heard from doctors and nurses. I love how supportive Ryan during the whole time even if he was fighting his own battles like fighting for fighting for custody of Ave from his previous marriage.

David and Ryan are already two of my favourite characters of 2019, I think it’s clear that I love Matthew’s writing topic and style and I’ll be reading all the books I find by him. Without further ado, my first five stars of the year go to you, Matthew J. Metzger.

Alex

Bump

Top Ten Tuesday

Hosted by thatartsyreadergirl

August 28: Back to School/Learning Freebie (in honor of school starting back up soon, come up with your own topic that fits the theme of school or learning! Books that take place at school/boarding school/during study abroad, books you read in school, textbooks you liked/didn’t like, non-fiction books you loved or want to read, etc.)

Let me be honest, I never really liked the book read in class since they were classics which I’m not a fan of. So, I’m picking five topics and two books that go with that topic.