Hi, I'm Yazmin,

Beginning: Where I Started

I’ve always loved stories.

As a child, I loved them so fiercely, I used to draft, edit, and illustrate my own picture books almost every week (ask me about my bestseller, Santa Got Stuck Down the Chimney). Equally as much, I loved film and cinematography. I loved the magic of being immersed in a story so real that, for a moment, I swore I was there. Now, some of that might have been due to me being a highly sensitive child, but some of it was purely due to the power of story: like a rubber band, it has the potential to expand the imagination.

But if a rubber band can expand, it can also constrict. At the time, I didn’t know then what I know now as an adult about narratives: our collective stories have the power to shape the imagination of our individual stories (and vice versa for they live in an ever-present feedback loop). We believe something is possible for us because we’ve seen it be; we don’t believe it's possible because we haven’t seen it be.

As a child, I went into the world in search of myself only to find myself in the same roles in media, books, and films: a side character. The message was clear: for people who looked like me, for those who acted and lived like I did, my place was on the side. Toward the margins. Unseen but needed. Unconsciously, my imagination constricted and I became that.

For the next decade of my life, my identity and work would focus on supporting others' dreams, goals, and needs. I thought that was my role in life. If it had not been for the Winter of 2021, my life might have stayed that way.

Middle: What Changed Me

In February 2021, my aunt died. Even now, I struggle to put words to the way her death ricocheted through my life. She was one of the sweetest and funniest people I knew. She also didn’t believe she could live the life she wanted. Memories of being bullied and taunted and mocked in her childhood haunted her even into her fifties. She decided then to stay in the crowd of life, supporting but never standing front and center; and when she died, I found myself grieving her life more than her death. To be honest, I saw so much of myself in her at the time.

The next two years of my life would bring a new death every six months and always the news would reach me by phone. They should have had more time, I thought at every grave-site. Then would come the more troubling thought: I always think I have more time. I didn’t realize until that moment how frequently I thought of my dream life as something “out there.” A nice fantasy that I’d (maybe) experience some day. But I only had one life (as far as I knew) and thus far, I was living it as a supporting character, sidelining my own dreams, desires, and hopes and finding myself in misaligned jobs, placements, and relationships as the result. I knew I had to make a change.

I knew I wanted to make a change.