Daisy: Healing through Community Care
CREATING A NEW NORMAL
Interviews and original transcription by Loisse Ledres | Co-written with Elise Blauuw
Content warning: mentions of trauma, mental illness, and colonialism
“Judge me all you want but I’m gonna protect my people.”
Daisy started 2020 in the protection of her community. She’d just come out of a time of isolation spent processing her trauma and navigating a new reality living with mental illness.
“There was a sense of grief and loss when the pandemic hit. Having the community around me was what was keeping me well. The people were making me well. What do I do without the people?”
The isolation of the pandemic threatened the progress Daisy had made. But even when Daisy’s world felt fragile, her people knew that she wasn’t. As her Filipinx community continued to grow around her, they turned to her as a guide.
“In Scarborough I’m regarded as this emerging leader. Sometimes I doubt that it’s true. But I recognize my role in either case. I hold it with so much care because that’s what my people need.”
Through her own healing, Daisy has seen the hurting and trauma her community carries as a result of colonialism and systemic oppression. Now she’s seeking ways to help and reach her people.
“The more I have connected with others, the more I realized that I have a powerful voice. For some reason, people listen when I speak. I can really create change if I believe that I can. I’m in the process of believing that.”
As a community researcher and curator, Daisy is focusing her work on amplifying the stories of BIPOC folks in Scarborough, a highly racialized suburb in Tkaronto.
“I want people to know they are loved and valuable, exactly for who they are. They are more than any traumas or challenges that they face. I’m interviewing people [with] stories of migration and care. So many of our stories have been erased and stolen and that’s not okay.”
Daisy hopes to use her new understanding of her own creativity to create more projects that care for and uplift her community.
“My community work is my creative work. I want to do more projects with Scarborough and creativity. It’s happening at the right time because I’m ready to understand myself as a creative being.”
Seeing the harm caused by colonialism inspires Daisy to create new spaces of care with her community.
“Our creativity is our liberation from what the colonizer has built.”
“What if instead of a table, it was a community garden? And we just brought what we could offer? What if it wasn’t so colonial and went back to our roots? If a plant is not growing, you change the circumstances around it so it can thrive. The world could be a totally different place.”
- DAISY
Daisy’s upcoming projects
@daaisybelle | @bayanihanto
HIGHLIGHTING STORIES OF MIGRATION, HOPE, AND COMMUNITY CARE THROUGH RELATIONSHIP-BUILDING, RESEARCH, AND CURATION - In collaboration with the Toronto Ward Museum’s Block by Block Project
These stories, especially the voices of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour in Scarborough, will be exhibited next spring.
CREATING COMMUNITY SPACES OF CARE WITH BAYANIHAN EMPOWERMENT (@bayanihanto)
Started as a research project in in February 2020, this space explored the needs of newcomer Filipino youth who reunited with their moms in Tkaronto as a result of the Live-in Caregiver Program. At the end of that project, some of my coworkers and I created Bayanihan Empowerment. They focus on building capacity in Filipinx youth through peer support, mentorship, the sharing of our stories, and by exploring topics that are taboo in the Filipinx community such as mental health, toxic Filipinx behaviours, and boundaries. It’s a space of safety, to bridge across generations and finally address the shame and judgment in the Filipino diaspora.
READ MORE ABOUT CREATIVES CREATING A NEW NORMAL:
This project is part of the Creative Wildfire project, an artist grant funded by Climate Justice Alliance, Movement Generation, and New Economy Coalition.
