I started skating by joining a roller derby team at the end of 2018 and later got into park skating, which got me my first skate sponsor in 2021. In the quad scene, there are only four or five trans women or trans femme skaters who have a sponsor, so it's humbling to be among only a handful of us who have one.

But navigating the scrutiny that the cis-het gaze puts on trans trailblazers is hard. I don't do a lot of competitions and there are a couple of reasons for that. I don't know if it’s in my head, but I do feel that as a trans woman, I have to work almost twice as hard to gain the same recognition as a cis-presenting woman skater would.

I don't want my hobby to turn into something that is a competition. I don’t want there to be a burden of pushing only towards the competition instead of pushing towards actually enjoying it, having fun, seeing how much I can do and how far my body can go. For a long time, I was a lot more reckless than I had the talent for, which brought me a lot of recognition. I've been able to do a jubilee video where they were talking about cis versus trans athletes, and got to fly out to LA to do that. I got interviewed by some companies who did trans spotlights and I've been able to draw some awareness to the skate community, which has been great.

For the most part, quad roller skating is fairly progressive. It hasn't been absolutely terrible, but you do have older school style skaters who definitely scrutinize you for being a transgender individual. And I think that changes geographically as well. I'm on the East Coast, so it's not as prominent of a skating scene as the West Coast or Florida would be. So it's been hard, but it's also brought a lot of really cool experiences along the way.

Skating has become a large part of my identity and I absolutely love teaching Park skating. When it comes to life things, I get a lot of anxiety, which I'm still working through with counseling. But when it comes to skating, as long as I drop into the bowl, I just go for it when it comes to trying a trick that's a little bit more dangerous. I think of it as a fear curtain: A lot of people don't progress very fast because they have this curtain of fear that they can't seem to push through. Skating is the only aspect of life where I can actually draw the curtain back and push through it fairly easily.

For a while, I was one of just a handful of people that were trying what's called a ‘faking front flip’ where you go up the ramp backwards and at the height of the ramp, you try and front flip, then land and come down, which is a blind landing. It's really difficult and pretty dangerous. But it's taught me that I'm a lot more capable than I thought I was, and I'm a lot stronger and a lot tougher. It's brought my pain threshold up a lot.

At the moment though, I'm in a bit of a lull with my skating. For so long, I used weightlifting and skating as a form to control and save my mental health. And now, there's been a lot of really good stuff that's been happening for me. I just started dating somebody a couple months ago, and it's going really well. I'm in a really good spot, and I'm really happy.

I'm still doing a lot of roller derby, but I haven't been able to do as much park skating.

By quoting testosterone, you discredit every single ounce of work that I have put in to become a better athlete

In the United States, there’s this sentiment of needing things immediately, whereas both transitioning and improving in skating can be extremely slow and difficult processes.

Learning new tricks and learning to become a better skater has taught me to not only enjoy the processes as slow as they are, but also to enjoy being able to work through the difficulties. I’ve learned to pay more attention to my surroundings and picked up on how to help other people so that they don't have to work through some of the difficulties that I've worked through.

I have really worked hard at creating a skate presence on social media. I've gotten very political and outspoken about where I stand on certain bills that are extremely harmful and need to be brought to the attention of people who aren’t aware as it doesn't involve them. Encouraging others has helped me gain a lot of confidence in who I am, to the point where I have been able to be so vocal about it and open about it on my social media that a lot of people actually come to me for questions, which really makes me feel good that others trust me.

I think something that's holding sports back from being a space of comfort right now, especially in the States, is the fighting and misinformation exacerbated by the anti-transgender bills each year. A lot of people will automatically assume that, "Oh, well, you were born with testosterone so you have an advantage."

By saying that you have completely discredited every single ounce of work that I have put in to become a better athlete.

I'm in the gym four or five times a week, for an hour or two hours at a time. I'm on my skates all the time. I put in hours and hours of work to become better at roller derby and park skating. Hours to figure out different tricks and new tricks, pushing my body as far as I can, or even past that sometimes.

People don't have a problem with you unless you do well. So if I do well, will people just assume that I'm doing great because I am great, or will they assume that I have this 'advantage'? Should I hold myself back? Should I not do as good as I think I should? Should I not push myself as hard? Those are some of the biggest struggles for me.

As transgender individuals in the States, we are having to fight so much from the assumptions that are being made about us from misinformation, ignorance, and lack of awareness. It's hard to get away and decompress from the legislative attacks against transgender people. I want to still have that presence online – it has been important and I have worked really hard at it.

But it's tough to get away from all of the anti-trans hate online too, whether it's on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Especially with the midterms, there was a lot of political stuff going on, a lot of conservatives pushing anti-transgender stuff to get voted in.

There are a lot of times I'll take a break from social media where I just won't sign on, and that's been really nice. It’s also helpful to stay active by going out, hanging out with friends and making sure that if I go somewhere, I'm in a safe place with people that I can trust.

Pre-transition, I did a lot of stuff with music, and it was my entire identity for a long time. I don't do a lot with music now but when I'm really anxious, sometimes I'll sit down at the piano and start playing or try to write a song. If I need to say something dark or angry, I can write it in a song and it feels nice to be able to get that out in a safe space.

I came out as trans and started hormones in July of 2018. I would want my younger self to know that:

It's okay to be who you are. It's a scary journey, but it is extremely worth it. I have never experienced joy or love on the levels that I do now because I feel like I can actually love myself.

It’s been important to learn to be patient and to enjoy the process. Sometimes it's not going to be what you want it to be, or not going to be what you expect it to be. But there's still beauty in it.

There's no wrong way to be trans, whether you want surgery, whether you don't want surgery, whether you go on hormones, whether you don't go on hormones, whether you are a trans femme person who has a lot of masculinity -- there's no wrong way to do it.

There's nobody else who can tell you who you are or how you're supposed to live. You get that freedom and you know yourself best.

It’s important to enjoy some of the slow parts of the transition and to be comfortable with being like "Yeah, you know, here's where I'm at right now. It's not where I ultimately want to be. But this is where I'm at right now. And this is part of my journey. This is part of my life. This is who I am at this moment."

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Everything in life is fluid. What's happening right now may not be the case five years down the road.

Be open to change, be open to learning as you go.