This month we were blessed to have our very first international guest on our Drop In Podcast. It was none other than The Turquoise Deity, Kiana aka @kianayouwanna! (they/them). We chatted with them about their journey through roller derby to the skatepark, and how they’ve found their identity and learned how to be unapologetically themselves along the way.
Check out some highlights from our chat with Kiana below and listen to the whole episode here.
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Being yourself feeds the need to help others more.
“I feel like I have just been trekking through my life and doing things rather than thinking about them so much, so to say ‘how do you be unapologetically yourself?’ or ‘how do you help your community?’ It’s just like these are the things that I just want to do…. I feel like there’s no other way to be except for just being myself. Being able to find other people that feel the same too [within the community] has just fed the need and the want to help other people more.”
Finding non-binary identity in the skate community.
"I remember when I was doing roller derby I used to have a friend and that friend introduced me to the term of being non-binary. That was the first time I’d ever realised there were other identities and other genders… Having forced so much of myself inside even though I was still being myself… that was where I started thinking how I can be myself more and what parts of me are following a norm that even roller derby is still pushing on me."
Taking up space isn’t always easy.
"When I started [at the skatepark] it was lonely, honestly. A lot of my friends were skateboarders, and they were my friends because I was the only roller skater and they were fascinated by roller skates in the skatepark…. I felt like I was able to create a space but it was mostly because people were intrigued. I wouldn’t say that it was the easiest either because … there’s, like, people watching you and that’s the reason why you have that space."
Kiana is someone we have admired and looked up to in the skatepark for such a long time and it was such a pleasure to chat with them. Make sure to listen to the whole conversation here, and check out their Instagram.