Hello, my name is Peter Lawryniuk. I'm 42 years old. I have a brain injury that I got when I was 7 years old. I was hit by a car while riding my bicycle and in a coma for 11 days. When I awoke, I needed to relearn everything over again. How to walk, talk, eat and use all my muscles again. I had a lot of different therapies, speech, physio therapy, etc. I went back to school. I was in a small classroom and I had a special ed teacher that would work one on one with me at times. When I was 12 years old, another tragedy happened. My father passed away of a heart attack. That left my mother to raise three children on her own, with me being the youngest and with a brain injury, it was tough. Going through my teenage years was tough. I had some anger issues as a teenager, but for different reasons. One, my father passed away and two, I have a brain jury. I didn't know how to deal with certain situations. I was sent away a few times to get some help. First a rehabilitation Center in London. I was there for a year and then came back to Cambridge. I went to high school and then a few years later, I was sent to another rehabilitation Center in Hamilton to get more help. I was there for a year. I came back to Cambridge and finished my high school in Cambridge. It took me a bit longer but I did it. I graduated. Fast forward to when I was 26 years old, I moved out of my mothers house and into an apartment on my own. A year later, I started volunteering at a daycare called Peekaboo, one day a week for a few hours in the morning. Well, that one day a week turned to 2 days a week and then three days a week. Then I did two things in September of that year. 1, I got my G1 license. The second thing I did was, I signed up for early childhood education apprenticeship at Conestoga college. Going through college, I had my ups and downs the first 5 years as I needed to repeat some classes again because with my brain injury, it takes me longer to understand some things. Then another tradegy happened. First, my mothers dog passed away and then three days later, my mother passed away from complications after her surgery that she had. It was a very difficult time as now both of my parents were gone. I took a little break from college. I wrote, sang, recorded, videoed and put on YouTube three songs. Miracles which is about my accident and hospital stay. Life is like a storm which is about a storm that's coming and how my life was like a storm growing up with a brain injury. Olivia which is about my Goddaughter Olivia. She's in the video to. My supervisor at the daycare told me I had to take a food handling course, because I help in the kitchen with the grocery shopping, etc. So, I did. I ended up passing that class as I studied long and hard. I passed and wanted to go back and finish what I started in the Early childhood education and apprenticeship program. Apparently, l found out that I only needed two more classes. I took them both, one after another. I worked hard, had a great teacher, same one for both classes and I passed. I graduated college. I now volunteer and work in a day care called Bright Path Childcare, which used to be called Peekaboo Childcare. I help out in the classrooms and in the kitchen. I bring my guitar there and play and sing to the children there. I volunteer on Saturday mornings at the YMCA, stay and play. I also bring my guitar and play it and sing to the children there. I volunteer at a place called Michael Fleming Center and as well volunteer in my church. I work one day a week at a place called open space, which is a place with people of different disabilities can go and socialize, play games etc. It's part of the extend a family. Some things I learned growing up is: Never give up, look forward in life, not backwards, think positive, not negative, take one day at a time and you can do anything you put your mind to.

“Oye, choca, que lindos tus ojos,” a middle-aged man called out to me from his small, beaten up car on the small dirt road I dread walking on so much. This was not the first superficial comment I had gotten that day. Most cat calls directed towards me came from large, unkempt men whose appearance alone caused me to feel fear and unease. I hurried without giving him a glance for fear of fueling the fire that was his acute need for attention that he may go to desperate measures to quench. All my life, I had never been allowed to play out on the street with my friends. I had never been allowed to do something as simple as walk to the little corner store half a block away to buy a few eggs alone. I always needed an adult by my side, and even that was not a guarantee of my safety. As a young child, I had been taught to divert as much attention as I could away from who I truly was. This was done by simple things such as never speaking English in public, never looking people on the street I did not know in the eye, never going out without an adult - preferably a Bolivian man, and by dressing in an attempt to hide some of my snowy skin. Even my best efforts at blending in could not keep all the attention away; cat calls were a common experience to me for as long as I can remember, and this put an inevitable fear in my mind of men. For this reason, getting as far away from that man on the street as possible was my only concern in that moment. As soon as I got far enough away for me to feel comfortable, I remembered the reason I was walking; my mom was waiting for me at the other end of the street to catch a “micro” - a public transportation bus. My mind settled instantly at the sight of my strong, beautiful, Bolivian mother, and all the fearful thoughts that seem to short circuit my brain disappeared for a split second that did not last anywhere near long enough. As soon as I reached my mom's side, she spotted the micro heading towards us. She reminded me to keep my bag in front of me since the risk of either getting something stolen or getting inappropriately touched were high if I did nothing to prevent it. Consequently, I stayed by my mom's side as she paid the bitter, overweight driver who had already stepped on the gas pedal again. No seats were available, so we stood in the overcrowded bus until we reached the “abasto” - a vast market in which one can buy fresh food; cheap materials; and agricultural goods. Immediately after stepping off the bus, I was hit with the seemingly origin-less, inescapable stench. I mindlessly followed my mom through the weaving market that seemed to never be the same as she searched for the perfect bunch of bananas for her banana bread. On the side of one of the endless numbers of small fruit stands, there was a little girl sitting under a truck in an attempt to escape the powerful sun that so violently beat on everyone who dared stand directly under its rays. She looked up from the corn husks she was playing with to observe the unusual sight of a white girl with green eyes. A teenage girl sat in the bed of the truck with one leg carelessly hanging off the side. Contrary to the child's simple way of achieving entertainment, her fingers vigorously flew across the glossy screen of her small cellphone. Unlike the child, the teenager barely glanced at me, and as soon as she saw that I was just another girl, her phone retook her attention. The little girl, however, was still mesmerized by my appearance, so I smiled which seemed to satisfy her as she immediately smiled back and returned to playing with anything she could find. Meanwhile, my mom had decided that she had found the bananas that she wanted, so she asked the middle-aged woman standing behind them how much they costed. The woman, dressed in faded clothes and a threadbare apron in which she kept the money she had earned, readily recognized my fair colored skin and naturally assumed that I was not Bolivian and, therefore, ignorant. She chose to take a chance at gaining more money by charging us extra; however, we were used to being charged extra a countless amount of times due to the fact that I was different. My mom convinced the woman to charge us the honest amount of how much the bananas were worth, and we kept walking through the abyss. After an hour, we got on a micro and returned home - one of the few places I felt safe. This short trip had not brought about any terrible events; however, the possibility of being taken advantage of due to irrelevant and superficial things was a constant likelihood in my life. I have grown up trying to hide who I am because of a fear of those who I do not know, but I have never seen it as a fully negative thing because being different means that I am special; the unwanted attention is simply due to everyone around me recognizing that. Maybe, just maybe, someday I will be free to be whoever I want to be without a threat. For now, I live as a minority in what I consider to be my own culture.