032: Tiffany & Dominique
In this episode, we’re joined by Dominique Viel, Founder and Executive Director of InvisiYouth, to chat more about subtle activism for the chronic illness and disability community, and using this soft power in social activism to make lasting impressions and change.
We discussed:
Dominique and InvisiYouth’s origin story
Where Dominique learned to advocate and her grief & self-acceptance journey around her chronic illnesses
Living well with chronic illness
Owning your chronic illness narrative on your own terms
Subtle activism to bring allies into the work
Defining activism and advocacy on your own terms and finding your safe people
Building resilience when others don’t react well to your chronic illness/disability
The curiosity of Generation Z and social media activism
Shifting roles of allyship
Balance
Show notes:
InvisiYouth: http://www.invisiyouthcharity.com/
Tiffany on InvisiYouth Chat Sessions: https://youtu.be/qWa0m6I87GA
Jessica Kellgren-Fozard’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDdi0yUyGW1PKzYXaIACnuA
Subtle activism: https://gaiafield.net/what-is-subtle-activism/
About Dominique Viel
Dominique Viel is founder and executive director of the international nonprofit, InvisiYouth, a 501c3 that helps teens and young adults with various chronic illnesses and disabilities gain the right lifestyle tools, programs, and empowerment to learn how to keep living life with health struggles. It came after her own experiences as an injured teen competitive tennis player that resulted in her diagnosis of a neurovascular condition. It is this personal passion that allowed Dominique to use her many years of experience as a patient advocate and guest speaker in children's hospitals and schools to tailor the InvisiYouth message for audiences, from students, to businesses and other organizations' events, to medical schools.
Follow
Website: http://www.invisiyouthcharity.com/
Instagram: http://instagram.com/invisiyouth
Twitter: https://twitter.com/invisiyouth/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InvisiYouth/
Transcript
Tiffany Yu: Hi, everyone. You're listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu, the podcast. This is your host, Tiffany Yu . If you're new to this podcast, Tiffany & Yu is a podcast about things that matter. And more specifically, I'm chatting with friends who are using their voices and platforms to cultivate creativity, compassion, and change. Today I have with me Dominique Viel, who is the Founder and Executive Director of the international nonprofit InvisiYouth, which is a 501c3 that helps teens and young adults with various chronic illnesses and disabilities to gain the right lifestyle tools, programs, and empowerment to learn how to keep living life with health struggles. Hi, Dominique.
Dominique Viel: Hi, Tiffany, how are you?
Tiffany Yu: I always like to start by sharing how I know my guests. Dominique we were Instagram friends and she slid into my DMs. And then had me on her podcast.
Dominique Viel: You were our final guest of season two.
Tiffany Yu: I always love starting these conversations with origin stories. And I would love to hear your origin story, however you interpret that, which led you up to the point of believing that InvisiYouth needed to be in the world.
Dominique Viel: I work with teens and young adults who have chronic illnesses and disability across the physical and mental health spectrum. And I'm 28 now. I launched InvisiYouth when I was 22. It was a month after I graduated from university. So that tends to become more of the conversation starter of why I built a charity at a young age. I am still part of the demographic that my non-profit supports and it was something that I knew I would have needed at a younger age than when I was creating it. Because I was a competitive tennis player for about eight years. I wanted to get scouted for university, try the pro circuit my early twenties. That was sort of the goal for the six hours a day, five days a week of training that you put your body through. And ended up during off season training, I got injured on my left hand, which is my dominant side. Ended up developing a type of neurovascular condition that affected my nervous system and was damaging to my sympathetic nervous system and ended up having an auto-immune condition that was more dormant that unfortunately, my illness then offset at a younger age when I was 16 and led me down the road of the chronic illness journey for many years of not getting diagnosed properly, going through multiple days and hours of physical therapy. I think my doctor quota now is 45 or 46 doctors I've been referred to. I think once you hit 30, you kind of stop, it's just too many doctors at that point. So it was just a lot of, we're not exactly sure which chronic illnesses you have. So it was a lot of just troubleshooting to see what would work. And I was 16 going through my last few years of high school going into university. And I was always in that gray area of being too old for pediatrics, too young for adult health care and really feeling like when I would go into a doctor's office and talk about medications or treatment, I was looking at the big picture of, well, how is your medical treatment going to affect me being able to stay in school full-time or I have to go to prom, I don't want to have medication that I would have fluid retention. So things that to a doctor felt was not their priority. They were strictly on paper, were trying to in quotes, cure you and fix you so you can then go back to your life, then you can do college and do all of the things. And at that point, this has been 13 years. I'm still chronically ill and spoiler for that everybody so I would've been waiting obviously for a very long time. And that was the big thing for me was just the nonmedical side of life. There was nothing for me to find. There was no support network. There was no just outlet for people. And since I was in multiple chronic illness groups, it was always one illness specific group and I would feel like I wasn't able to be a part of anything since I was in so many different spectrums of chronic illness. So for me, building the charity came out of, I then started becoming a guest speaker at children's hospitals that I used to be a patient at. I then got put on grants to do stakeholder work, leading the teenage patients they would bring on. And I was always being asked the same questions of how do you deal with teenage patients? They're angsty, they're on their phones. I don't know how to connect. And it was years of answering the same questions. I was going to university to do philanthropic work. I wanted to work with the UN, and their NGOs, their non-governmental organizations. And then my few of my doctors said, well, instead of working for a charity, why won't you build your own? I think they were being funny, but I am a little type A, so I was like, wait a minute, what does it take to build a non-profit? So my entire senior year was me building InvisiYouth. So my friends were having more relaxing senior years. And on weekends I was going home meeting with accountants and lawyers and developing the whole nonprofit and I launched it the month after we graduated. So June 1st of this year will be six years since I launched. From that point forward, it's just been a snowball of going international and doing our programming and always evolving with what has happened, especially the past year as well for philanthropy. It's been quite a challenging experience. You're trying to reimagine the format you've had your work in.
Tiffany Yu: Thank you so much for sharing your journey. You were this competitive tennis player. Some things started happening, not being sure what it was for many years. People telling you to put your life on hold, a grief process of what your life was before. Was there a turning point where, it was, I'm unwilling to put my life on hold?
Dominique Viel: I had the blessing that my mom is a nurse. She's been a nurse for over 35 years. So my sister and I were taught even at five or six years old to explain everything to a doctor and be that advocate because she knew the value of that. So I knew going into a lot of doctor's appointments of I had the luxury and I say it's a luxury that I could walk out of an appointment feeling uncomfortable and just explaining it to my mom and having her explain medical jargon back to me. And I know that's not what a lot of people get to experience, but she always instilled that in me of if you're uncomfortable with how you're being treated in the doctor's office, stop them and tell them. You're not 18 yet, doesn't matter. You're still the patient. This is still your body. So it was always having that mindset was probably helpful for me. The grief portion of it. For me, it was like the three second life switch. So when I was having my injury, it was the first second was me playing the sport. The second second was my life's flipping upside down. And the third was me now having to look at life in a whole other way. So I didn't have the ability to change my mindset quickly. I was just thrown into this whole other mindset and having a plan and being the type of person I was of what my life was going to look like. And knowing that I wasn't going to have the careers I wanted. My social setting became very different because at a teenage age, if your friends don't see you answering their texts quickly, or you're in and out of school, having that connection to them when you're chronically ill, it's alarming to them because that sort of invincible mindset. They see you struggling. They don't know how to handle it so you become a little bit more isolated, even on a social side and it was me really having to work through myself of working through this mindset of going, I need to become okay with my career goals not being what they were and the way that I look being different than what I used to, and my version of normal and my version of healthy has to be different. For me, it was probably about two years into it when my nerve damage started spreading throughout the left side of my body. And it was going down instead of up where my doctors were explaining it should have gone. I'm not an exceptionally patient person, so to be told, wait, I said, well, that's not fair. I still want to apply to universities. I still want a job. I'm not gonna just sit home. Why are you telling me to wait for my body to catch up to what you want? And that was more for me going, I need to accept that there's two time periods of my life before illness and after, and appreciate that version and that portion of my life as what it was, and use portions of my personality then to feed into and fuel what I do now. And just running InvisiYouth as well, a lot of our leadership program and our global brand leaders, they joke that I act like a coach to them. And that probably is from eight years of being a competitive athlete and that played into how I do physical therapy. It was always the athlete going into the therapist being like, okay, what's the plan for today? They would be like, Dominique, calm down. It's just tapping exercises for your hand and wrist mobility. So like, this is not a big deal, but I always wanted to bring that competitive fuel, even if I had to do it at a lower speed because of what my body was capable of. And even 13 years later, I always say it's still something I adjust to, having to always evolve the charity to fit my medical needs as the one who's in charge of it is something even still, it's not like I went through the grief process. I'm on the other side and I'm fine. There are still moments within where I have to take a pause and be okay with changing programming that we do, because I know I medically can't lead it that way and I want everything to be successful. So it's still a process. And I think people recognizing that you never evolve out of the process with a chronic illness or a disability, you always have to evolve with it, accepting it that way is the best thing. For me, the biggest piece of advice I always give was my chronic illness at one point, it became less of it being my competitor and it became my teammate because when I stopped looking at it as the thing I needed to be and be better at in the day, and it was something I just had to work with and they were on my team, it became easier for me to not fuel that negativity of just feeling like my illness was doing something to my life. It was okay. I have to be on my team. You and I are doing this together. I can't separate you out of my body. So working with it instead of against it really was the shift, especially from more of the sadness, and more grieving process of what my life and my health used to be like so now that I'm able to use it as something of benefit to me.
Tiffany Yu: Wow. That was so powerful. Seeing it, not as your competitor, but as your teammate. I wanted to read something that you had written. " I'm super interested in showing how the focus of success and chronic illness or happiness and chronic illness or humor and chronic illness are not mutually exclusive lives and that you can straddle these lines and still be an incredible asset and human."
Dominique Viel: That was probably the biggest when I went to build InvisiYouth's mission, it was because I wanted to have that mindset for myself of what are things that I need that are tangible for tomorrow. And to be able to feel like I'm still successful, I have to live with my chronic illness, but I'm still able to achieve things. And it was never the waiting for the cure in air quotes mindset that a lot of people, you're instilled, especially in the medical community, to have. And a lot of that for me, that exclusivity comes from not being able to see yourself in any format as a kid. There weren't books with characters who were chronically ill or disabled. You're not seeing them as the anchors on the news, in fiction television or non-fiction. They're not the best seller book list. And so I was never having access to it. So when it became my position, it was like, Oh, okay, wait a minute. I'm not going to be able to be as successful as I used to be, or as happy because anytime you would see a chronically ill or disabled person in a film, it was always the melancholy storyline, or they needed a romantic partner to be successful and to be happy. And I felt like that was a disservice to me that I had to find all these other things to be just cause I have to adapt to my body and my health doesn't make it any less special. It is that lack of fusing them together. It was this, I had to have two different boxes of the days I felt healthy were the only days I could be successful and happy, but I was still joking with my friends on the phone if I was doing work from my bed, because I couldn't get out of bed that day doing work, I was still having a successful day. It was just not what everybody else likes it to look like. And that was the biggest thing, especially through the work that we're able to do with InvisiYouth is that everything is super tangible. I joke that what we do is so common sense that the world doesn't do it yet and understand it yet. We're not reinventing the wheel. It's just you getting the mirror to turn to yourself and being able to realize that you have access to all of the tools you need. You might just need to adapt a few steps then to get there because constructionally, the world's not built for the chronically ill and disabled yet. Luckily we have people like you and Diversability and your podcast out there, so people can have more access, especially those that are healthy and non-disabled to then be able to see this perspective and realize there's only a couple of things that people need to do to make things more inclusive and accessible too. If you just look at statistics, it's a very high portion in most countries that identify chronically ill and disabled. So I say we're the most untapped market for every brand. It's the most intersectional. I'm always pitching that going guys, come on, we're this whole axis of people who are just waiting to showcase that they are multifaceted and multitalented.
Tiffany Yu: You're totally right. It's not rocket science. I want to transition the conversation over to advocacy, activism, because we need more people like you in the world, and being able to equip others with these tools or these strategies is so important. So we'll take a break. And then when we come back, we'll continue chatting with Dominique.
And we're back from the break. On this episode, we have Dominique Viel, who is the Founder and Executive Director of InvisiYouth. Before the break, we were talking about her chronic illness journey and how she came into her own to be this incredible advocate, not only for herself, but for other people and to really model and show the world what it looks like to live with a chronic illness and be happy and be successful. So I put a poll out, and I asked if people who had chronic illness or mental health conditions considered themselves as disabled. Because technically, they are disabilities. And I got so many responses from people who were chronically ill telling me that they didn't feel comfortable taking up space from those who had more visible disabilities. And of course I go back and I say, there's space, there is disability, there's Crip space for everybody. And so I'm curious if you have a response to people who do live with chronic illnesses, but don't identify as disabled. Are you trying to sell them on a disability narrative? How can we get people who get the, but you don't look sick or what you don't look disabled to really transcend some of those harmful microaggressions.
Dominique Viel: For me it definitely is a twofold. Personally, before I built the charity, I had never met anyone with a chronic illness or disability besides I had one aunt who had diabetes and that was it. And it wasn't until I built the charity, seeing people smiling saying, Oh, I have a chronic illness, or, Oh yeah, I'm I'm in the disability community or using the term spoonie, which a lot of people in the chronic illness people use to identify themselves with. And it was seeing people smiling, referring to themselves through their health narrative was important and interesting for me to see as the founder of the charity. I never thought it was something I should use as an identifier for our community. I built the name InvisiYouth came off of the fact of feeling like an invisible youth and wanting to be an invincible youth. And so that identifier of feeling invisible because a lot of my illnesses were invisible was very much to me going, well, if I don't lead with my chronic illness, it can be something that people then aren't as uncomfortable with, because most of my friends had the uncomfortable, bad reactions of hearing about my diagnosis. So I wanted to make everyone comfortable with my educational background and my social skills or what I like to think is my winning humor and lead with those first, before my illness. But then for me, and especially through InvisiYouth, you need to leave enough space to let people meet you where they're at and find a middle ground. Some people, especially through InvisiYouth, that's what we've been doing the last probably one to two years was trying to open up our volunteers. There was a very public forum through our leadership program. And then we had a very private behind the scenes program of volunteers. So a lot of our more behind the scenes volunteers, they're not on our website. They come in, they're with us for six months to a year or even longer. And they have chronic illnesses, but they don't identify, they're not on their Instagram bio. They're not publicly doing any work. The most they might do is fundraise for it through their birthday and that would be about it. And it was interesting seeing more people want to come into the charity on a behind the scenes level of seeing that they could connect to a community, but not make it an identifier. And then seeing a lot of those volunteers have actually morphed into our activists was really interesting for them to realize that they could use the term in a positive way. And if people had a negative reaction, take control of the situation or take control of the narrative. And even if it's practicing a few responses with your parents, that seems like the most ridiculous thing to do. But if you've had experience of that initial comeback, it's not 10 minutes later you go, Oh, damn, I should've said that when they meant that comment about my illness or told me they were sorry, and I just went, oh, it's okay. No, don't apologize for you just existing. Have a response for someone if they have a reaction to your illness, because it's just a level of ignorance that now you can then empower yourself through. On my personal level, it has become more of a public identifier for me with the more work I do through the charity. But that also came just from time. And if you Google me now, the only thing that comes up is InvisiYouth, so I do have to lead with it. And also letting people who say I don't associate with my illness publicly, telling them that there is a space for them in activism. And there's so many opportunities to do things behind the scenes that they don't need to identify. They can still even go to events or follow charities or enterprises like your own as well, and be a part of the community that they are part of, that's part of their day, because it will give them opportunities to find access to things that can be adaptive for them, that can actually just improve their daily quality of life that they wouldn't see if they never associated to their health or disability circumstance.
Tiffany Yu: Over the years I've become more and more progressive in terms of the way and how proud I feel around my disability narrative, my disability identity, but it's also having a little bit of grace and compassion for meeting other people wherever they are. And ultimately, all anyone wants is just to be seen and validated in their experience. So even if it's not public, if it's done in a one-on-one, if it's a DM thing, just making sure that we're acknowledging people's existence . I want to read something that you wrote. "Something super important that threads through my work with InvisiYouth and my personal advocacy is the emphasis on subtle activism and the power of challenging those exclusivity clauses society tries to keep chronic illness and disability community within." What is subtle activism?
Dominique Viel: So I always would say passive activism before I built InvisiYouth, when I would fundraise for other nonprofits or do philanthropic work. It was always these very big fundraising events with these very big statements of making posters and going into other classes and using tools of education and visuals. And knowing that a lot of people were not comfortable getting on the soapbox to do it. And that was something even myself was uncomfortable doing. So when I built InvisiYouth, I said, I want it to be passive activism that I'm not throwing out statistics and shaking my fist at the system because of being frustrated. I don't want to live in my frustration every day. I want to have moments of frustration because it validates when I'm happy. Because I know both of the pieces of my emotions, but I wanted to live with more of a upbeat positivity. And I kept saying, well, it's like passive activism. It's subtlety. And then the first I, if she has heard it from someone else, I apologize, but there's a YouTube or from the deaf community in the UK, Jessica Kellgren-Fozard , she used it in a video and it was the first time I heard somebody else say it the same way I did that. She went, I don't lead into the room with the fact that I'm deaf, but it's part of who I am and subtlety people will see the way I do things on camera. And it was seeing her put it together. It made a second reaction of, okay, I'm not the only one who has said the same word before. The best equation I make to it is, it's like Game of Thrones and having the Starbucks cup in the background. It's something that's there that people can see, does it make sense? But it causes them to then have a conversation about it. So I always wanted, what we would even do with our fundraising was very much something that healthy non-disabled people could connect to and then would lead them to feel a curiosity to a conversation, whether that was my own humor and sarcasm. We had a fundraiser that was basically a grid of amounts of money, and people would just check things off and they would get an Instagram shout out, which is why loads of teenagers will donate to a charity is to get that moment. But it was them seeing, Oh, well this looks familiar and then going, Oh, okay. It's about chronic illness and then realizing, Oh, all these different illnesses and disabilities all connect together. And it was always lead with a little bit of information so that people that would be allies to us can then feel comfortable in their curiosity, because if they're not comfortable to ask the question, if they feel like we're othering them, because they've othered us, it won't be to a narrative that makes change. They need to be comfortable to come into the room, to hear us talk about issues so that they can, as allies who have positions of power, then take us into the rooms with them because now they feel comfortable asking the questions and doing the work.
Tiffany Yu: Wow. That's so powerful. What I realized is that the best allies come from proximity, a deep relationship. We want the invitation in to a world that some people may or may not get the chance to experience. So your mom sounded like an incredible role model for you in terms of how you became such a strong advocate for yourself. And I'm curious if you have any advice for people who might not have that figurehead, role models, possibility models. That's Laverne Cox's term. What's your advice to them in order to gain the confidence to be able to feel comfortable advocating?
Dominique Viel: The biggest thing of trying to find confidence is knowing that you don't have to fill the space the way everybody else does. When people hear the term activist, they think I have to be at every rally sharing every post and being very vocal, sharing my opinion. And knowing that activism can be done in all forms that allow you to use your interest and skillset. I'm very talkative, obviously. Doing this and I run a podcast for our nonprofit. So most of what we do leads with the fact that I'm very vocal. But when it came to a lot of the more of the emotional side of my illness, that was just not the conversational point for me. So while I had a fantastic role model through my mom being an advocate, she also knew where I struggled, and would allow me to find the spaces that I felt comfortable to help myself. And so through other areas, I felt okay, well, I can use writing as a tool of communicating things that I need. In terms of people wanting to take those initial steps into activism, or even just seeing a community that they want to connect to or support, you can always do things as an observer in the first sense and then use your interest and skill sets, whether that is verbally communicating through writing, through music, through art and graphics, wherever that may lead for you, and then see people that have that intersection for you if something you feel is a strength of yours, that then weaves into that activism community. So trying to figure out where your comfort section and your comfort zone is, and then placing that into the activism space and say, okay, how can I mold around what I'm comfortable doing to be able to continue to push for positive change for myself and for other people around me.
Tiffany Yu: One of the biggest fears we have is around rejection. What are ways you can improve your confidence when others don't react well to the accessibility or accommodations you need because of your chronic illness or disability?
Dominique Viel: It's the one question I will always ask everyone else because so often people, even other advocates, they'll share their positive experiences of when they had friends or people in romantic relationships, their partners, or family members or colleagues opening the door of grace and being like, here's all of the things I can make accessible to you, or let's have this dialogue. From my family, I was very blessed that they were magnificently supportive of me through my health and just myself as a person. My friends that socially was essentially nonexistent. I had one friend who still to this day took the curiosity of realizing she couldn't relate and said, okay, I know I can't relate, but let me try to meet you where you're at. And she did. Outside of that, I had pretty much no positive reactions from people when it came to my health or people just meeting me somewhere that I was capable of medically at that time. So I always will ask people how do you react to a negative reaction to then go back up to the plate again and take another swing at it? Because so many times when you have that first rejection, you're like, Oh, that was fun. Never doing this again. And especially for young adults and teens, especially in this virtually driven sense of work and socializing, even pre pandemic when you're chronically ill, virtual accessibility tends to be where your social sweet-spot is, being able to realize that having one negative reaction did not mean that you could look down the line and all of them were going to be saying no behind them as well. It was realizing that that person is supposed to then move beyond you or roll off the armor. And then bring somebody else forward. They weren't meant to stay in your life, permanently, even those work relationships you're able to then build around somebody else's inaccessibility to you. You're able to then become a more creative worker because you have to work in the confines of somebody just not meeting you there. And whether that might mean other colleagues of yours see you taking that initiative just to make your job more accessible. They then might take that extra step for you going, Oh, well, maybe that might be a better way of me being more efficient and you'll see that domino effect of it. But really for me, and especially for our young adult community, that's now this generation wanting to push for positive change, I'll always then leave them saying the people who give you that negative reaction are supposed to kind of be the fog that moves over and then you'll eventually get to the clearing after them. Thank them for their service in your life. Move them along. And eventually the people who stick are the people who are going to do the work with you.
Tiffany Yu: And I want to acknowledge that it sucks. What we're really touching on right now are lessons around resilience. And I often tell people that if you're in a really hard spot and you don't think you're going to be able to get out, that's not the end of your story. And I think, especially for both you and I, we've just had so many experiences that compound upon each other that makes every rejection just hurt a little bit more because we're trying to operate in a non-disabled world or a world that wasn't designed for people who are chronically ill. And then to add on top of that, people in our intimate friends and family in our intimate spaces who want to understand, but they can't. I'm also learning, how can I be more vocal about what I need because many of us go around and we're like, can't you just read my mind and know that I wanted you to check in? So InvisiYouth, it's an amazing platform working with young people. Chronic illness or not, what would you tell these young people who don't want to speak up because they don't think that their voice or their actions are going to matter?
Dominique Viel: Well, the biggest thing that I've noticed with young people is that if they get a negative reaction to something once, their curiosity is so much more than the adults that I've worked with, even though I'm 28 and they all like to joke, I'm close to aging out of my own nonprofit. So they'll remind me of that all the time. But that curiosity of going, why was what I just said insulting? Or why was something I said ignorant and then wanting to learn was something I'm always so impressed with young adults is that they want to make their community not just more inclusive, but they really are thriving in this space of realizing that human experience can connect you on, even when you don't look the same or have similar experiences or live in the same area. And us sharing that in InvisiYouth, it's non illness specific and non-disability specific. So I have people that are have partial limbs are speaking to our brand leaders who have Lyme disease or cystic fibrosis, and they're connecting on something that on paper, they would not walk into a room and think they would have a relationship or an experience that connects them. And I think for young adults, it's reminding them that use your creativity wisely, use these social media apps for the positive benefit that they were designed for. And not focus on the negative pitfalls that come out of them, especially for the chronic illness and disability community. There are the infamous algorithm conversation and not being seen. Recognize that that is an issue. Get annoyed with it when things don't work the right way, but then use the tool for the way it's built. And then I like how you and I met, I did that professional DM slide as nicely as I could, because I was so impressed by the way you had so many people in your comments that you were interacting with, and that would also then interact with each other and they were all so different. That's why I said, even if it's just me saying, Hey, great job. Heart emoji to Tiffany, I'm going to do it. And it then worked out to getting to have our platforms then get to interact with each other. And then like this now with both podcasts, it was because of that curiosity. And I started looking for other things that it then opened up a whole new community for myself, for InvisiYouth. And then, more people that can walk between both communities and be in all of them at the same time.
Tiffany Yu: I love the theme around really leaning into your curiosity and creativity to potentially move conversations that matter forward. I believe that as long as you are acting in alignment with yourself and with integrity and speaking your truth, then if the not so fun side of social media comes and finds you, then you know you're still in alignment. What are some of the ways that we can bring non-disabled supporters into our work as allies?
Dominique Viel: I say it's been a blessing since this pandemic experience has happened internationally. People and especially with last summer with the Black Lives Matter movement. And then currently with seeing the Asian community really moving forward being so vocal against these hate crimes happening in the U.S. and internationally as well. Seeing people realize they can be allies in multiple areas. They didn't just have to pick one. And that was the big thing for me, was realizing for people in the ally space. But that's something that I walk in as well. I am a white woman that runs InvisiYouth. So that does in a lot of spaces, put me in the ally seat. But then in other positions, being a woman, running a business and having chronic illnesses, I'm on the other end and people are my allies. So realizing for every ally that where you're in a position for people to support you, that also then means the other side of the coin that you should then lend the other hand to support other individuals the way you would want them to reach out to you in an area that you feel has disadvantages to your self and your daily life. So through the work that we do, it is really bringing in the people that are in your immediate social network and support network and telling them that they can be allies to you is great because it becomes a domino effect and like you said, sparking that curiosity in someone else realizing following a couple of nonprofits or activists on Instagram will then naturally bring different people into your feed that you're now seeing. And will build that snowball effect that you'll then start sharing other things. And then your following as an ally will then see becomes that domino effect by doing something so simple as saying, I'm going to stand shoulder to you, even though I can't relate to the experience I can through empathy, realize that I want you to have that same opportunity that I am able to have in a similar space. And knowing that small steps as an ally, as simple as following other activists, really can make an impact, sharing petitions, sharing news articles, those things that you think are not going to make a difference because I'm one in billions of people on the planet really does make a difference because your network will web out to multiple people.
Tiffany Yu: You're really making me think of I want to call it like allyship crowdfunding. I just made it up right now. Really it's this whole idea of the pay it forward. The allyship crowdfunding is you've got a goal, which is inclusion or more equity and justice and liberation for all. And every person, makes their little small acts and all of them just add up. I want our listeners to realize that something small can mean a world of difference to someone else. Can you give our listeners an update of where your vision is for the future?
Dominique Viel: We've expanded to nine countries with our leadership and our virtual programming having access to, which is so wonderful to have people of other countries and across those countries, getting to use our tools and our campaigns and feel themselves paying that forward and expanding that inclusivity of the chronic illness and disability community. And for us now, this 2021 for us, I say it's revolutionizing our evolution as a charity to really be able to provide something consistently and tangibly for this older youth population that really needs that day to day life support of just seeing that they matter, that they're able to do work outside of their school work or professional work that fuels them in a way that that might not be doing for them. That's the biggest thing for us is providing more tools that are more in the virtual space. A lot of it is letting our subtle activism take the lead and allowing for us to create the vessel that people then can fill the way they want and sail the vessel into the ship that is their community. So as long as we can allow InvisiYouth to remain the vessel people can fill, that's the direction we're trying to lead more of our programs and resources, and continuing to provide those for free. There's enough in this world for the chronically ill and disabled community to pay for, finding those allies in the business world that want to actually then build a tangible market of young people that really want to see their businesses evolve and become more inclusive and adaptive as well. And see everyone thrive the way they want to.
Tiffany Yu: I love the way you lead this organization. You've got so much energy and passion for this. What does the word balance mean to you? When you do have your days, when your body is taking a break, is your hope that the vessel is still there and you've got all of the new people driving the vessel?
Dominique Viel: It'll be six years since I built the charity and I built it and run it as well. So for me, the biggest hope of balance is that I always wanted InvisiYouth to breathe without me present. Because there are still days and weeks of time where I have to, take the medical break, because my body wants to take the driver's seat at the moment. And luckily, what I've been able to cultivate a bit more within InvisiYouth is that everything we have is accessible for them at whatever time they need it. It's not an experience they need to be able to be available for on certain days that they can always go back to different tools that they need. That's something I'm hoping for within this year is that things can be a bit more categorized so that it could be more swift for them to access specifically what they need for themselves in those points of their life. And balance for me is really, a lot of times when you are at the position of power, you want to exude the perfect position of work health, balance of life, but there are still a lot of times, especially even in the last couple of years of me realizing that even though so much of my social network and my professional network is through my work, just because I've worked in seven times zones does not mean I need to be working seven times zones is very important for me to have and end of day that my Google calendar is like, and your inbox is done unless it's an emergency. And that really has been by balance for me, is having that designated end point during each work week day, and also letting myself have the hobbies that my chronic illness didn't impact so much that I'm still able to go to those. For me, it's creative writing and publishing fiction novels and that space is more my fun side for it, which is great. Ironically, I've written characters with like mental health struggles and chronic illness prior to my own thing, which I don't know if I was mentally thinking that would eventually be my wheelhouse. Balance is having the things that you love while also working in the things that fuel you.
Tiffany Yu: I always close with the same question, which is I just ask my guests what they're grateful for today.
Dominique Viel: Ooh. That's a good one today. I'm really grateful for having my family present. I think knowing so many people have to keep distance, especially now physically, having that emotional connection to my family and really appreciating that I'm able to have that is what I'm most grateful for.
Tiffany Yu: And then if people want to support you or InvisiYouth, what slash where is the best place to do that?
Dominique Viel: We are all over the social media spectrum. So on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube at @InvisiYouth. So that's I N V I S I youth. And our website is invisiyouthcharity.com. So that's where you can do all the subscribing, thumbs up, all the things you can do virtually, you can do and connect with us there. And we're always ready to involve people and ready to pay our work forward to you.
Tiffany Yu: Well, on that note, thank you so much, Dominique, for coming on the podcast. And this is the end of this episode of Tiffany & Yu.