{"id":29850,"date":"2021-11-29T10:30:33","date_gmt":"2021-11-29T10:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/blog\/adobe\/how-bloody2shoes-found-her-community\/"},"modified":"2021-11-29T10:30:34","modified_gmt":"2021-11-29T10:30:34","slug":"how-bloody2shoes-found-her-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/blog\/adobe\/how-bloody2shoes-found-her-community\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u201cBloody2Shoes\u201d found her community"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Charlotte Malan (front row, center) with her Roller Derby team.<\/p>\n

In recognition of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, Adobe employee Charlotte Malan shares the story of how she found her voice in a world where she always felt different.<\/p>\n

If life were a high school from a \u201890s movie, Charlotte Malan says that she would be the person who didn\u2019t fit in.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Provo, Utah, as the youngest of seven children, she didn\u2019t know many people who behaved differently from her family. She tried to fit into what was considered \u201cacceptable,\u201d but Charlotte is quick to admit: \u201cI\u2019m not very good at pretending to be something she\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flash forward to 2011, when she helped create a roller derby team and everything changed for her, suddenly becoming close to people from all types of backgrounds. In the story she shared during Adobe for All Week, Adobe\u2019s annual internal D&I event, Charlotte recounted how joining roller derby sparked her fierce allyship to the LGBTQ+ community and inspired her to eventually come out publicly as bisexual.<\/p>\n

We talked with Charlotte\u2014or \u201cBloody2Shoes,\u201d her name in the roller derby track\u2014about her experience of sharing her story and how understanding others\u2019 experiences helped her understand her own.<\/p>\n

Why did you feel it was important to share your story broadly with Adobe employees?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I really value connecting with people on a personal level, and I feel like one thing you can\u2019t argue with is someone\u2019s experience. The best way to understand experiences outside of my own are from people telling me, and I realized that I can\u2019t ask for vulnerability from somebody else if I\u2019m not willing to give it.<\/p>\n

Initially, I didn\u2019t even think I had a story to tell. I don\u2019t have a dramatic event that altered the course of my life or anything. But telling my story helped me see this common thread of being different, not fitting in, which I used to feel was such a liability but now I see as one of my greatest character strengths. At the beginning of the process, I couldn\u2019t have articulated that.<\/p>\n

What kind of response did you receive from people who listened to your story?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Afterward, I heard from people who thanked me for telling my story or who said that it gave them the courage to come out. That was really touching. And as I moved to a new team at Adobe last year, sharing my story was a really lovely way to say, \u201cThis is me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knowing I was going to talk about my sexual identity during Adobe for All Week spurred me to come out publicly in June of last year. I really didn\u2019t want my parents to find out by watching the video, so it pushed my own journey forward.<\/p>\n

How did your journey to becoming an ally to the LGBTQ+ community start?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Really, it started when I was working on my criminal justice degree. I met people with really different, interesting experiences in that field, like police officers, judges and former DEA agents. That became this first step into, \u201cWow, I need to understand people in a totally different way.\u201d I had always thought about people\u2019s lives in this narrow way, from my own perspective, and I suddenly saw that I have just one grain of experience on the entire beach of what\u2019s possible.<\/p>\n

Why does roller derby appeal to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Coming into it, being supportive and inclusive was the expectation, not the exception. It\u2019s in our bylaws! And that really hit me hard. Why isn\u2019t it like this everywhere? Why isn\u2019t the expectation to just be good humans to each other? We had a really diverse group, and it was fantastic to learn about everybody\u2019s experiences. My first real experiences with people who are non-binary or trans were with my friends in the roller derby community. We\u2019re there to be a team, to support each other and push each other to be better. Everything else is just peripheral.<\/p>\n

\"Charlotte<\/p>\n

What would you like people to take away from your story?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve found my voice in being vocal about my journey, and I\u2019ve been able to have incredible conversations with family and friends, old and new, that I don\u2019t think would have happened if I had kept my thoughts to myself. It\u2019s been an honor to be involved in the Pride at Adobe employee network and in Adobe For All events, and I hope that others have the courage to share their own stories so people can learn from them, too. Afterall, I can only live this one life I have, so please tell me about yours!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source : Adobe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlotte Malan (front row, center) with her Roller Derby team. In recognition of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, Adobe employee Charlotte Malan shares the story of how she found her voice in a world where she always felt different. If life were a high school from a \u201890s movie, Charlotte Malan says that she would be the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29854,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29850\/revisions\/29854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}