Our Founders
Paula
Paula was born in Harold Hill, London in 1959 and as a child became a fan of Batman. She always knew she was different, although in the 60's gender diversity was not talked about at all. Being undiagnosed autistic made things even more complex, often feeling isolated and different, she spent all her spare time playing football. Her home life was very difficult and as a consequence, she rarely attended school and lived on the streets from 14 to 16. At 16, with the help of a friend, she joined the Army, Royal Signals, and served for 25 years. In this time she went all over the world, and on one operation was deployed to Cornwall. She fell in love with the county, and on leaving the Army moved here.
She bought a house called Trevedra in 2001, as she had a vision of constructing a building in the back garden for her very extensive collection of Batman memorabilia. The house name was changed to Wayne Manor, and The Batcave was built. In 2009 Paula was diagnosed with kidney cancer, and this was a real wake up call. When she had recovered from losing a kidney, she started to explore who she really was, and Paula emerged. Paula is bi gender, so lives as both Paul and Paula.
In 2013 Paula started to run monthly coffee days in The Batcave for transgender people, as it was private and safe. In February 2014 Paula met Pixie at a transgender event in Plymouth, they started seeing eachother in May 2014 and have been together ever since. In 2015 Pixie moved to Cornwall to live with Paula, and they started running parties every month for gender diverse people and their family members, and it grew from that very grass roots, dancing to a cd player, word of mouth event into what Safe Haven - Cornwall is today. Paula has been instrumental in the development of the charity, and is very proud of what it has become.
Pixie
Pixie was born and raised in Devon, although her Father was Cornish and she spent a lot of time in Cornwall as a child. She has two adult daughters and a grandson. Pixie has a passion for roses and currently has 85 different varieties in their garden. She is an animal lover, and has quite a menagerie which includes dogs, horses, birds, a cat and 2 goldfish. She is also an avid DIY enthusiast and has an enviable collection of power tools in her workshop.
She first became involved in the transgender community in 2013 when her then spouse came out to her as transgender. She wanted to understand and be supportive, so she attended meetings at the GIC in Exeter, where her frustration at the system they used to assess and help people sparked many frank debates with the staff there. Pixie was astounded to learn there was no support for partners, and felt this was a serious oversight. In 2014 she met Paula at an event in Plymouth, and they started dating. Pixie soon ascertained that Paula's bluntness and black and white thinking was due to autism, although until this point Paula had always assumed other people were odd! Pixie was working with young people in long term foster care, and had a lot of experience helping autistic people make sense of the world. Pixie moved to Cornwall in 2015, and together they started to run a monthly event for transgender people, and it all started from there.
Pixie had a vision to create somewhere that anyone questioning their gender could go, somewhere safe and supportive where people could meet and forge friendships and support networks. She also wanted to run support groups for the partners and parents of trans and non binary people. The Batcave became that place, and Safe Haven - Cornwall came into being. Pixie became a qualified BACP registered Person Centred Counsellor in 2018, so she could better support and help people dealing with whatever life was throwing at them.
