We Are All Divine: Kuinton Elliott Finds Light in a Hard-Lived Life

“I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone, but I am thankful and proud for the life I have lived,” says Kuinton Elliott, though he might have said otherwise a few years ago. He’s found his answers now, but there was a time when Elliott lived with undiagnosed PTSD, coming out of one career in the military only to live through homelessness, hard labor, and psychological isolation. With his new career as a successful model, actor, and new musician, Elliott has a platform to talk about what he learned in the dark.

“I had to learn the hard way… I first and foremost had to help myself.”

Kuinton Elliott was born on the wrong side of Windsor, Ontario. “In the west end,” he says, “considered still to this day as the ‘hood.'” An interracial child of poor parents, Elliott was determined to work and contribute. He was cutting grass at ten years old, serving as a Young Army Cadet at 12, and enlisting in the Canadian Armed Forces when he was 16. During his military service, he also attended the University of Windsor and played varsity football.

“While most students were stressing and complaining about exams, campus drama, and paying rent, I had a whole entire career which imposed stress levels beyond what most humans ever experienced,” he says. “During the war in Afghanistan, we lost more soldiers to suicide than battle.”

After graduating and leaving the armed forces the same year, Elliott took his psychology degree to look for a career and found… nothing.

“I could sit in my darkness and recognize that I am the light.”

“I applied to over 400 jobs in Toronto,” he says. “I didn’t get a single job offer. I was unable to pay rent, or feed myself or my girlfriend at the time.” Homeless and suffering from PTSD, Elliott eventually found hard, hourly labor, but it didn’t help his health at all.

Things changed suddenly and strangely when his sister, a model for years, posted a picture of him to her Instagram. Elliott had signed a five-year deal with a Miami modeling agency shortly after. “This changed my life for the better overnight,” he says. “It doesn’t mean it was easy. I hated being on camera at first.” He doesn’t regret the change, though. “Although leaving the military has left a void in my life, I am much happier and at peace in this line of work.”

He discovered much of his peace in 2017 when he moved to New Zealand for a year. “I lived off grid and healed myself, practiced meditation, walking at night under moonlight and sitting alone undisturbed for a few months. And so I focused on my light.”

“In our greatest and most authentic expression of ourselves, we are all divine.”

Not everyone will get a lucky break in the life-changing runway fashion industry, let alone a year in New Zealand. Elliott knows he’s fortunate and wants to be a voice of healing and light for those stuck in darkness like he once was. “I make music, I model, and create other art forms to shed light within this dark truth to help alleviate the suffering so many of us feel we are alone in feeling,” says Elliott. “To help change the script and stigma on mental health is part of my life purpose in this chapter.”

With his new platform of modeling and acting, Elliott wants to speak more about mental health and spread healing and hope where he can. Among the lessons he wants to share is one of self-care, self-love, and empowerment: “We are the only real limit we have when we become our best support instead of our biggest critic, there is truly nothing we can’t accomplish, become, create, remember or embody.”