Hey everyone,

Welcome to Episode 6 of SPEQ:TRUM podcast: “Overcoming Internalised Homophobia & Learning to Love Yourself”.

A few weeks ago, I interviewed popular content creator and business owner Aarika Lee on the topic of ‘Diversity, Rainbow-washing & Making a Stand’ for a previous episode.

At the end of our interview, she felt inspired to ask me a couple of questions about how I coped with being gay growing up, and how I’ve since reconciled with all my struggles.

So we did a reverse interview for this episode and for context, I wanna let you guys know that Aarika and I are cousins who grew up together. We spent a lot of time together in our childhood and always had a ton of fun. I’ve never felt like I had to hide my gender identity from her but it wasn’t something that we spoke openly about. And the following conversation is actually the first time we’ve addressed this topic, which, to be honest, no one has really ever asked me about in my life.

I really appreciated the fact that Aarika is such an empathetic human being, and created a safe space that allowed me to open up and be so vulnerable with her and now, with you guys too.

I hope you find value in this episode where I also talked about the deep, internal identity work I have done on myself over the years to replace the disempowering thoughts and beliefs that were drilled into me since young and very damaging to my sense of self-worth and self-esteem, with more empowering beliefs and a more positive self-image instead.

It has been a really long journey for me getting here, and for those of you still on that journey, I hope you find this episode helpful and empowering.

Host: Jamie Nonis

Audio Editor: Natasha Pestana