Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host for the Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had the conversation around the subject of inclusion, belonging, and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future, then please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk, that's S-E-E Change Happen dot Co dot UK. You can catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and the usual places.

So plug in the headphones, grab a decaf and let's get going. Today is episode 96 with the title "Authenticity Unveiled" and I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Lee Gilbert. Lee is a marketing leader and a volunteer, mentor and counsellor for adults with gender dysphoria. When I asked Lee to describe her superpower, she said, being an authentic leader who is comfortable with being vulnerable and using the happiness that comes from it. Hello, Lee. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Jo. It's a real pleasure to be here.

Likewise. And where are we now? We're in Twixmas, aren't we? The bit between Christmas and New Year 2023. And we were just chatting just now about our family occasions and all the things we've done. So, Lee, authenticity unveiled, what's all that?

I guess there's two parts to that. Authenticity is something that's become more important to me in the last few years, and the unveiling is the part that took 40 years, I guess is a way of looking at it. So, winding back the clock just to set the context here. I am transgender. I am someone that has been through and experienced a lot in my life, but I didn't become authentically myself until 2020. Prior to that, I was operating what I would call the role of a lifetime, as Ronald Reagan once described it, as an acting role. I was one of the world's best actors. I was acting a life that wasn't authentic, but a life that was very successful, productive, and from the outside to other people, looked amazing.

But inside, to me, was very uncomfortable and challenging. Winding back the clock. I knew I was trans in 1985, which was when I was about seven, coming on eight that year. In 1995, when I finished education in March of that year, I attempted my own life, because that was a point in my life that was possibly the lowest. I've never thought about it or had ideation about that since. But it was a moment that was the deepest and darkest time as I began adulthood at that point. And it was a time when it happened, but it thankfully failed. I guess I decided to do what society expected me to do for the next 30 years almost.

And I'll. And I'll tell you the difference between the 30 and the 35, the difference in the time there in a moment. But the intervening period, I was reasonably successful. I decided, for my own mental health reasons, not to go to university. I could have gone, but I chose not to because I thought the isolation of university, considering what had just happened, might have been one of the worst things I could do for myself. So I decided to go and get a job and go for the picket fence and the 2.4 kids and everything else that the world kind of dictates that you're supposed to do. Dictators, a bit of a strange word to use, but I guess that's how it feels. And that lack of belonging created that inauthentic feeling.