Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I'm your host for the Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had a conversation around the subject of inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. 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 your headphones, grab a decaf and let's get going.

Today is episode 94 with the title beyond the Closet, and I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome TJ Richards. TJ described themselves as a programme manager and LGBTQ plus network chair at Santander and also chair of trustees at Q:Alliance. And when I asked TJ to describe their superpower, they said, is talking a superpower? Because they sure do love to do it. Hey, TJ, how are you? Welcome to the show.

Hi, Jo. Thank you so much for allowing me to join you. I've been a huge fan of your show from the beginning and of know you and I have known each other for a couple of years, so really excited to be here. And when we talk about today's episode of beyond the Closet, I think that's such an amazing title because my journey, and I imagine a lot of other people's journey, is very similar, is that working out that you're in the closet in the first place and then that journey of figuring out how the hell you get out of the closet and what that looks like for you and how you live a life without those boundaries. And it's such an exciting topic. I'm really excited to be here today and talk to you about it.

For most people, and I say most, the majority, we've had a census, we know that it's. Majority of people don't even realise there is a closet or something to escape, do they? They just wake up and they're always themselves.

Yeah. And it's so amazing because it's not until you stop to ask yourself that question that you start to realise whether you are in a closet. And maybe closet is an outdated term, I don't know. Certainly the term I grew up with. But finding out, realising that actually you're operating within a set of boundaries that you've not necessarily chosen for yourself, and that could be your sexuality, that could be your gender identity, that could be just the social role that society has put on you based on your perception. To them all of those boundaries play into sort of how you operate in the world. And realising that actually I don't have to is quite liberating and revolutionary in a sense. And it's a journey I think many of us have gone on.

And honestly, I wish the whole world would go on it, because it's a question we can all answer for ourselves. Whatever the answer is, who do I want to be in the world, and how do I be that person in a way that makes the world a better place? Like you said, that's the ultimate goal, to leave it a little bit better than we found it. Right?

Yeah. Essentially, you question whether closet is an outdated term. I suppose when I was going through my self discovery and exploration, I kind of used the metaphor around the three phases. The first one was a cage, a zoo. You're trapped behind the bars, living by somebody else's rules, where you have no negotiation. You're trapped in that cage, basically existing under someone else's rules. And then the fire. Extreme I've talked about was the plains of Africa.

Wild, roaming free. But then you're living in a world where you have got no safety, you've got no guarantee of support, no family around you. You're at a waterhole, being risked by eating by a lion or an alligator or a crocodile jumping out at you. So I was always trying to find what I called my safari park, which is kind of this place you can exist where the boundaries were so great, you never hit the fences, you got fed, you got looked after, you got someone caring for you. If you were ill or sick, someone was there. But you don't feel trapped because the boundaries are so vast and bountiful. And then you can exist in that world outside of the cage, and not in the wild, in this safe zone. And that's what I was always trying to find.

I called it trying to find my safari park existence.