A Fresh Start In Tasmania And A New Mission

Allyship gets talked about like a badge, but I’m more interested in it as a verb: what we do when support needs to be public, practical, and a little uncomfortable. After a big transition moving from the Blue Mountains to the north coast of Tasmania, I’m back with a reset for JD’s Journal and a clearer mission for where this show is heading next.

I also share another major project that’s in motion: I’ve joined the Kintsugi Heroes team, a storytelling platform with hundreds of podcasts behind it and a focus on supporting communities facing tough realities. Through that work, I’m helping build a new stream called Pride In Stories, a podcast designed to amplify LGBTQIA voices. I’m not part of that community, and I’m not trying to speak for anyone. I’m treating it as a learning journey and a way to help make space for stories that deserve to be heard.

From there, I lay out the plan for Season 3: a seven-episode series focused on allyship across women, LGBTQIA people, neurodivergent communities, people with disabilities, seniors, and cultural and religious minorities. We’ll talk about what allyship is, why it matters right now, and what it looks like in real life when you move beyond quiet acceptance into visible advocacy. If you’ve ever wondered how to show up better, speak up smarter, and keep learning without centring yourself, you’ll feel at home here.

Episode #2 will focus on Women, their unique challenges, and how we can be allies and advocates for them. 

In the meantime, you can check out Kintsugi Heroes and if you're interested in hearing a great example of their content, have a listen to this powerful episode with Gene Moore hosted by my good friend John Milham

Transcript

Welcome And Ground Rules

JD 0:09

Hello, and welcome to the JD Journal Podcast, where every couple of weeks my guests and I share some of our life journey, our successes and our failures, and the valuable lessons and resources that we've gathered along the way. This podcast is being recorded in Tasmania, a look to the traditional land of the Hello people, and we've had our deep perspective on the past, present, and emerging. This land always was and always will be an aboriginal land. The content here on this podcast is intended to inform, editing, and it should be applied with your own good. As always, if feedback is good and perspective, it's always a crazy idea. The podcast is produced by me, so forgive the occasion produced a little bit of time. Anyway, enough of the formalities. Let's get on with this episode.

The Move And The Pause

JD 1:08

Hi folks, and welcome back to the JD's Journal podcast. It's been quite some time since I've been here. Um the last episode of season two was released on December 31st. And uh I've been going through a transition process as we've been moving from the Blue Mountains, uh beautiful Blue Mountains in Sydney, uh, to our new home here in the north coast of Tasmania in the Burney region, or La Truita, as it's known to the indigenous Palawab people, it's been known as that for probably 30,000 years. Anyway, so we're here. Um, it's been uh a heck of a transition for us, a wonderful transition. Um, but I took a break, uh, done quite a lot of soul searching in terms of the podcast and and uh and thinking about how I want to proceed this year. And I'll talk more about that um in the moment. Um, but I I I've got to take some time and talk about another project that I'm working on as well.

Joining Kintsugi Heroes And Pride In Stories

JD 2:00

Um, and so late last year I had uh the opportunity, having been a guest on on a different podcast, I had an opportunity to join the team at Kin Kim Sugi Heroes, um, a storytelling platform that's been in existence for years now, and uh a platform that's released more than 300 podcasts so far. Um, really uh using storytelling as a vehicle to support uh communities who who really need the support. So dealing with challenging issues in those communities around uh domestic violence and addiction and suicide uh uh tendencies and and many others. Um, they've done some tremendous work and continue to do tremendous work in that space. And so I was approached with the opportunity to drive the creation, the establishment of another stream within the Kinsugi Heroes uh family of podcasts with a focus specifically on the LGBT IQ community. And uh uh that new podcast hasn't launched yet, it's gonna be launching fairly soon under the banner of pride in stories. First couple of episodes have been recorded already. I've got a couple more that are scheduled now, and I'm excited by the guests that are coming on board uh with that podcast. The importance of that podcast is that it's a it's a platform for the voices of members of the LGBT IQ community. I am not a part of that community, I'm not pretending to be a part of that community. I see this podcast as my learning journey as much as anybody else, learning from members of that community and and and the diversity and and the uniqueness of the every individual that we're talking to as part of that community, I think is quite exciting in terms of what will be shared uh through that medium. Um so, as I said, that's in play right now, working heavily on that with the Kinsugi Heroes team. And I'm I'm thrilled that they gave me the invitation uh to be a part of something special that they've been creating now for years. Um back on JD's journal.

Resetting JD’s Journal For 2026

JD 4:02

Um, equally, as I said, I've been doing some soul searching about this podcast. Um, I love what I've done over the last two years. It's been a massive learning journey for me. I knew nothing about podcasting when I kicked this off uh back in 2024. Um, the first year was a good mix of my own content and guest content. 2025 had a far greater dependency on guests, and I had some tremendous guests, and I wouldn't wind that back at all. I really feel um honored for the people that I had a chance to talk to and that I was able to provide a platform for them to share their stories. And I certainly intend to continue having guests on the podcast. I think the the guest spots are incredibly important, and I want to make sure that they are delivering on my mission to use my journey and the journey of others to impart wisdom and experience and hopefully funny anecdotes along the way and so forth, but to entertain and but mostly to inform and have a positive impact uh for the listeners and now the viewers of the podcast, I think that's a critical thing. And so that will continue to be my focus. But in 2026, I'm I'm kind of coming back to where I started to a degree and I'm trying to shift the ratio to be a greater level of my content um uh as opposed to just relying on guests. I think in 2025, if I'm if I'm vocally self-critical, I became quite quite dependent on guests, and I want to kind of rebalance that to some degree and make sure that the guests uh that are that are there are delivering. And you're probably seeing there's a there's a significant synergy in terms of what JD's journal's been doing in its format, along with what the team at Kinsugi Heroes are doing. I think both uh of us collectively um have the same mission in terms of of taking you know lived experiences, our life journeys as they were, and then delivering those to an audience, again, to entertain, um, but but more practically to give a sense of connection, a sense of belonging, a sharing of resources and knowledge, and so forth.

The Seven Episode Allyship Plan

JD 6:07

And with that in mind, uh my approach, certainly for the first part of this season three of JD's journal is going to be a series of episodes, seven episodes I have planned at this point in time, that focus on the topic of allyship. And and the reason for that is as I've been watching the world recently and kind of observing what's going on in actually quite a few aspects of our world right now. I I believe allyship has never been as important as it is today. The ability for us, um, for every one of us to go beyond you know toleration, beyond acceptance, beyond, you know, kind of non-verbal support uh for marginalized communities, those folks who really need it, but to move into the sense of actually being proactive, being active, being vocal, and being seen and heard in support of folks who really need our support. And so with that in mind, uh, the plan is to launch this series of of seven episodes that focus on, you know, what is allyship? You know, what what what is that? I'll talk about that in a minute. You know, why is allyship important in in this day and age? You know, why do we need each of us to be willing and courageous and somewhat extrovert in many ways to be able to step up and represent um other communities, our our partner communities out there uh as they are today? And then what does it look like? You know, what is what is an ally? Um and so with that in mind, um, I'm my focus is to look at allyship in the context of of a number of different domains. So I'm gonna I'm gonna start uh talking about allyship for women. And I think, you know, anybody who watched the Louis Thereus um documentary on uh on this kind of man's fear, this masculine environment that seems to be I would say derogatory, but certainly um it seems to put women on a very different level in terms of of how we treat them and how we respect them. I think advocacy or allyship for women is such a critical thing. Um for the LGBTQIA community. Allyship in that space is a place that I've certainly tried to be positioning myself for quite a few years now. The the involvement that I had within the Glamour LGBTIQ affinity group at Amazon was a was a big part of my learning journey and it's become a big part of what I care about. And I've continued to take the the notion of being an advocate, being an ally, being vocal on behalf of the LGBTIQ community very strongly. And so again, looking at the Kinsilgi project, that's a manifestation of how I think about what I can do as an ally, what can I do that goes beyond just toleration, but goes to actually advocation and vocalization on behalf of that community. And then I'm gonna focus on neurodivergent folks and try to build a better understanding of that. I think a lot of people I talk to actually don't really understand neurodivergence um in all of its manifestations across the spectrum. I think that's an important topic for us to cover. And again, how do we become allies for that community? Then looking at people with disabilities and what that represents and how we can support those communities. Um, then seniors, which is kind of near and dear to me these days, um it's it's kind of hard for me to believe that this is a topic that is actually quite so personal for me. I don't feel like I've become a senior, but I've become a senior. And so the context of what are the what is the world for seniors? You know, what are the the hurdles and battle battles that that they need to fight that are different uh when you kind of step over that that 60-year-old mark and go beyond that? How is the world different and how can we be allies to support our seniors? And then finally, um, I want to focus on allyship for the cultural and religious minorities around us. And again, I see, you know, there's a it seems to be a wave right now across the world uh around built on a kind of fear of immigration, a fear of different cultures, different religions uh and and and different, you know, uh communities around us. And and as somebody who's had the privilege to live and also travel the world as much as I have, um, I have a very different perspective in terms of the incredible value that comes from a diversity of culture and religion. And so I want to kind of wrap the series up with an episode that focuses very specifically on what are the challenges for those communities, what are the hurdles and unique challenges that they face every day. And then how is I how can I, as a, as a general citizen out there, um, be the ally, be the vocal advocate on behalf of those communities. And so uh, as you can imagine, as we as we journey through this series of episodes that are going to focus on the notion of allyship, um, there's a lot to cover here. And I'll be honest with you, I'm still in the learning journey as I prepare for those episodes. And I I expect that one of the great values that's gonna come for me as I prepare and deliver each of those episodes is the research that I'm doing is gonna help me become a more rounded, more educated, more aware individual across all those aspects that I talked about, all those communities that I talked about. And so I'm quite personally very excited uh by this this series that I have planned.

Your Perspectives And What’s Next

JD 11:39

Um, I hope you can be too. Um, I'd love to hear from you as I deliver each of those episodes. I'd love to get your perspectives shared. Um, I'm I'm keen to understand from folks uh around the world. Um, how do you see this differently? What assets and resources have you found that might be that might be relevant uh for those communities and so forth? What can we share with the greater community here that's going to help all of us, first of all, understand um and then add value, be able to, again, be uh an advocate, be somebody who can stand up for um and uh and promote diversity and promote acceptance um and support. And frankly, the the world that every individual on the planet deserves to have, a place where they can uh live safely, where they can fulfill their their dreams and expectations and and really be the whole person they want to be. So that's a very, very quick update. Um that's where at right now. Uh I'm as I say, I'm working on the preparation of that series of podcast episodes to come up. Um and uh for JD's journal, uh I also am looking at guests. There's no question about it. I'm looking for some guests that I'll have on the podcast in the coming year, and I'll share more about that as well. Um, equally, the I expect that uh Pride in Stories, the Kinsugi Heroes series, spoke uh specifically focused on LGBTIQ, um, is going to launch sometime in the next kind of four to six weeks. And certainly I'll be sharing information about that podcast um in future updates on JD's journal. So excited by that. I I again I feel like these two work streams uh are so uh beautifully entwined. I'm actually quite excited about the congruency of both of these efforts and again the learning that I'm gonna do, and hopefully you'll join me to do um as we traverse those. So for that, that's pretty much all I want to share in this episode. It's very short, very sweet. Um, and there'll be more coming over the coming weeks. Um, but in the meantime, uh, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, I hope you're living a best life, and uh, please be good to each other.