Jobi is a neurodivergent, queer, gender diverse Melburnian who runs a disability support business and has spent twelve years as the inclusion and welfare officer at one of Melbourne’s largest hockey clubs.
The business began fifteen years ago running holidays for adults with intellectual disability and now works across the NDIS with participants from thirteen to eighty, often with complex support needs.
Jobi was diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood, and came to understand later that autism was co-occurring, at a time when the accepted view was that the two could not sit together.
Host Greer McGearey and Jobi trace a life shaped by two things running in parallel. One is a knowledge of self that was settled by about the age of four and then held quietly for decades. The other is the trauma of a Christian Brothers education, and the long shadow it cast across school, work, and health, including years were holding a job for two years running was not possible and where family did not expect them to be alive past fifty.
They talk about the turn that came with turning sixty, with grown children and a workplace of their own making, and what it meant to become visible in men’s team sport rather than after leaving it. They talk about the presentation where Jobi said aloud that it is still frightening to be out in men’s sport. They talk about how uncomfortable that visibility was, why it was worth doing, and the people who came up afterwards to say hello for the first time, and about a mother of eighty-six who put her arms around her child and asked what they would like to be called.
This episode mentions childhood institutional abuse, depression, and suicidality.