Grammy-nominated singer Demi Lovato introduced their new podcast, ‘4D with Demi Lovato’ while coming out as non-binary yesterday through a video posted on Twitter.

“I feel this best represents the fluidity I feel in my gender expression and allows me to feel most authentic and true to the person I both know I am and am still discovering,” Demi said about their gender identity in the video.

During their first podcast episode with poet and gender non-conforming artist Alok Vaid-Menon, Demi references their 2018 overdose, connecting it to how the pressure to present themselves as ‘feminine’ tied into them suppressing who they were, and ignoring their truth.

“When you have that kind of shame and that repression, it can almost kill you,” Alok said. “That was my experience growing up as a young non-binary person that everyone mistook as a boy.”

Menon mentioned that growing up in Texas, they were dissociated: living someone else’s idea of who they should be; afraid of their own voice; uncomfortable of the boxes people kept putting them in.

“Why is it that whenever I’m joyous, people tell me that I can’t be that? Menon said. “Shame is joy interrupted.”

Alok says that getting connected with the queer community felt like coming home to themselves. And now, when people ask them what it means to be non-binary, Alok they can tell them:

“We are people who have existed for thousands of years who actually experience ourselves outside of the idea of man or woman. But what I want you to understand is that it comes from a place of deep joy and healing, not from a place of doubt."