This Voice is Mine: the Unquiet Podcast

In this episode of This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, Dr Emma Offord sits down with DL Clinical Psychologist Ashlyn Firkins, an HCPC registered assessor with over a decade of experience across NHS and private practice. Ashlyn was diagnosed dyslexic in childhood, an experience that shaped how she sees the world and, later, how she came to understand her son Ted, diagnosed autistic at three. She talks candidly about being a late bloomer, holding two sides of herself (the perfectionist and the playful, spontaneous one), and the long, uncertain wait for a diagnosis. She shares what changed when she stopped searching for answers in a textbook and started following Ted's lead instead, and the values-led practices that help her show up for him on the hardest days. This is a moving, honest conversation about resilience, grief and learning to truly see your child.

Follow Ashlyn: @an.autism.care.space
Listen and follow: divergentlife.co.uk
This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast.

Rachel Clark was seventeen when she wrote her debut book, How to Save Your Own Life. In this episode of This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, Rachel talks to Dr Emma Offord about growing up as an undiagnosed autistic girl, the years she spent internalising difference as personal failure, and the eating disorder that became the only way she felt she could be heard. Rachel speaks openly about situational mutism, about a treatment system that wasn't built for her brain, and about the nurse who gave her hope when nothing else could. She shares how a late autism identification became a turning point rather than a complication, and why she now believes there is no such thing as too complex, only someone who hasn't yet been properly understood. A conversation about survival, identity and the hope that makes recovery possible.

Follow Rachel on Instagram @rachelc1ark 

This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, from Divergent Lives.

In this episode of This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, Dr Emma Offord talks with Linsey Biggs, full-time parent carer to three and the voice behind Unschooling Stanley, about the years that led her to take her eldest son out of school entirely.

Linsey describes watching her son's distress build until it became impossible to ignore, and the moment she finally trusted what he was telling her over what the school system kept insisting. She talks about recognising her own ADHD and school trauma through his journey, the judgement that came with choosing a different path, and what eight years of unschooling has taught her about trusting children as whole people, not projects to manage.

A raw, grounded conversation about crisis, recovery, and what becomes possible when you stop pushing a child to fit a system that was never built for them.

Follow Linsey: @unschoolingstanley (https://www.instagram.com/unschoolingstanley/)
Divergent Lives: divergentlife.co.uk
This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast

Dr Helen Wall spent years quietly noticing something no one had trained her to see: that hormones shape the brain, and for neurodivergent women, that shift can be seismic. Her own perimenopause took her ability to function before it touched anything else. She was told she was too young. She believed it, for six months, until she couldn't cope and finally sought help.
In this episode, Dr Emma Offord and Jolene Ironside talk with Helen, GP, menopause specialist and author of Menopause and ADHD, about medical misogyny, endometriosis diagnosis times that are rising rather than falling, and the pressure to secure a formal diagnosis before you're allowed to trust your own experience. Helen's message throughout is simple and hard won: you don't have to wait for permission to understand yourself.
Connect with Helen: @doctorhelenwall | tvhealthdoctor.com
This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast is hosted by Dr Emma Offord, clinical psychologist and founder of Divergent Lives.

Lou was diagnosed ADHD in her 30s. By that point, she had already been through secondary school struggling and unidentified, failed college three times, experienced serious mental health crises, and spent years being told to try harder. When she finally sat with a therapist, everything she brought to that room turned out to be ADHD. Not failure, but simply a neurotype the world had never named for her.
In this episode, Dr Emma Offord and Lou, founder of ADHD Interrupted, have the kind of conversation that doesn't happen enough: one where the full cost of late diagnosis is named with honesty and without flinching. The shame. The anger at the systems that missed her. The grief for the years lived without language or support. And the slow, extraordinary work of building a life rooted in self-understanding rather than self-blame.
Lou's hope, that one day your neurotype is known as simply as your blood type, is a thread that runs through this whole conversation. That kind of world starts with conversations like this one.
If you have ever felt like you were trying your hardest and still falling short, like something was always slightly off but no one could tell you why, this episode is for you.