I got the answer. Then came the questions.

I grew up on the west coast of Scotland and I've still got the accent and the dry humour to prove it. I went to university in England at 18 and then spent sixteen years teaching music in secondary schools: Christmas concerts, the annual school show, GCSE coursework, choirs, with a few years as a pastoral lead on top of all of that. Everyone in the staffroom said they were tired and for years I assumed they meant the same thing I did. They didn't. I was doing it on hard mode and had no idea.

The September I couldn't picture

In March 2021 I was signed off with stress. A few weeks later I sat trying to picture any version of September that might work (two days a week, dropping head of year, just the music) and every single time it was like walking into a brick wall. So I walked into the kitchen and said I had to resign. My body had made that decision long before I knew I was neurodivergent.

Then came the questions

The ADHD diagnosis came in June 2022 and the autism one followed that August. I was 37. First there was disbelief (I was half convinced I'd fooled the doctor), then relief, then grief for the version of my life where I'd known sooner. After that came a long stretch of autistic burnout, where my executive function went out of the window and I had to work out all over again who I was, where my boundaries sat and what my role at home looked like.

When I asked my GP about support for someone like me, he told me to my face that there wasn't any.

So I built it

Coaching came first, then the podcast, then the book, then the community and then the app, each one for late diagnosed adults with jobs, families and a head full of new information they don't know what to do with yet. Letting go of being a teacher took me a long time and it was terrifying. Somewhere along the way, life stopped feeling like peering out through a castle arrow slit and started feeling like standing on the turret with the whole view open around me.