When my son was two years old, I gave him a book about dinosaurs — one of those Usborne lift-the-flap books with really obscure species in it. By the time he was two and three months old, he knew every single one.

During COVID, he'd run full pelt down the road on our daily walks. Roaring. Not making noise — roaring. Because he wasn't a two-year-old on a walk. He was a dinosaur.

At age five he was getting up before everyone else in the house to play Mozart on guitar. Nobody had ever taught him. He'd worked it out entirely by ear.

At age six he got a distinction in his Grade 4 classical guitar exam.

And then he stopped playing entirely.

This episode is about what happens when the world notices a gift in a neurodivergent child — and then accidentally takes it away. About the genius label and the pressure it creates. About the strategies we found to keep the love alive without the expectation. About music time with daddy, which has no grades and no rules and no agenda.

And it's about who he actually is underneath all of it. The boy who picks up bottles on forest walks because he wants to help. The boy whose goal in life is to make millions — not for himself, but to give to homeless and cancer charities.

This is for every parent who has watched the world try to point their child toward outcomes. Keep their eyes on the love. The love is the whole point.

🎙️ Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033hbR3h5qo6TD3WxWF8FL 🍎 Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weighted-blanket 👥 Join our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1000143112417292/ 🔗 Everything else: https://linktr.ee/theweightedblanket 📧 hello@theweightedblanket.co.uk

You are not alone. 🤍

I was 36 years old when someone finally told me my brain was different. Not broken. Not difficult. Not strange — even though strange was the word I'd quietly carried about myself for as long as I could remember.

Just different.

And I cried. Not because I was sad. Because I'd spent 36 years working twice as hard as everyone around me just to appear like I was keeping up. And it turned out there had always been a reason.

In this episode I talk about what the late ADHD diagnosis actually felt like — the process, the appointment, the moment the doctor said "you're not broken." The elation that came first. And the significant low that came after — the one nobody warns you about.

I talk about the identity question I'm still sitting with: what is my actual self, and what did I build because I felt like I had to? About the Ellie Middleton book that's helping me figure that out. About the guilt on the days when I can't get into anything. About titration. About what's actually changed — and what hasn't.

And about the particular experience of feeling like the odd one in every room — long before I had any idea why.

This one is for the late-diagnosed. For the people who always felt slightly off the frequency. For the ones who are sitting with a piece of paper that explains everything — and still trying to figure out what to do with it.

🎙️ Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033hbR3h5qo6TD3WxWF8FL 🍎 Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weighted-blanket 👥 Join our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1000143112417292/ 🔗 Everything else: https://linktr.ee/theweightedblanket 📧 hello@theweightedblanket.co.uk

You are not alone. 🤍

I lost fourteen kilograms in six months. Not because I was trying to. Because my body was the only part of me willing to say something was wrong.

I was being called Superwoman. And every single time someone said it, I felt the weight of it land. Because that's what compliments do when you're performing. They raise the floor. They tell you that this — this exhausted, crumbling, hollow version of keeping it together — is what people expect now.

This episode is about what ADHD burnout actually looks like. Not the falling apart version. The Superwoman version. The one nobody sees coming because it looks, from the outside, like thriving.

I talk about the fourteen kilograms. The IBS. The chronic headaches I convinced myself were a brain tumour. The moment I ended up in tears with my director after a meeting. The coach who asked me whether I was teaching my children that hard work gets you far — or that burnout is the price we pay.

And where I am now. Which is in recovery. Signed off. In CBT. Still figuring it out.

This one is for anyone who has ever been called Superwoman and felt worse for it.

🎙️ Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033hbR3h5qo6TD3WxWF8FL 🍎 Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weighted-blanket 👥 Join our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1000143112417292/ 🔗 Everything else: https://linktr.ee/theweightedblanket 📧 hello@theweightedblanket.co.uk

You are not alone. 🤍