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On 19 April, Jon and a few comrades are running the Manchester Marathon—not because he enjoys suffering (debatable), but to help raise awareness and quietly cause good trouble with Autism Wellbeing Project CIC. It’s his preferred method of advocacy: put the work in, start conversations, and push for a more humane, inclusive autism world—one mile at a time.
Episode 22 - Kaleidoscope Festival 2026: Living Out Loud: Kirstie's Story of Being Neurodivergent & Childless
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Welcome to the first EVER podcast pop-up special! Our podcast was invited by Nicola Haigh, Community Manager at the Storyhouse in Chester to be a part of the incredible Kaleidoscope Festival that is held annually celebrating people with learning disabilities, neurodiverse and all kinds of disabilities as part of Disability Pride Month! Sarah had the mammoth challenge of doing FOUR different interviews in ONE day, with guests with so many different stories to tell.
Joining Sarah on this podcast special episode filmed in The Den in the Children's Library at the Storyhouse for Kaleidoscope Festival, we welcome to the guest spinney chairs (rather than the usual sofa) the first time onto the podcast, Kirstie, a member of the Token Comedy Collective and one of the initial instigators of the next big event at the Storyhouse - the Storyhouse Childless Festival.
Running now for its sixth year this September, Storyhouse Childless is one of first of its kind: a unique event held to explore the diverse experiences of those on the spectrum of non-parenthood whatever their circumstance may be. Creating a community for those that are often hidden in society through this festival with talks, panel discussions and creative workshops, Storyhouse is creating a safe space for honest conversations and giving empowerment to those that are childless, childfree and their loved ones.
Being one of the people that inspired the festival's creation, Kirstie wanted others like herself to not feel alone and to create a bigger community locally for those that are childless. After initial talks alongside her local childless group with Nicola Haigh the Communities Manager, Storyhouse Childless Festival was created with its first festival occurring in 2019. It now has international reach with the weekend passes for this event already sold out. However, there are still tickets available for the first two panels one of which Kirstie is hosting called Neurodiversity: Childless and Childfree Perspectives.
Being neurodivergent herself, Kirstie talks about her experiences of how she became involved in the Childless community, how the research shows correlations & intersections between being neurodiverse and being a part of this community and about the impact that this festival has had on her making her feel visible in not just the Childless community but in the neurodivergent community too!
Kirstie brings her warm and funny personality through talking about how being a part of the Token Comedy Collective has helped her, a unique tie to the comedy star Miranda Hart that she has with our host and how important community and belonging is to her!
Want to know about The Autism Wellbeing Project and the amazing activities that are provided for free for autistic adults?
Come and be a part of our inclusive and welcoming community that supports over 300 people across the UK! For more information, please click for the link to our website here
SPEAKER_01
Why weren't they doing these like years ago? This is amazing. I'm ready to go when you're ready. Yeah. Yeah. We did try and do it that people would be going like three two one action, but then John would go three to one. I can't hear you. If anyone wants to do three, two, one action, they can. Three, two, one action. Thank you, Ellie. Hello, and welcome to the Autism Wellbeing podcast. I am Sarah and I'm your host for today. And I hope wherever you are in the world and whatever you're doing, you're doing as well as you can do. We are at the Kaleidoscope Festival as a podcast pop-up, which was an amazing opportunity given to us through Nicola Haig, who is the communities manager at Story House. So we want to say thank you to them. And also want to thank our co-directors of the Autism Wellbeing Project, Emily and Emma, for trusting us with coming here because we are quite a new podcast and it's been an incredible opportunity. We've met so many new people and heard lots of different stories. And now we are going to have our guest for today. And I've actually met you before, which is amazing. We have, yes. We've met Sarah.
SPEAKER_00
So introduce yourself, tell us a bit about yourself. Well, my name's Kirst, and we met via the Token Comedy Collective, didn't we? Yes. I've been going to that, I think now, probably for about a year and a half. And yeah, as well as all the other things at Story House that kind of go on. It's just a really kind of great inclusive environment. You posted in that, and I saw the opportunity for this, and I was like, yay, there's so many intersections between parts of me and it all fits.
SPEAKER_01
I think as well, a lot of people, when I was given the information from Nicola, they were surprised that they would get selected. But everyone's story today is being unique, and someone's said something different, and I think that's what we want to share because if you are neurodivergent or you're not, everyone's story is different. So I think that's just been something that's been really important to share. And also Token Comedy Collective, again, we're shouting out to Lulu because we did it with our episode with Sammy. And one of the things with Token Comedy Collective is that it's free. Yes, it's a free activity, which the Autism Wellbeing Project, we're based in Witness. The podcast is actually one of their free activities. So they have funding that they apply for, and there's so many different activities available from cooking, arts and crafts, and I believe and this will be dated, but yesterday people went to do go-karting. So it's things available, but it's for autistic adults, and you don't really tend to get that.
SPEAKER_00
Not at all. I was talking about this with somebody yesterday about lack of provisions. That's really important and really good to know.
SPEAKER_01
Now, I know we have met before, but I like to get to know guests a bit better. So I want to see if you have an interesting fact about yourself.
SPEAKER_00
Well, possibly my interesting fact could be a token relating one and a storyhouse relating one. Okay. Because thanks to both those organizations, and it really couldn't have happened anywhere else, I don't think, because I'm very limited. I have other disabling health conditions, so I'm very limited on what I can do in terms of continuity. So things are very last minute. Yeah. But last year I was able to do my first ever little mini set of stand-up as part of Token Comedy. They appeared at Story House Childless Festival, and that was one of the reasons I contacted Token was because of childlessness, neurodiversity, invisible disability, all sorts of things. So yeah, I did my first stand-up ever in my 50s, which is quite fantastic. And it was also the first time that I'd actually performed in 20 years because years ago I was an actor and a performer, and to be able to actually I get emotional to stand on the stage again was really lovely.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and the fact that you got the courage to do that, and especially with comedy, I find it quite scary to do it on a stage. Apparently, I'm I'm told I'm quite hilarious, and I'm not like just bragging or anything, but if I was on stage, I don't think I would be able to do it. So that's really amazing that you've got that opportunity to do a set, and after 20 years.
SPEAKER_00
20 years because I'd never done stand-up before, so I'd never written my own things before. I'd always performed as either part of sketch shows for comedy or plays, musicals, general stuff. Yeah. Previously. So this was kind of a big opportunity. But interestingly, for me, as well, over the last few years I've realized I don't really like comedy necessarily. It sounds really funny, but I've always had a thing about sense of humour and banter and it's not funny and all these over my life. And not realising because I'm a late diagnosis person as well. But I've been really drawn to these comedians and found out they're all autistic. So Hannah Gatsby, Ashley Story, Emma Maguire is just, you know.
SPEAKER_01
I love Emma Maguire. Do go the dog. Oh god. Yeah. I found the same thing. Like I was drawn to comedians and comedy, which then I was like, oh, they've got ADHD, they're dyslexic, they're all autistic, must be something. My my fact for you is before COVID, I had auditioned for a few TV shows. So one of them that I will talk about is Mastermind. I felt like a massive imposter. There's these people going, oh yes, my special subject is the 1600s of this castle. And I'm there going, so my three chosen subjects are the Japanese heavy metal band Baby Metal, the Life and Times of Phoebe Buffet from Friends, and the TV show Miranda. And literally I had these people looking at me going, What's that?
SPEAKER_00
Oh my gosh. That's a throwback. The past was one of the last things I ever did acting was a casting workshop with Miranda.
SPEAKER_01
Was it?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it is a day. She wouldn't recognise me, but obviously I recognise her. Yeah, wow. I absolutely love all these interweaving bits. And I love that you did that because I think, yeah, why not? They're specialist interests, you've got a lot of knowledge.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and the thing is it just made it different. There was only one other person that had something quite similar, but everyone else, it was like history, it was science, and I literally was like, I don't know what you're talking about. But I'm just gonna nod and go, Yeah, that sounds really interesting.
SPEAKER_00
I'd never watched them really before, but again, Ashley Story did Celebrity One, so I watched that to see her do it, yeah, and it was it was just so much more entertaining.
SPEAKER_01
Obviously, we mentioned about comedy, obviously Miranda. So is that how you first got involved with the Story House's token?
SPEAKER_00
No, no, nothing to do. Storyhouse and I came together, as it were. I came along in 2019 to Story House Women. I am childless not by choice, and I hadn't realised that was going to be my path in life until 2017. Yeah. I host a local group for women and people who identify as female and they're childless not by choice. It was then part of Gateway Women, yeah, and it's now called the Childless Collective. There's two things that go. We'd kind of lost our place of meeting, so I wanted to talk to them about that. But I also wanted to talk to them that I came to 2020 Storyhouse Women and I felt a little bit isolated. Yeah. I just, there's all these people talking about being mummies, and so I kind of wanted to come in and try and have a chat, and that's when I met Nicola. And A, they let us host our gatherings here sometimes, which is fantastic. But B, she said, Well, we're thinking of doing some kind of festival around possibly child loss. Or and I was like, What about those who've never even had that because it's disenfranchised and those who've chosen not to. So all these conversations, and basically, yeah, Storyhouse Childless came into being in 2019, November. So that was my first big contact with Story House and carried on working on that with them over the last few years.
SPEAKER_01
So it's got two areas of belonging with the token collective and then with the childless collective. And the thing is, I didn't realise that there was an intersection, but there's so much out there, research-wise, that this is one thing that I've not thought of, and I've thought of a lot of topics to deal with neurodivergence.
SPEAKER_00
So can you talk about where you see the link between the two? For me, it's not necessarily my own lived experience because my own journey into childlessness, A, I didn't know I was neurodivergent at that point, yeah, and B, mine was also very heavily influenced by male factor infertility. Yeah. So there's different reasons why I unfortunately remain childless. But what's been interesting over the last few years has been listening to other people's experiences. And I came to consider that I could be neurodivergent because of having a horrific perimenopause. So then there was a lot of women that I was listening to. There was some through lines coming through, and also back in 20, I think it was 2022, we had people come and share their stories, and we have panels, all sorts of different things at childless, and there was one guy, an actor, Robbie, who came and he was giving his story on stage, and he was autistic. Okay. And first autistic graduate of Oxford School of Drama, I think, Robbie, he was great, and he was talking about how he'd never really considered necessarily having children, he was in his 20s, but his girlfriend she knew that she didn't want to have them, and she was also neurodivergent, so that was influencing him. So I remember talking to him, and then I remember a young woman stood up and she said, I just want to thank Robbie for talking and saying, I'm autistic, and it's really influenced my decision not to have children. So she identified as child-free or childless by choice, yeah, but it was a lot of the needs around her autism. She said, All the sensory stuff, there's no way I could cope with the smells, the touch, all the overwhelming from the point of view of all the medical obviously involvement that goes for women with pregnancy. So that was one of the first things I heard even before I knew I was neurodivergent, and then over the last couple of years within the childless community, I've heard a lot of people talking about how they feel that it could be the sensory issues, you know, they've not realised that's what's been happening, they've really wanted to have children, but actually it's not happened or been issues, barriers, and the relationship issue. It can be hard for people to find relationships that kind of can last. And obviously, with women, we're on a clock, so I didn't meet my husband until I was 40, so that was very much later in life. So that's how I think neurodiversity played in potentially to my childlessness was previous relationship always ended up breaking up. The person who I've ended up staying with, unfortunately, we found out wasn't then able to have children. But other neurodivergent people are really kind of saying, Yeah, there's all the sensory issues, the relationship issues. I listened to Dr. Helen Wall, who talks about ADHD and kind of female hormone issues, and she was on a podcast the other day and basically talking about the hidden costs of ADHD, and this woman who was a really successful businesswoman, and to look at her, obviously, people just thought she had this amazing life. But her hidden cost was that for every meeting she went to, she had to prepare the night before for like four or five hours, so she had no life, no energy outside that, no energy for relationship. She really wanted children, but she'd no energy to even pursue that, especially on her own. There's so many different ways that it can play, like you said, you meet one neurodivergent person, you've met one neurodivergent person, we're all different.
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
SPEAKER_00
Same for childlessness, but there's a very big intersection, which is why I think it came up a lot in the focus groups for this year's Storyhouse Childless, and we've actually got a panel on it neurodiversity and child-free childless perspectives. Because I think there's a lot people want to explore.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, definitely. And it was the first time I'd ever heard of the Childless Festival was when we interviewed Nicola Haig, and I knew about Kaleidoscope, I knew about Storyhouse Queer, but then I didn't know anything about the childless one. So you've mentioned about like those different panels and things like that, but what kind of events have you been a part of?
SPEAKER_00
All sorts of things, it's great because it's evolved over the years. So we will have panel discussions which will be chaired by somebody and then have people discussing their lived experience. We also often have speakers, so we've had speakers like Jodie Day came and spoke, who was basically how I find out about Gateway Women. She's amazing in the Childless Not by Choice community, and she'd been at Story House, so that's how I knew I was in a kind of a safe space coming to speak to Nick in the first place. I knew there was a link there, and the link happens to be Dora Cloellen as well, who very much is involved in Story House Childless. So she chairs the whole thing. We have panels, we have speakers, there's creativity workshops this year. Whether you want to write, sing, dance, paint, whatever, there's somebody there to facilitate getting creative around your childlessness. And it's for say childless is very much for childless by choice as well. So it's for the child free. We had the first men's panel, which we think ever in the world basically that took place in 2022. So we've had men's panels since, and we've got another men's panel taking place this year. Last year we had breakout discussions for the first time. Yeah. Because what we want to do is kind of create community, and that went down really well. So this year we've got like little breakout discussion groups taking place as well. So there's lots of different things going on over the course of the weekend.
SPEAKER_01
It's very collaborative.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because I like the fact that there are discussion bits because obviously sometimes when you're going to events, it's very much people talking at you, then you go on to the next thing. But the fact that you're able to chat with like-minded people must be quite nice for you to be able to feel safe in that space, not just as a neurodiverse person, but then also your other part of your identity as well. I think Nicola said it's quite one of the only festivals in the world. For world first. Just blows my mind, really.
SPEAKER_00
It blows mine because we've created a unicorn. Um there should be a whole lot of unicorns around the world. Yeah, it's from going from feeling so isolated to actually being part of this and helping this to grow because it is needed. And it's one of those groups where we are invisible, you can't see us, you can't look at me and go, I don't have children. There's a lot of assumptions that are made, just like there are around you know diversity, around being queer, around being disabled, all those other things that I'm used to, those things, but when I had the childless thing as well, for me, it just felt how much more invisible can I get?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you're literally turning into the wall at this point.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and for somebody who used to perform, this is very strange. I used to be very seen. So it is really nice for people to come and be in a safe space. They know they can talk about stuff and people aren't going to start talking about their children all the time, or they're not going to do those. Every year it comes up, we discuss the bingos that people kind of throw, the inappropriate comments you get from people who are trying to fix you or help, which again it's again another tie.
SPEAKER_01
And I understand why this intersectionality is because there's so many assumptions about people that are autistic or neurodivergent, but then you've got that same thing for the childless side with however else you're identifying, especially if you're being disabled as well. That's last year.
SPEAKER_00
We had a panel on chronic illness, and it yeah, it was it was really needed from the response that we got. So, what's lovely is it's not just the panel. Once we've had a panel, we always then open to the floor for questions and answers. So much interaction, and actually, from that one, I was on that panel, and quite a few people came up to me afterwards saying, I'm not just chronically ill, I'm neurodiverse. And that was another reason why you know we kind of put this forward on the feedback at the end of last year's festival that this seems to be a real need. People want to talk, people want to meet other people.
SPEAKER_01
And the thing is the fact that they are looking at it in that much detail, it shows that there's a care there, it shows that they are looking through like what the best bits were, what things maybe they need to like improve on. I think that's what's amazing about the story house and how they create the festivals with people with lived experience and then with Nicola as well and and the team. I think it's something that's quite unique because again, a lot of the time you can feel invisible and you look at these things and you go, is this really for me? Because they say it's for me, but it doesn't look like it's for me. You mentioned about there being a panel this year. Are you involved on the panel? I think I'm chairing the panel. You're chairing.
SPEAKER_00
I am hosting the panel this year, I think, and the Neurodiversity One. So we've got different people who are coming on to it, some child-free or childless by choice, some not by choice. We always try and get a really even mix if possible. It's going to be interesting just to kind of hear everybody's stories and how they feel, you know, it's affected their life or how they've made their choices based around it. I'm really looking forward to it. It's been a really popular choice. Actually, it's the next festival.
SPEAKER_01
I know. Well, I can mention that the childless festival is the 26th and 27th of September. If someone's listening to this right now and they're a bit unsure about going, what would you say to them?
SPEAKER_00
It's a big thing to go to if you're going solo or absolutely, and it's also a double whammy. I get that that it can be a double whammy of the childlessness and the neurodivergence. And childlessness, it's not by choice, can also come with a lot of emotional things with it, which we know from emotional dysregulation perspective can be difficult. So it's just to know that there are people there that do understand. It's not a kind of support festival, it's much more of a social vibe, a fun vibe. Obviously, we had token there last year, we've got token again this year doing a comedy evening. And if you have any concerns or you know, queries, there is a private Facebook group people can join, Story House Childless, where we kind of answer questions. Nicola and the team at Story House. This is why I champion them so much. They're so good. When I first came in, she walked me through the theatre and showed me the places that I'd be able to sit because of my physical disability needs.
SPEAKER_01
It can often be about being a bit brave, especially if you're coming by yourself. They can go to a meeting and then if they did want to explore going to the festival, then they'll have people they already know. So, do you have a message of thanks for anyone?
SPEAKER_00
Well, I'm really grateful to Story House and Token because them coming together was something very special for me. But in my life in my family, I'm really lucky to be partnered. I have a husband who is my carer. So, yes, big thank you to him and my dog, who, if anybody looks at me on social media, you won't find me. But my dog occasionally posts some things.
SPEAKER_01
I love that. When I was talking to you, I was like, I don't actually know what you look like because it's a picture of your dog. Your dog is amazing, by the way. Just want to put it out there. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it. It's been really interesting to hear about how everything is just so linked. Like, my mind is blown. I feel like I need to do some research after this. It's been diagrams, isn't it? We've got to go do some diagrams and charts.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I'm really glad because I'm now going to go and look up the Autism Wellbeing project because that I think that could be really helpful.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, definitely. And Kath has got a card waiting for you when we finish recording. Thank you so much, Kirsty. If you're ever in the woodness area, like come and um check us out. Absolutely. And thank you again to the Story House and to Kaleidoscope Festival, Nicola Haig, Erma Eager, and Emily Abbott, and to the podcast team. And we'll see you in, or you'll hear us, in the next episode. Thank you so much. They look like kind of little badgy brushes. Yeah, they're like more like a cute little hedgehog. You've got like bugging eyes on them. It's like Dennis DeMena's head.
