2-hour interview special now available on our YouTube channel!
The Doctor, The Poet, & The Reverend: Aucademy Educates. ADHD, discovery journeys, & finding neurodivergent others
In this Aucademy special, Dr Chloe Farahar (they/she) talks with Tom Delahunt (AKA The HoboPoet, he/him) and Reverend Lizzie Hopthrow (she/her) in The Quiet View yurt just outside Canterbury.
CONTENT NOTE: sporadic loud banging (try turning the sound down and using closed captions); discussion of suicide; mental health; addiction.
Chloe interviews Polyennic (ADHD) PhD candidate, Tom, and explores his journey and desire to share the neurodivergent canopy. At Rev Lizzie Hopthrow’s Quiet View, in a beautiful yurt, Aucademy discuss the importance of finding community and sharing curious spaces with other neurodivergent people.
Tom Delahunt is a doctoral candidate, dyslexic academic, TimesHEA winner (2019), and author of The Wandering Lamb. Tom’s PhD research interests lie in exploring the gaps between art and health. Link to Tom’s book: https://bookshop.canterbury.ac.uk/The…
Revd Lizzie Hopthrow is Warden of the Quiet View, and an Anglican priest and retired hospice chaplain. She is passionate about encouraging people to find stillness, comfort or inspiration when they visit. Her experiences in the hospice movement and the Taizé Community together with influences from Eastern spirituality have formed her understanding of the Universality of Divine Love. She is a very experienced labyrinth facilitator and trainer and has been published extensively on her national labyrinth work. Lizzie is a recipient of the Janki Foundation’s award – 100 Women of Spirit Link to the Quiet View https://www.quietview.co.uk/about-us
*Please note we are not clinicians or diagnosticians*
By Thomas Delahunt & Dr Chloe Farahar For The Poetic Nursing Heart
Aucademy interview special with Tom about the importance of neurodivergent spaces to be released December 2025. When released, Find the interview on our YouTube channel.
Tom provides audio of his written piece, transcript found below
Sharing the Canopy: Tom Delahunt “When trees grow together, nutrients and water can be optimally divided among them all so that each tree can grow into the best tree it can be.” Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees (2016)
In The Butterfly Farmer, I explored safety as something grown, not built nurtured through relationship rather than prescribed. A cocoon is only safe because the world around it allows it to be. It is a space of quiet transformation, a place of suspension and trust.
Lately, I’ve been thinking again about trees and their canopy, how they share the light within their branches. It recalls Peter Wohlleben’s words, and it reminds me of Chloe’s work, alive with connection, awareness, and care. Beneath the soil, roots meet fungi, fungi meet stone, and stone meets water. There is no hierarchy, only a web, each thread alive to the other’s pulse. And perhaps that is the truest form of equality: the unseen brilliance that binds us. The mycelium beneath mirrors the stars above, weaving light and life in opposite directions. Between them, we learn what it means to belong to both earth and sky.
As I sit with that image, I think of Fred again’s line: “I found you, the one who cares.” Listen here
Isn’t that what we’re really doing, in the classroom, in the forest, in the poems and pauses between words? We are finding the ones who care, those who see us not for productivity but for our pulse. To build a canopy where light is shared freely, where safety grows from reciprocity.
Safety, however, does not appear by accident. It must be made. It takes intention, humility, and often a quiet struggle. Hatred breeds hatred, as La Haine reminds us; if we are to stop that cycle, we must plant something tender, radical, and alive. This work – this Middle-earth battle for inclusion – is fought not with swords, but with care, art, and listening. It is a battle of roots, not power.
Soon, Chloe and I will meet in a space I have held as safe a quiet view offered by Lizzie, a place where reflection, connection, and understanding can unfold fully. It is a space to witness tendencies, to explore pulse and presence, to discover light shared in its most tender form. There, with Steve capturing the moment on video, the canopy we share will take shape not only in thought, but in sight, sound, and feeling.
And so, I will ask Chloe: what does the canopy mean to you? How do you find and share light within the academic forest? What sustains your roots when the soil feels thin?
And I wonder, quietly, what spaces will I find next, beneath the canopy of those who care?
Picture of Tom in the HoboPoet Hut, Chloe looking in.
Chloe provides audio of their written piece, transcript found below
Response to Tom: Chloe, Sharing the Canopy
Tom, your canopy metaphor resonates. It reminds me of the difference between two worlds I’ve lived in: the “culture of autism” and Autistic culture. One traumatised and pathologised me. The other helped heal.
The “culture of autism” gave me a vocabulary of deficit. Before diagnosis even, my Autistic behaviours and way of being were assaulted. The pre-diagnosis and then diagnosis labels were etched into my skin with black markers by others. “Persistent impairment in reciprocal social communication” – a warning label, not a description of my experience. I was communicating. They just weren’t listening in my language.
Images of Chloe as a child.
Image of the diagnostic manuals as to what “autism spectrum disorder” is.
For years, we can exist in limbo. Too Autistic for neurotypical spaces – even when we mask. But also, too alienated by the pathology narrative to seek out other Autistic people. Who wants to gather around shared symptoms? Who finds community in a checklist of what’s “wrong”?
So, we drift. Not just alone, but unseen. Existing in translation, never in our native tongue.
And then we find Autistic space.
Spaces where finger flicking means “anxiety” without explanation. Where someone could see another’s near-invisible rocking and know “meltdown imminent” without needing a performance of distress.
We’re writing the Autistic dictionary. Where they wrote “special interests,” we write “specialisations” or “dedicated interests.” Where they diagnosed “high-functioning,” we recognise “unsupported.” Where they labelled “severe,” we see “distressed Autistic human.”
This isn’t semantics. It’s survival. Language shapes reality. And when they call us “people with autism” – that careful separation – they’re telling us they’d like us better without autism than with. But I am Autistic. Capital A. Like a people. Like a culture. Like something worth capitalising.
Healing from the “culture of autism” doesn’t mean becoming less Autistic. That was their goal, never ours.
It means recognising that the pathology was never in us – it was in the narrative wrapped around us and used against us.
When I’m thriving, I’m still Autistic. When I’m struggling, it’s not my neurology that’s failed – it’s the environment that’s failed to accommodate it.
Beneath that canopy, those marker labels that seeped into me – “cold,” “standoffish,” “unapproachable” – begin to lose their bite. Among fellow Autistic people, those words are shared, understood, and reframed. What was once isolation becomes connection. The canopy is where we scrub away the Sharpie tattoos of stigma, together, even if the residue remains.
Image of Chloe with marker drawn words on their face and body, like “bossy” and “weird”
Every Autistic person who moves from shame to pride weakens their narrative. Every connection we make breaks isolation tactics. Every space we create proves their “treatments” unnecessary.
We “treat” autism by teaching how to be Autistic. Chloe Farahar. SoYoureAutistic.wordpress.com
We’re not asking for acceptance anymore. We’re building our own space.
And in these spaces – these canopies – we don’t just survive. We thrive.
So, the canopy means to me: healing and refuge. It is the place where Autistic identity replaces pathology, where community replaces isolation, and where culture replaces stigma. It is the space where we learn not how to be indistinguishable from others, but how to be unapologetically Autistic, together.
Everybody’s weird, you just have to find your group of weird. Chloe
It’s not the absence of struggle. It’s understanding its source. It’s not fixing what’s “broken.” It’s recognising we never were.
And under this canopy – whether in a classroom, a forest, or an internet forum – we find each other.
A number of images of different neurodivergent people, friends, and fiance of Chloe’s.
Where Chloe has written on Autistic identity, culture, community, and space for Autistic well-being and other related topics:
Farahar, C. (2022). Chapter Nineteen – Autistic identity, culture, community, and space for wellbeing. In D. Milton, & S. Ryan (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Autism Studies (1st ed.). Routledge.
Farahar, C. (In Print 2025). The Farahar and Foster Three-Dimensional Autistic Space: Dismantling the ‘autism spectrum’ and centring observer bias in the missing, dismissing, and misdiagnosis of Autistic people. In R. S. Herbert (Ed.), Beyond Autistic stereotypes: New perspectives on identities, gender, and experience. Oxford University Press.
Farahar, C., & Foster, A. (2021). #AutisticsInAcademia. In N. Brown (Ed.), Lived Experiences of Ableism in Academia: Strategies for Inclusion in Higher Education (pp. 197-215). Bristol, UK: Policy Press.
References (Tom)
Carello, J. & Butler, L.D., 2015. Practicing Trauma-Informed Care: A Guide for Teachers and Practitioners. [Publisher if known].
Herman, J.L., 1992. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books.
La Haine, 1995. La Haine [Film]. Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. France: Canal+.
Wohlleben, P., 2016. The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate. London: William Collins.
Fred again.., 2021. Kyle (I Found You) [Song]. On Actual Life 2 (February 2 – October 15 2021). London: Again.. Ltd. Link
I’ve been autistic for 35 years—my entire life. For most of those years, I struggled with organisation, routines, and the overwhelming sensory chaos of everyday planning tools. Bright colours, cluttered layouts, flimsy materials that felt wrong in my hands. Nothing worked the way my brain needed it to.
So I built something that did. This is the story of how lived experience became a business, and why designing for autistic minds means designing differently.
The Problem with “Normal” Planners
Walk into any stationery shop, and you’ll find hundreds of planners. Complex layouts with multiple sections fighting for attention. For neurotypical people, these might be inspiring. For many autistic minds, they’re exhausting.
Here’s what I learned the hard way:
Sensory overload is real. Glossy paper that reflects light. Bright colours that demand attention. Thin, flimsy materials that feel insubstantial. These aren’t just preferences—they’re barriers. When a planner feels wrong in your hands or hurts your eyes to look at, you won’t use it. I didn’t.
Visual clutter kills focus. Many planners cram every page with decorative elements, multiple fonts, and competing information. For someone managing executive dysfunction, this creates decision paralysis before you’ve even started planning your day.
One size fits nobody. Neurotypical planners assume everyone thinks, plans, and processes information the same way. They don’t account for time blindness, routine rigidity, or the need for predictable structure.
Building a Business Through Autistic Burnout
Starting ROARGANISE wasn’t a smooth journey. I was navigating my own autistic burnout whilst trying to design products, manage suppliers, and learn e-commerce. There were days when answering a single email felt impossible, let alone running a business.
But burnout taught me something crucial: if I was going to create planning tools, they needed to reduce overwhelm, not add to it.
Every design decision came from lived experience:
Black and white colour schemes because my eyes needed rest, not stimulation
Soft-touch, waterproof vegan leather because texture matters when you’re holding something every day
Thicker paper (170gsm) because flimsy inserts felt temporary and unreliable
Clean, simple layouts because my brain needed clarity, not decoration
Customisable inserts because rigid systems don’t work for flexible autistic routines
I wasn’t designing for a market. I was designing for me—and for everyone like me who’d been failed by “normal” planners.
Why Sensory Considerations Matter
Sensory needs aren’t luxuries. They’re fundamental to whether a tool gets used or abandoned in a drawer.
When I chose waterproof materials, it wasn’t just about durability. It was about the tactile comfort of smooth, consistent texture. When I selected FSC-certified 170gsm paper, it was because the weight and feel communicated reliability.
Every sensory detail either supports or sabotages executive function. If a planner feels wrong, your brain spends energy managing discomfort instead of managing tasks. That’s not a personal failing—that’s a design failing.
What I’ve Learned About Serving Our Community
Three years into this journey, here’s what I wish I’d known sooner:
1. Autistic people know what they need. The most requested features—dated monthly calendars, food trackers, weight loss planners—came directly from customers. Listening to the community is the only way to truly serve it.
2. “Professional-looking” matters. Many customers use these organisers at work or in medical appointments. They needed something that looked polished and serious, not childish or overly decorative. Autism doesn’t look one way, and our tools shouldn’t either.
3. Planning tools can support diagnosis. I didn’t expect this, but many customers use the organisers to track symptoms, routines, and challenges to share with doctors during ADHD or autism assessments. Clear, structured documentation helps medical professionals see patterns quickly.
4. Sustainability aligns with autistic values. Many autistic people care deeply about environmental impact. Using FSC-certified paper and vegan materials wasn’t just ethical—it resonated with the community’s values.
Final Thoughts
Building ROARGANISE has been the hardest and most meaningful thing I’ve ever done. Every organiser I check before dispatch, every customer email I answer, every design decision I make—it all comes back to that autistic teenager who couldn’t find a planner that worked for her brain.
If you’re autistic and struggling with organisation, know this: it’s not you. It’s the tools. You don’t need to force yourself into systems designed for different brains. You need systems designed for yours.
And if you’re thinking about creating something for the autistic community, start with lived experience. Listen to autistic voices. Design for real needs, not assumptions.
Because when we design for autistic minds, we create tools that actually work.
About the Author: Lisa is an autistic entrepreneur and founder of ROARGANISE, a UK-based business creating sensory-friendly planning systems for neurodivergent individuals. With 35 years of lived autistic experience, she designs products that address executive dysfunction, sensory needs, and the unique challenges of neurodivergent organisation.
