How We Got Here: The Story Behind Neurospice & Life

You may not notice it at first, but the exploding spice jar in this image and the one on our podcast cover aren’t the same.
Would it shock you to know our AuADHD brains have gone through over six different branding concepts — and more than 100 jars?

Each version brought us closer to something that felt like us. This podcast was no different. It’s been years of slow growth, self-realisation, career shifts, and self-expression — 30 years of friendship that somehow led us here.

We met as kids and recognised something in each other straight away.
Both a little different. Both each other’s kind of weird.

Our friendship became instant and lasting — closer than sisters, the kind of connection that feels pre-written.

Back then, we didn’t have words like neurodivergent or AuADHD. For women and girls especially - those things didn't exist. We just knew that the world sometimes felt too much, too hard, too different — and that we could breathe a little easier in each other’s company.

Over the years we grew up, moved cities, started careers, and reinvented ourselves more than once.

Each detour — every burnout, every “maybe this isn’t me” moment — was another clue.

We were learning, coaching, counselling, facilitating, and still feeling that quiet, constant hum of something different about the way we move through the world.

Then came the realisation — the late diagnoses that cracked everything open.
Finally, the puzzle pieces fit.

When we understood the type of brain we had, it is like we finally had the right operating manual. So many things clicked into place and we were thirsty to know more.

Cue two massive hyperfixations and an expansion on our shared passion for understanding human behaviour and dynamics. We found the more we understood the more questions we had and in this space we started unmasking together.

We stopped taking everything as fact - and started to question "I wonder" and "What else could be true"?

It was from this space that we started to question and let go of the labels, to rewrite them and reclaim them - the 'difficult', the 'weird', the 'senstive' and the 'blunt'. Those things that had held us back for so long, shrunk us and sometimes even sunk us.

As we walked this path together we wanted to do something helpful. Something to share the thousands of hours of accumulated knowledge and learning, to make it a little easier to be ourselves in a neurotypical world, that was not built for us.

Two years ago, we dreamed up a podcast. We had the name, the ideas, the passion — and the same old AuADHD pattern of talking it to death. Each idea was a little different a little bolder, a slightly different shade of the same colour. But we did not actually DO anything.

Then ten weeks ago, something shifted. Freya AuADHD coached us and said, 'let's record in person and book flights'.
We gave our brains the crisis they needed to turn idea into action. To create momentum. To filter ideas and possibilities against.

In the middle of that whirlwind, everything suddenly became clear: Labels are what hold us back and bind us at the same time.
When we release them — or redefine them — we create room to breathe, grow, and connect.

It came as a late night what's app message from Hanna "I have an idea for a segment of the podcast..." and Freya's immediate message back recorded in a stage whisper as her daughter slept in her armpit "Babe... that is not a segment of the podcast... that is the podcast"

Over the past 10 weeks we have done something really hard... and we did this because of our big, beautiful, neurospicy brains - we could not have done it without them. Thanks brains for a busy 10 weeks, we:

• Made a business (yes even all the legal and financial admin)

• Wrote 16 episodes up and recorded them in 3 days - hiding out in our sensory room (a glammed up closet)

• Drank about 70 litres of coffee while doing hundreds of hours of research

• Learned new technology platforms - systems and ways of doing things

• Laughed so much, Hanna cried (more on why Freya didn't in the pod) and we helped each other through

• Learned new things about ourselves and each other, finding new opportunities to unmask further

• Made workbooks, t-shirts, merch and free tools (coming soon)

• Kept working full time, parenting and Hanna even starred in a play.

We did this with our brains. We love them. We hope we have made something special and that this helps our NeuroSpicy community to rewrite and reclaim some labels of their own.