Anna Kennedy’s guests this week on Women’s Radio Station are Kelly and Hester Grainger. ‘All Things Autism and Life in Lockdown’ will be aired at 1pm and 1am every day this week on Women’s Radio Station.
This is their story:
Hester and Kelly Grainger are parents to two autistic children, India who is 10 and Hudson who is 8. Both children were diagnosed last year, as was Kelly age 44. His wife Hester is neurotypical and they’ve been together for 19 years and married for 12.
They didn’t get any help pre or post-diagnosis with either the children or Kelly and they know they aren’t alone so they launched Perfectly Autistic, a community to connect parents, partners and people.
They want to provide support, guidance, understanding and also connect with others on the autism path, as it can be lonely. They are sharing their own journey, knowing everyone will have a different experience.
Having gone through the diagnosis process three times, they felt that there was a huge lack of support, guidance and information provided.
They were simply handed a report and sent on their way. Having spoken to many others, Hester and Kelly realised this experience is very common, so they both decided that they wanted to do something about it.
Kelly had worked in the corporate world for 23 years in a number of senior sales and marketing roles for global companies, before deciding to leave and launch his own business with Hester.
This was partly due to him being diagnosed autistic, as he can now manage his workload and diary and there is no more travelling. It also means he can be around for the children. As well as their day job running Hudia, offering PR and web design, they’ve been increasing their knowledge on all things autism.
Hester has a qualification in understanding autism and wanted to read as much as she could about it.
Kelly has attended lots of courses too and finds he understands himself much better now.
