Unlock the secrets to thriving as a self-employed individual with disabilities in our latest episode featuring Lydia Wilkins, a freelance journalist and editor at Disability Review magazine. Hear Lydia's compelling personal journey as she navigates the workforce as an autistic person living with long COVID. We tackle the significant disability employment gap in the UK and explore why traditional nine-to-five office jobs often fall short in accessibility, making a strong case for the financial and personal benefits of freelancing.
 
Discover the essential support systems available for freelancers with disabilities, including Personal Independence Payment (PIP), and Access to Work and how they are crucial in managing day-to-day needs.

Finally, we discuss the empowerment that comes from taking control of your career, urging both disabled and non-disabled individuals to explore the potential of freelancing. Don't miss this episode to gain invaluable insights and tips that could transform your working life.


If you are experiencing any issues discussed in this podcast, please contact your healthcare practitioner.

For support


Hosted by Chantal Boyle, Hidden Disabilities Sunflower.
 
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a rating and review.

Find out more about the Sunflower by visiting the website hdsunflower.com

Music by "The Emerald Ruby" Emerald Ruby Bandcamp and Emerald Ruby website

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Speaker Key:

Chantal Boyle – Host

Lydia Wilkins – Guest

Voiceover

 

Voiceover: 00:00

Welcome to The Sunflower Conversations, where we explore the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower and its role in supporting people with hidden disabilities.

 

Chantal Boyle: 00:30

Hello and thank you for joining me. I'm Chantal and this is the Sunflower Conversations podcast. Our topic today is employment the benefits of self-employment and to discuss this I am joined by Lydia Wilkins. Lydia is a freelance journalist and editor at Disability Review magazine. Lydia has written for a range of titles, including Mail and the Metro, among others. An ambassador for AccessAble and a paid speaker, Lydia is autistic and lives with long Covid. Lydia joins us to share valuable advice about taking control of your employment and economic future by explaining the advantages and steps to becoming self-employed and working freelance. The employment rate of disabled people in the UK is 54.2%. The employment rate for people who are not disabled is at 82%. This means that the disability employment gap is around 28%. The proportion of disabled people who are in employment varies considerably depending on the type of disability and how many health conditions they have. So, for example, I believe that people with learning disability employment rate is at about six percent yeah.

Lydia Wilkins: 

Yeah that's it. It's the thing about these statistics that I always find very interesting. It was only recently that. So, just as a caveat to this, learning disability and autism are not the same thing. One is neurological, one is learning disability, but they very often get lumped in together when they shouldn't be yes, when they shouldn't be. The stats for then, disabled and autistic individuals, generally speaking, have the lowest amount of employed individuals. When it comes to learning disability as well, it's just absolutely shocking, and it's always the same reason. There is no real improvement, despite the fact that we spend, you know, so much money and time looking at the reasons as to why, but we're not doing the what, so to speak.

Chantal Boyle: 

Yeah, to do better yes, because, when you drill down into the specific disabilities and those, that rate of 54.2 percent, is totally obliterated, isn't it?

Lydia Wilkins: 

I always want to caveat this further, because we very often have this sort of cultural idea about work and what it means and what is so-called legitimate work. Massive air quotes to that one. So I've always been freelance. The day I graduated, I basically went freelance. I've been freelance my whole life. I am self-employed, I work for myself. I find it very sort of imposter syndrome-y type thing, because the amount of people who didn't think like I still have people come up to me and go, oh, look at this job opening, you should apply for a real job yeah when I just also really want to underline this in terms of the level I'm at, I make more than I would do in the newsroom with my qualifications, and I work from home.

Lydia Wilkins: 04:28

Yeah, not bad, is it? My money is just as good as anyone else's money. But we have this such utterly ableist idea of traditional employment. But everyone has to be in an office has to be nine to five.

Chantal Boyle: 

Has to be this, any other so well, let's talk about that then. So why does the traditional nine to five, five days a week working in an office that stereotypical view of what having a job means? Why can that present challenges for disabled people?

Lydia Wilkins: 

Because the modern workplace is not accessible and when we start to talk about accessibility it's very often not done right. In this respect, I can only talk to kind of the newsroom and my experience. I can't speak for other people, obviously. When I started to sit originally for job interviews, it didn't shock me. It did surprise me, however, the amount of newsrooms that had no idea about the Equality Act and reasonable adjustments for interviews. So even in just I will never forget this I went to I'm not going to name the place, but it was a lifestyle magazine, a very glossy, very glamorous book type that everybody knows about it's very notorious publication, and I will never forget the fact that I disclosed I have I am autistic. They did not have a policy in place for disclosure or reasonable adjustments, so that I had to talk the person doing the interview through what this meant for them as an organisation.

Chantal Boyle: 

Yeah.

Lydia Wilkins: 

And we wonder why diversity and inclusion, particularly in the disability space, is very low when it comes to sort of journalistic circles, I mean when it came to access as well. So I consider myself to be disabled. I do not use the term neurodivergent for myself just because I have seemed to have acquired a lot of different conditions. So disability encompasses everything. It would be things like my friends of mine who are wheelchair users. They’re told oh, can't you just get in the door, can't you just go up the steps?

Chantal Boyle:

A lot of the access, is it's physical access?

Lydia Wilkins: 

Physical access, or even just like in the sense of reasonable adjustments. One of the pieces of pieces of advice I was given when I first graduated was don't let them see how weak you can be.

Lydia Wilkins: 

Chantal Boyle:

Oh, okay.

Lydia Wilkins: 

Which now I come to think of it, I think that's the symptom of the problem. So things such as mental health show showing emotion, or even just kind of like anything that's reactive is always taken as being like the worst thing ever, and then that's sort of I would argue. Then that starts to go into kind of the way that we empathize with people and how we understand others. If we cannot express ourselves emotionally, how is it that we can claim to be able to cover a complex issue.

Chantal Boyle: 

Well, that's it. I mean, that's the key ingredient, isn't? It is your, is your personality, your emotions and your feeling. That's what makes us a living entity, a living being. So having to suppress key elements of that is only going to have a negative outcome for that individual. You are listening to The Sunflower Conversations with Chantal. To learn more about the Sunflower, visit our website. Details are in the show notes. I am thinking about other barriers that may exist for people with disabilities. I have interviewed a lot people on the podcast with varying

Chantal Boyle: 

disabilities. One of them being ME, and that particular person was telling me how his sleeping patterns, because of the pain that he experiences, are terrible. So he is unable to get to an office at 9am to be able to do a full day's work. However, having being able to work from home allows him to manage his time around his illness, if you like, his disability, and he knows when the peak times of when he's able to operate give his best performance. And he's the communications manager, so he's got a great job. But just having this flexibility and not being stuck into this kind of rigid construct of nine to five, so it's not just having the prep to physically get somewhere, it's also these the rigidity, rigidity of the hours, can also really present a barrier.

Lydia Wilkins: 

I think it's something that needs to be thought about culturally. So, uh. So this week I've started reading the Future Proof Career and on the first page the statistic that is cited is that 13% of the UK population, I think it's the UK population, are self-employed.

Chantal Boyle: 

Okay.

Lydia Wilkins: 09:52

Compared to the rest of the working population. So in the sense of when we talk about disability and the culture of perception, when we talk about disability and the culture of perception, the thing that always gets me is how, oh, you've not done, you're not working in the traditional mindset, so therefore you are. It automatically becomes a kind of hierarchical, so you are lesser than yes. I'm always told, for example, oh, you must stay home and all the time, and you're just watching Netflix and you're just watching it back to back.

Chantal Boyle: 

Well, let's talk about the term. So the term freelance. Many people might not have heard what that means, so can you explain what freelance means and how and why it can suit disabled individuals?

Lydia Wilkins: 

So the term freelance, I forget when it originated, but it basically meant it was originally mercenaries who would be, they were literally a free lance who would go off and fight for whatever army would pay the most.

Chantal Boyle: 

I did not know that.

Lydia Wilkins: 

Neither did I. I had to research this for a talk that I gave a few months ago. The idea of freelancing is that, effectively, you work for yourself, you are self-employed, you are your own boss. There are drawbacks to that, so you have to do your own tax return, you have to set aside costs, you have to account for yourself and generate the work and the connections and all that kind of thing. But there are benefits to this, such as you can work from home, you can manage your disability needs, there are support systems in place. It means that you're not necessarily on a fixed salary. So if you're on a scale and a workplace but you can only earn x amount at such a company, you can always top that. It's things such as that. So freelancers are becoming more and more of an economy in themselves. We also now have the right to work from home that we can request.

Lydia Wilkins: 

Prior to the pandemic, freelancers were becoming a significant portion of working individuals in the UK. Now, wouldn't it be interesting, rather than sort of espousing this traditional mindset of what work constitutes, if we actually had a culture where we said, okay, work can be whatever you want it to be, if we supported people with their access needs. I shouldn't even have to say this out loud. But if we start to do that, then they can start to work, rather than saying, oh, we've got this completely arbitrary job role and we're going to if you receive benefits, for example, we're going to cut them until you get enough work, type thing. That doesn't work. We know it doesn't work, why do we still persist in this completely futile, arbitrary idea? Yeah, freelancing is the way. That will be my campaign manifesto .

Chantal Boyle: 

Yeah, so I mean, I think that when we think about when I was at school, I guess, and you think about work, it's basically it's very rigid and, yes, not, it's not necessarily nine to five. It might be that the role requires you to work nights. You know we've now got 24 hour, you know 365 day economy, don't we? So things are set up slightly differently, but there are so many ways in which you can actually carve out a career for yourself, employment, call centres even.

 

Many years ago, I worked in a call centre for a mobile telephone company, and it's, you know, it's full of people. But I get the impression that even that can be done from home. Now. You don't have to make that journey in and be in that, uh, actually quite overwhelming environment with lots of people all talking at the same time. So for many people that could be really overstimulating and not necessarily bring about the best performance. So scope report that the average disabled household faces a £970 a month extra in costs, which is a significant amount of money. This must be a barrier for disabled people seeking employment. Can you explain what support exists and how does PIP work? PIP stands for personal independent payment plan it is?

Lydia Wilkins: 14:37

PIP is personal independence payment. So there are a few systems in place, so there's things such as access to work, there's universal credit, there is personal independence payment. I need to be very clear about this. Personal independence payment is disability related. It is not to do with work. Right, and I say that because it drives me mad by the amount of politicians who just espouse this idea just to beat disabled people with. It is not to do with work. It is not a kind of get out of jail free card.

Lydia Wilkins: 

It is for extra support needs okay it is completely separate, but the idea that we're exploring on this podcast is, effectively, if you meet disability needs, then it's a way to shape the future and by doing that, it gives you the independence and, arguably, as a by product who knew? it can support you into work. PIP has been wonderful in that I have been able to meet my needs and it has meant that I've been able to do better creative projects. I've since become better paid. I've done bigger and better things, simply because my disability needs are being met. Yeah, added to that. So in March 20. So in March 20, I'm trying to work this out for you. So in March 2022, I call COVID for the first time. I would describe myself as being a long COVID patient, because the kind of like the after impact has not really gone away and I have a multiplicity of conditions. Enough, so that I've started to joke that it's almost like a disability alphabet of the things that I can tick off.

Lydia Wilkins: 

So yeah it's really fun. I'm the fun person to have a party. So in that sense, I spent a long time recovering and it wasn't until recently that I sort of started to understand, like the need for rest and that kind of thing. If you're freelance, it is incumbent on you to do the work and to generate it, but we also have the 30-day payment rules, so the money that you earn now is effectively going to be available to you in six weeks time. That's if you were lucky enough to be paid on time.

And it takes some organization and planning to it. After I was negative from COVID, all I can remember really are two things the bone crushing tiredness. So even things like just raising my arms to be able to feed myself while eating. That meant that I would just sleep for hours and hours and hours.

Chantal Boyle: 

My goodness. So that's the chronic fatigue that comes with it, that's associated with it.

Lydia Wilkins: 

Yeah and then it was also. So the best way I can explain this is I still experience this, this kind of word loss where I had to basically relearn a lot like words. So it wasn't. It's not that it's lost on the tip of my tongue, it's that it's just disappeared, which is it's really weird. It's very distressing and it becomes more obvious if I'm tired or stressed out or nervous about something.

Chantal Boyle: 

Well, especially as a journalist, I mean, I would imagine your head is normally full of lots and lots of interesting words that you can just grab for.

Chantal Boyle: 

You know, like a dictionary, as I use the same words, I haven't got an extensive vocabulary, so it must be very frustrating.

Lydia Wilkins:

It is, but the thing PIP in the sense that it's a disability benefit, that being sat there was such a great support because it meant that, in the sense of having to cut down on work because of the tiredness, and having to go to, so, I've worked out recently I've seen between 35 to 40 different doctors in just over two years.

If we are able to meet access needs then rather than describing this subset of the population. So the disabled individuals are nearly a quarter of the UK's population. This is the biggest growing marginalized group.

Thanks to COVID-19, it is getting bigger. And yet we see kind of there are so many sort of speculative articles that are saying, oh these people are suddenly disabled and it presents a problem for the state in that these people are now not working. So in the respect of self-employment, I think there needs to be a greater emphasis on that to meet the needs of disabled people, very simply, rather than saying, oh, look, these are work shy and you know it's so woke, or that kind of nonsense.

Chantal Boyle: 19:43

You are listening to the Sunflower Conversations. Remember to hit subscribe. Do you feel that there is a negative attitude towards disabled people in regards of employment?

Lydia Wilkins

 A hundred percent in regards of employment, a hundred percent.

Chantal Boyle: 

You mentioned a couple of other programs which are there to support people into employment. So PIP isn't necessarily for employment, but it does allow you the space to kind of be able to focus on what you want to do for your career or your employment. You mentioned something called access.

Lydia Wilkins: 20:23

So there's Access to Work. It's another type of benefit where it's to do with it's more like the setup and how. If you have ADHD, for example, if there is pieces of equipment that can be bought in order to help you, it can be things such as with ADHD coaching. Hester Granger, who is one of the co-founders of Perfectly Autistic, is amazing at this sort of thing in terms of explaining and all the kind of different resources, different stages. Perfectlyautistic.co.uk is the resource bible for this. Okay, universal credit is uh, I didn't even know where to begin with this. I absolutely hated universal credit for how useless it was. It's income gaps. So, if you needed like a, I'm trying to think of a way to explain it because it can be used in connection with things such as housing benefit and that kind of thing. Yeah, those two are more kind of like work-based, whereas PIP is disability specific so access to work, is that only accessible by a company?

Chantal Boyle: 21:47

or if I'm going to become freelance, self-employed, hypothetically speaking, and if I have a disability, I can claim and use the resources from Access to Work to support my employment.

Lydia Wilkins: 22:02

My understanding is that both so employed traditionally and employed freelance. My understanding is that both can do it.

Chantal Boyle: 22:02

Okay, so those are really good for people to note those down. So, Access to Work, there's PIP and then there's also universal credit. It's also worth having a look at some of our recent members, because we do have an organization who supports people with their PIP applications, and that and they're Sunflower members. It's run by people who are, who also have disabilities, but they are sort of lawyer professionals as well, because, I think everybody has seen and heard about the impact negative impact that trying to apply for it can present to individuals and then you end up actually not being able to do it and then you're not being supported.

Lydia Wilkins: 22:59

So it's ultimately privileged in the sense that it's basically. I just want to point out, for example, the amount of claims that go to tribunal and then get overturned because the department for working pensions has said you can't have this incorrectly, it's just mad. So it's a. It always ranges between 80 to 90 percent of initial claims that have been rejected then get overturned at tribunal.

Chantal Boyle: 

I mean how much money is that costing the economy? You know just that process of going through all of that, saying no, and then it going to tribunal. I mean the whole thing.

Lydia Wilkins: 

But then it takes up to a year. There is a waiting list in order to be able to do that for a start. So if you are in an economic circumstance where that's not possible, then it would be the thing of how long can you hold on for effectively. Added to that so I think this was Rachel Charlton Daly who pointed this out on Twitter recently as Rachel Charlton-Daily who pointed this out on Twitter recently half of the amount of benefit support that is put aside by the government is actually not being claimed each year. So all of this idea of we're going to cut the welfare estate and all that half of it's not even being claimed.

Chantal Boyle: 

I heard that as well. Do you think that's down to the fact of how difficult it is for people to claim?

Lydia Wilkins: 

Definitely I can't really do phone calls, so I have an appointed person, as is my right when it comes to PIP, to do this, because there aren't in-person consultations don't seem to be happening now. They're over the phone right and yet there are never.

Lydia Wilkins: 

Whenever it has been asked, well, there's never been any accommodations made for me as the autistic person. It's always very combative because, so I have somebody doing the talking for me. It took me, I think it was, 18 months in the end to claim personal independence payment and I have to go back periodically to basically say I'm still autistic, I've not gotten better.

Chantal Boyle: 

I mean, it just makes you wonder who is running these programs, these, you know, these initiatives that are supposed to be there to support those who need it. So let's talk about the steps. So we've heard about what the benefits are about becoming self-employed and working freelance. The benefits are that you can do that at times that work with you and your schedule and your illness or your disability or your neurodivergence. What are the steps? What? What steps would you give? Uh, would you advise?

Lydia Wilkins: 25:51

When, in terms of the practical things. So once you've decided you are going to need some sort of online presence, nobody can really afford not to be online anymore. So, whether it's just even like a basic website or even there are I can never remember what it's called if you're a journalist, there's a website that collates all of your writing for you.

Chantal Boyle: 

Oh, that's a good idea, so. So it's like for somebody who's into design, they would have something called a portfolio which is like a diary not a diary, but it's like a diary, I guess, of their best bits. So you have that for writing. Electronic format. So you need to. First of all, you need to create your brand of who you are and have some body of evidence of the type of work that you've done before. So it could be that you're a carpenter, so have some photos and some examples and some videos and some testimonials of the carpentry that you've done in the past or previous clients.

Lydia Wilkins: 26:58

And make yourself contactable as well. So email address, phone number, if you have that, for tax reasons, you also need to be, you know, careful. So I think it's. It's something like as soon as you earn a thousand pounds as a freelancer, then you need to register as self-employed with HMRC. Okay, that's important to note. I think it's a thousand pounds. I'm not sure because I know that various tax rules have changed since, so you will need to do a tax return each year. So keep an account of you know, invoices, keep the receipts of things to be expensed.

Chantal Boyle: 

Can you get support with that through the Access to Work?

Lydia Wilkins:

Yes.  

Chantal Boyle: 27:41

You can. Yeah, because that that's the thing, isn't it? You can be like totally skillful at writing, for example, but that other side of it can be so overwhelming that you're not going to do it because you can't do the admin side, the tax side. So to know that you can have a look at Access to Work as a way of potentially getting support with that, that would be a really good benefit.

Remember to hit subscribe.

We've spoken about well, we're talking about the steps. So we've got your identity, getting your examples of the work that you've done in the past and what you want to set yourself out as. We’ve spoken about Accessible who may be able to offer support with, either like the admin side or the tax side of you having to register yourself as self-employed with the tax office. What other things would you want to impart as part of this becoming self-employed?

Lydia Wilkins: 28:57

So Access to Work is there to work for you. That's the one thing that I would like to emphasize. Simply because we have this idea of kind of owing too much to people, that we do not owe stuff to, organizations that are funded by public money are there for us. They should not have a hold over us.When it comes to the final thing that I this is something I've been thinking about a lot sometimes it's okay to think in terms of projects and to have long-term goals.

Lydia Wilkins: 

For a very long time, I was sort of struggling in the sense of how I am as a freelancer and in terms of branding. I really hate the fact that whenever I do something like a podcast interview or somebody interviews me, it's always she's the autistic journalist. Last time I checked, that's not an objective. And, second of all, there are I have eight different things wrong with me. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure what that's the most interesting, most pressing thing. In that sense, it's okay to have long-term projects that you want to work on and longer-term ambitions, rather than just being this kind of idea in order to meet people's needs. So if anyone comes into my inbox with that sort of request, usually I say no. I don't do interviews where people say oh, talk about autism and journalism. That's really not for me. Yes, not, it's not my specialism yes it's also massively reductive.

Lydia Wilkins: 

For a long time that stopped me doing what I ultimately wanted to do. So, just to for further background. Uh, for contextual reasons, it seems like I wanted to do stuff around kind of the criminal justice system and to look at it further. The majority of my work is not about autism. It's not about neurodiverse individuals or neurodiversity. It's actually about disability as a whole, rather than this sort of very niche subset. For the first time in my life, this is actually something that I am proud of, of having produced. I was signed to a literary agency at the start of this year. We are working on a second book about the criminal justice system, about disability. It's not just about autistic people, it's not just about neurodivergent individuals. That's something that I'm actually proud of and it's not been. My agent has not allowed it to be reduced to kind of this productive sort of tokenistic idea.

That's what I mean when I say it is OK to think long term, to have longer term ambitions, rather than sort of thinking small, almost.

 

Chantal Boyle:

Yeah, have big like big ideas and see where they take you. That's brilliant.

Lydia Wilkins: 31:54

Well, it seems like I really want to do a TED talk. I don't know how to make that happen, I have no idea how to even start that, but that is something that I would like to do. If you are self-employed, you effectively sky's the limit, so what is there to stop you having ideas that are, you know, apparently out of the box?

Chantal Boyle: 

So that's another really key point is that when you are self-employed, you the sky is the limit and you can. You can expand your ideas into any direction that you want, whereas if you're in, you obviously are going to be employed. But when you're employed in the traditional sense, in that you have this nine-to-five contract, you're working for an employer and your everything is basically you're doing what they've directed you to do. That doesn't allow for as much creativity and to be able to sort of veer off in different directions, which you, which you can have the freedom to do when you are self-employed. So that's really good, and you can supplement these great ideas by having some regular freelance work or, you know, pick, pick, a mix, I guess, like a sweet shop. What professions, uh, job roles, do you think lend themselves to this form of employment?

Lydia Wilkins: 

Consultancy, publishing, sometimes journalism, not always. More and more journalists are having to be freelance due to traditional media dying its death. Truth be told, I'm also interested in how content creator has kind of happened as a sort of offshoot of that. Content creation is not bound by the traditional rules of news gathering, which makes it interesting, but it also makes it an issue in some senses.

Chantal Boyle: 

Yeah. So and of course, just to be clear here, Lydia is talking about the profession that she is in and she's not professing to know every kind of job role that has ever been created on the planet. But that just gives some examples of what can lend itself well to that. I mean any creative roles, anything to do with media and art and fashion can work well where you are able to express your ideas.

34:55

We encourage businesses to become members of the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower to support colleagues so that we ask them to create a Sunflower-friendly environment so that colleagues do feel comfortable to share that they have a disability, if they choose to. To share that they might have some access needs and discuss with their employer what they are. I mean, it's really important that when organisations join it becomes embedded as part of their culture and you know, and that there are updates and it isn't like, well, we've just joined it and now we've moved on to another project.

That is really really crucial, absolutely, it's really crucial.

Lydia Wilkins: 35.35

I think that the Sunflower lanyard is an excellent concept. Prior to the pandemic, it was working well, for me particularly. Oddly enough, one of the individuals who were on the founding team actually lives close by to where I live. Added to that, so I knew their partner and they would be walking their dogs at the same time I would walk mine, so we had a conversation about this.

Organizations need to remember that disability is not just a tick box type exercise. It is a continual way to learn and incorporate, and to include it is in a business's best interest. Due to metrics such as the purple pound and the amount of the disabled economy, if you want us to tap into your resources and to buy your product, you're going to need to include us. Very simply, the sunflower lanyard scheme is a way to do this, and it means renewing and continually learning rather than just assuming oh, I did that training, so I understand all of that.

 

Chantal Boyle:

Okay, so final final words have you got a sentence that you would like to say to somebody who is debating whether or not they should bite the bullet and become self-employed or freelancer?

Lydia Wilkins: 37:00

Do it, do it Just. The first thing is I always come back to this idea that the first step is often the one that makes people wobble or to worry. If you have a tangible plan or you have a tangible idea as to a way around with the contacts and with the necessary kind of skill set in order to freelance, what's stopping you? Too often, we have this kind of arbitrary kind of sort of concept where we think that a traditional workplace owes us, a workplace does not owe its employees. They are paying you, but as soon as you're not needed, that's it. I think there's something powerful in recognising that, remembering that and ultimately doing it for yourself. There's something powerful in that, and I think that we need to remember this just a bit more, whether or not we're disabled or non-disabled.

Chantal Boyle: 

Thank you.

Lydia Wilkins: 38:12

Thank you so much and thank you for having me. I'm sorry that I've been sort of like wheezing away in the background sort of like wheezing away in the background.

Chantal Boyle: 38:08

If you are interested in any of the advice discussed in this podcast, please follow up with your GP or healthcare practitioner. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it, leave a rating and review to help raise awareness of non-visible disabilities and the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower. You can also follow and subscribe to The Sunflower Conversations podcast - The Sunflower Conversations podcast.