The Mad and Crip Theology Podcast

Season 4 Episode 9: Kay Louise Aldred and Katherine Schneider May 30, 2025 • Amy Panton and Miriam Spies

In this episode of the Mad and Crip Theology Podcast, we sit down with Kay Louise Aldred and Kathie Schneider to explore spiritual abuse, belonging, and faith through neurodivergent and disabled lenses.

Kay talks about the urgent need for safeguarding in faith and wellness spaces, especially for neurodivergent women and girls, and shares red and green flags for healthy spiritual communities. Kathie reflects on her life as a blind theologian, her evolving relationship with faith, and how metaphors in scripture can either harm or heal. We ask honest, grounding questions about prayer, interdependence, abuse, and what it means to truly belong.

Based on Kay's piece “Safeguarding Neurodivergent Individuals from Spiritual Abuse” and Kathie’s “Blind Faith: Beyond ‘Amazing Grace’” from the Fall 2024 issue of The Canadian Journal of Theology, Mental Health and Disability.

For the journal click here

To listen to the podcast click here

To watch on YouTube click here 

#educateevolveembody #embodiment #spirituality #depathologise #rehumanise #safeguarding #neurodivergent #spiritualabuse #theology

The Interdisciplinary Witch Conference: Culture, History and Society
York St John University @yorkstjohn Friday, 20 June

Super excited to be delivering a presentation, Gender, Power, and Witchcraft: Women's ‘Spelling’ Lived Experience Storytelling, discussing the four @girlgodbooks anthologies I co-edited, at this progressive & exciting event

Interested? Details & how to book a ticket below 👇

Witches have occupied the academic imagination across disciplines and have in recent years become a rebellious feminist trope. From medieval trials to modern feminist reclamations, from folklore to popular media, witches embody resistance, transformation, and power. Whilst there is lively debate about the meaning and extent of the European and American witch trials and a burgeoning cultural milieu in which the trope of the witch is explored, there is also a growing interest in the practice of witchcraft as an individualised spirituality. This free interdisciplinary conference will explore the figure of the witch in all its historical, literary, sociocultural, political, and spiritual dimensions

#educateevolveembody #embodiment #spirituality #depathologise #rehumanise #interdisciplinary #witch #storytelling #livedexperience

​Bodymind Diversity

"Mind is an embodied phenomenon. Mind, brain, and embodiment are intricately entwined in a single complex system.

We’re not minds riding around in bodies, we’re bodyminds.

A lot of people hear neuro and they think, brain. But the prefix neuro doesn’t mean brain, it means nerve. The neuro in neurodiversity is most usefully understood as a convenient shorthand for the functionality of the whole bodymind and the way the nervous system weaves together cognition and embodiment. 

So neurodiversity refers to the diversity among minds, or among bodyminds."

Dr Nick Walker

I depathologise the diversity, needs & experience of our bodyminds. I work to rehumanise society & to make its institutional spaces hospitable for bodymind diversity.

#educateevolveembody #bodymind #diversity #depathologise #rehumanise

​Chapter 23: Beyond Mind: The Embodied Double Empathy Problem Jill Corbyn & Kay Louise Aldred

Honoured to have coauthored a chapter which will be featured in Dr Damian Milton's upcoming The Double Empathy Reader: Exploring Theory, Neurodivergent Lived Experience and Implications for Practice

The Double Empathy Reader brings together a substantial collection of work from leading researchers, theorists and practitioners, with first-hand accounts of neurodivergent people, to explore this growing area of study within the neurodiversity movement.

This comprehensive handbook explores Damian Milton’s ‘double empathy problem’: the breakdown in mutual understanding that can happen between any two people yet is more likely to occur when people of differing dispositions attempt to interact. It challenges the traditional view that in exchanges between autistic and non-autistic people, this breakdown was simply the result of autistic people being inherently deficient in empathy.

Thirteen years after the theory was first published, The Double Empathy Reader brings together an important volume of work to explore the research that has developed in that time as well as the many gaps in our understanding that still exist, with the aim to understand the potential of this theory to aid a reframing of autism itself and the radical change this could bring when considering best practice models for supporting autistic people in different settings.

This title is the first in a new ‘Readers in Neurodiversity’ series, which follows Milton et al’s The Neurodiversity Reader, first published in 2020. In keeping with this earlier collection, this new volume also explores how the concept of the ‘double empathy problem’ may be of use in wider theory and practice regarding neurodiversity.

Available for preorder now.

#educateevolveembody #embodiment #spirituality #depathologise #rehumanise #autism #doubleempathyproblem #neurodiversity

​Someone asked me this week to comment on Neurodivergence being a difference rather than a disability.

My answer. It's both.

Neurodivergence is a difference - a natural variation of the human bodymind and is a disability due to the way society is currently structured, institutions and workplaces operate and the socially constructed attitudes of normal we collectively adhere to.

I can hold both realities to be true.

Being multiply Neurodivergent I am both disabled in the pathologising and dehumanising society and structures we currently live in

And ..

Am a different but natural variation of human bodymind.

#educateevolveembody #embodiment #spirituality #depathologise

​This coming Tuesday I will complete the 8 week evening facilitation of the first spring/summer Neurodiverse Connection NdWA for Individuals Cohort & begin facilitating the 4 week half day NdWA for Practitioners Cohort 🎉

There's one cohort left with a few spaces to book this season - NdWA for Individuals - which starts Tues 27th May & runs on a Tues evening for 8 weeks 👇

What is the Neurodivergent Wellbeing Approach course?

The Neurodivergent Wellbeing Approach is a holistic, Neurodivergent-friendly wellbeing curriculum that offers education and practical strategies for Neurodivergent individuals, their family members, friends, caregivers, and professionals who support them.

This programme is based on the concept of ‘experience to share’ and is designed to promote the wellbeing of participants, which they can then share with those they care for and support.

Find out more or book now 👇
https://ndconnection.co.uk/ndwatraining

#educateevolveembody #embodiment #spirituality #depathologise #rehumanise #neurodivergent #wellbeing

​The Wisdom of Cerridwen: Transforming in the Cosmic Brew

Delighted - as always - to be featured twice in this powerful latest Girl God Books  anthology, writing about rehumanising & depathologising our embodiment, spirituality & psychic abilities.

A truly fabulous collection of women's writing, art and poetry which is available to purchase now from the Girl God Books website or online stores.

"Her body, as is ours, is the vehicle for change" from my first of my submissions - Embodied Mentorship with the Goddess Cerridwen 

"Things are shifting. Pathologising our intuition, creativity, and internal ways of knowing - plus diminishing and undermining our internal spiritual authority - is no longer possible" - extract from my second submission - Retrieving the Black Rose: Dream Divination, Transformation, and Initiation with Cerridwen

#educateevolveembody #embodiment #spirituality #depathologise #rehumanise #intuition #creativity