Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? - Victoria Lenormand: Cacao, Crystals, and Courage: Unconventional Autism Support

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

Description 2 Victoria Lenormand shares her transformative journey from police officer to autism advocate after her son's diagnosis, revealing how unconventional choices led to unexpected healing and growth for her entire family. • Former police officer whose life changed when her son was diagnosed with autism at age three • Faced impossible demands balancing work while trying to help her son fit into traditional school • Discovered during lockdown that her son thrived without school's constraints, rising from bottom to top of his class • Changed diet completely, eliminating trigger foods and focusing on gut health with remarkable results in six weeks • Traveled in a motorhome for three years providing experiential learning rather than traditional education • Explored natural anxiety management using high-quality cacao as an alternative to medication • Found that self-directed learning allowed her son to follow his interests while developing necessary skills • Documented their journey in her book "The Magic of Not Fitting In" available on Amazon and IngramSpark • Now coaches other families, sharing natural approaches to supporting neurodivergent children If you're noticing issues with gut health or anxiety in your child, consider exploring natural approaches like dietary changes and cacao. Visit Victoria's website at geminidirections.co.uk for more information about her coaching and her book. https://whynotme.world Intro music: T. Wild Music: Mantor Music BMI The content on Why Not Me: Embracing Autism amd Mental Health Worldwide, including discussions on mental health, autism, and related topics, is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not reflect those of the podcast, its hosts, or affiliates.Why Not Me is not a medical or mental health professional and does not endorse or verify the accuracy, efficacy, safety of any treatments, programs, or advice discussed.Listeners should consult qualified healthcare professionals, such as licensed therapists, psychologists, or physicians, before making decisions about mental health or autism- related care.Reliance on this podcast's contents is at the listener's own risk. Why Not Me is not liable for any outcomes, financial or otherwise, resulting from actions taken based on the information provided. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Why Not Me, embracing autism and mental health worldwide, hosted by Tony Mantor. Broadcasting from the heart of Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests share their raw, howful stories. Some will spark laughter, others will move you to tears. These real-life journeys inspire, connect, and remind you that your never alone. We're igniting a global movement to empower everyone to make a lasting difference by fostering deep awareness, unwavering acceptance, and profound understanding of autism and mental health. Tune in, be inspired, and join us in transforming the world one story at a time.

Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me, embracing autism and mental health worldwide. Joining us today is Victoria LeNorman. She's a former police officer turned strategic intervention coach, energy worker, and fierce advocate for neurodivergent families and authentic education reform. From navigating her son's autism diagnosis to building a holistic coaching practice rooted in human design, cacao medicine, and compassion, Victoria embodies what it means to rewrite the rules and reclaim your voice. She has a wealth of information and we're just real happy to have her join us today. So before we dive into our episode, we'll be back with an uninterrupted show right after a word from our sponsors.

Thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. I appreciate that. I really do. Oh, it's my pleasure. So if you would, give us a little background on what you do. So I started life as a career police officer in the south of England. I moved with my family to a small island called Guernsey in the Channel Islands and had my second son while I was there. And he was diagnosed with autism, which kind of made things really tricky in my workspace and in his education space.

And although we were doing everything we could to try and tick an awful lot of boxes about what was going to be required for him to be in school, it was an impossible situation. I didn't really understand how impossible that situation was until it impacted us. It was impossible to work and impossible for him to be at school. And just the word impossible seemed to be very, very prevalent for about three years of that everything we took was impossible. And he was going to require a lot of work and a lot of changes. And it started to eat away at me just a little bit.

That's very understandable. When a mother first finds out that her child's autistic, it's the big unknown. So with that said, what were your next steps? Next was, well, firstly, the heartbreak of understanding that I felt life was kind of tough enough and why did my child need this additional challenge as well? Then under the microscope for what I did as a mother, either in pregnancy or before or something to have caused this, there's an awful lot of guilt, awful lot of guilt. And I do think that is just the way that the system speaks to parents of children with autism,

possibly trying to establish what's causing it themselves, but it comes across as a, you've done something wrong because this child is not conforming. That scene kind of continues. The child is not conforming because you're not a good parent. Yes, but we know now that that simply is not true. Only when we bottom out that you're an okay parent, do we start to consider that maybe there's some neurodivergence at play here

or something else. I'll never forget going to the nursery with him and finding him unwelcome in nursery, It was quite shocking to me that we could give up on a child quite that. And it was really quite shocking because he'd eaten a Lego brick and they felt that Lego City may be being built in his stomach and I needed to get him henceforth at A&E and have him in examine. So in A&E I'm talking to a doctor who's saying, well, you won't be feeding him properly

because children who are malnourished eaten on food items. And I said, I think I'm feeding him okay. What's going to be missing? Well, I have to take blood. And so again, it's very accusatory, where you even start. Yeah, that's pretty sad. But in the end, this doctor said he did take blood. He found there was no nutritional deficiency that he could see.

So he put us on the pathway for an autism assessment. That was the first time it had come up. How old was he at that point in time? So he was three at that point. And I felt he was a fairly, yes, robust, yes, active, otherwise fairly typical three-year-old. He ate well, he slept well. I wasn't seeing what they were seeing. A definite need to march to his own tune, absolutely.

But I wasn't seeing the catastrophic problem that it was for the education system. And that's what happened at that particular point. I was made to understand just accommodation was going to have to be made for him, for him to be able to fit in school. And it started a process for me of we're absolutely certain that this is the right place for him and that he must fit. even if it's not right, he must fit. And that started a questioning process.

So my background is in an investigation. And I think I got there eventually once I got through the grief and the upset was I started asking questions. Everything you said is just so understandable. So what was next for you? I understand that you started your own business. I did, yeah. We try very hard with the school to try and get this fit. We had all the care plans.

We had all of the plans that just kept change. The constant phone calls and the constant meetings. And I just couldn't be at my desk and I couldn't be at the school. There wasn't enough of me to go around. So my husband initially put in a request for a reduced hours. I put in the same. We tried to get something to work. And then a bit of a gift for us, the world lockdown.

Okay. And in that lockdown period, I went from having a child that was in the preceding year wanting to die because he didn't fit. Wow. He couldn't understand why he wasn't like the other children, why he couldn't get on this rainbow. He couldn't understand so much. When the world locked down and I said to him, he won't be at school today. You know, things have happened and it's better for children to be at home with their parents.

He said to me, I will do anything, anything, not to go back there, anything. That's a very big statement. First time he'd really verbalized it. We'd had a lot of, I don't want to go, things that, you know, he was saying that he was quite distressed. but not to that extent of I will do anything. And in that period of time, during the lockdown period, we got to see a young man come back, a young boy come back to the person that he was, a relax, he started to change.

He went from the bottom of the class to the top of the class. So much so the teacher asked if I was doing his homework. I'm sure I'm not. He's just worked out that if he does his work when he gets up in the morning, he's got the rest of the day to himself. And because you're not putting the timetable on him, he's just getting it done, barely asking me anything. So he sat next to me, I'm working, he's working, you know, there's barely anything here. That's just great to hear.

Was there any other changes? We also changed his diet. We noticed that he had quite an issue with his tummy from birth. He seemed to have an issue with his digestive system. We were working with a nutritionist. The school had muted that they wanted to do more medication, and I was quite resistant. I'd watch children on medication not be themselves afterwards and I didn't feel that the medication was for him.

I felt it was for the school so that they managed him. So we wouldn't get to see the distress and he wouldn't be able to express it. And I didn't feel that was a reason to medicate a child. So we got a good look at it in lockdown and decided at that point to see what we could do to change our stars and my husband had a message from work saying we're letting you go and I found it very difficult to go in.

It was easier for me to be working from home so that I could keep an art on it. And I saw him improve. I saw him change dramatically. The change in diet was also huge. So change in diet, change in environment. Within about six weeks, I had a completely different child. So going through that, how old is he now?

So he's now, he's going to be 14 next month. 14. Okay. So how is he now? You started out. You was concerned. you saw all the changes. You started homeschooling and then you saw him blossom into something new, fresh and much better. So how is he adapting now, especially going through the teen years?

So he's thriving and yeah, even with the teen years, even with the teen years, he is thriving. We have tried many iterations of a timetable of learning to he could see what was happening. within about six months, threw that out and said, look, I'd just like to do it when I feel like it. I said, okay, as long as the feeling like it works, let's try it. That was the agreement that we have between us is that as a family, we would look at what was working, and we're quite prepared to tweak it and move it around and see how he learns best. Because we lived on a small island, our access to a lot of things, it was wonderful, but it was also limited. It became progressively more expensive to leave for experiences.

We figured out fairly quickly. He learns really well when it's in an environment, when he's in the environment, and he can take it all in. So we decided to move into a motorhome, traveled for three years, bringing experiences to him rather than trying to get him to connect with the experience in a book that was proving challenging. We started because we were on quite a budget. The first time my husband and I had not worked, had an income. The income came from renting out a house, and we traveled in our motor home on that budget. our eldest went off to university in Scotland, and that's how we ended up discovering the delights of Scotland. So we travelled around here, around the UK, then we traced his family tree

back to France, went travelled there, learnt about Second World War, beach landings. He was totally absorbed, so it flowed, learning just flowed, it was so easy. He had questions and we were there on hand to be able to answer him. Were there challenges? Yes, absolutely. there's three of us living in a motor home for about seven months I couldn't believe there was not a crossword between us then he started to get worried about what would happen when it ended

Well that makes sense That was the time to have the conversation with him When he asks the question Rather than preempt it Overplan anything else So we met him at that particular point He said he loved Scotland He wanted to, he was quite happy to leave Guernsey

He didn't feel particularly attached to it And was quite happy to come and live in Scotland and it's very outdoorsy. We've done the Three Peaks Challenge together, and he just loves that life. So he started to, he was writing, and it's all self-directed. And that's the bit that shocked me,

as much as anything, is just once he decompressed, how much he did have that direction, he's always had, I'm going over here, I want to do it this way, I'd like to try this, he's always been quite self-directed.

And I think what was actually really impactful for him in a school is it's so regimented. And there's this idea that, All autistic people need to have a very regimented routine. And that's not entirely true. William didn't tick the box for that at all. He was, I know where I want to be.

I know where I want to go. Now the current interest is rugby. Oh, that's great. Now, what about meltdowns? Autistic people are well known for having them. How is he affected by that? So we still have meltdowns. They were particularly aggressive, particularly violent when he was younger.

no ability to control the level of emotion that was coming up. Now we have strategies that we work with. So the keys are not being overwhelmed, not overwhelming him, allowing him to have that autonomy with his learning and him allowing us to make suggestions as guides and coaches rather than prescribing. We don't prescribe learning for him. We try to encourage it as he's going,

but it's not prescriptive. It's a, we have this sort of, you know, if you try it and you don't like it, you can leave. So there's quite a lot of autonomy in his system and I think that is helping with the reduction in the meltdowns. He's getting older. Current challenges are still social. So in the rugby and scouts groups that he belongs to, if there's a social difficulty in there, something he doesn't quite understand, that tends to be very, very challenging. If his system gets overwhelmed by it, we will still see.

an inability to manage the emotion. So we're still working on it, debating strategies all the time, though. Yes, that's very good that he's adapting. Now, what about focus? It's very well known that autistic people around the world, when they focus on something, they get so intense on it that they will not give up until they know everything about it. Does he tend to get focused like that as well? Absolutely. So if he takes a break, I don't worry about it either, but he will he will drill down until he's satisfied that he's got what he needs, which frequently is further than I would have gone into a subject for his age. I would try to make it age appropriate,

but he will drill down pretty hard into some of these subjects. We did actually take him on a world cruise as well. When my pension came in, we decided to take him around the world and absorb, show him that it's quite a big place, and it's bigger than he thinks it is. That was really a great thing to do. Now, with all the activity that happens on a ship, how did he handle that? Was it good for him? He was amazing. We went on a small cruise ship with a lot of retired people, so he ended up with about 60 sets of grandparents on board a cruise ship, building Lego, entertaining them, playing games,

loving the countries that we went to see, and really understanding that there really are completely different ways of living out here. There's not just one way, which is where he was stuck at that particular point he was quite stuck that there might be one way of doing this. Many ways, many ways, look at this. That's good that he's developing. So with everything that was happening, you became self-employed. Can you expand on that sum? I was watching him with stones and crystals when he was younger.

He was absolutely drawn to them. And he said that he could feel them. You know, there was like electricity. He was describing it like electricity. I can feel it, I can feel it. He would sort of smell people as they were going past. and one occasion when we were travelling, he said to me, you have to tell that lady, she's not very well. And I said, I can't do that.

So you can't just approach a random stranger and tell them that you don't think they're very well. But I understand that you're sensing something. So my business started to develop around holistic practices. It started as coaching. I retrained to the coach as much as anything to learn how to support William. So it would develop my coaching skills, but I also looked at Reiki. I looked at Crystal energies with crystals. and I looked at cacao.

I was looking at a natural way to help him manage that anxiety that comes with trying something a little new. You know, to certain extent, that's perfectly natural for the vast majority of us. But I really wasn't keen on medicating. The body's developing, he's still a young person. So I found a natural alternative in a really, really high-grade cacao. I was using it myself because we were pretty anxious at the time that we were, we were changing a lot.

I've always worked with somebody. We weren't living at a regular and typical life anymore. There were definitely anxious moments. I started with this very high-grade cacao and it's been a part of our lives ever since. So now when he's feeling slightly anxious, he'll ask me for a cacao banana smoothie because the natural properties in cacao, a really high-grade cacao where it's complete with all the cacao butter, minimally processed, no milks, no sugars, no nothing like that. It's a very bitter chocolate. Yes, it's great. I love it. I use it at least twice a day. It's just incredible for the natural response in your body to calm.

I have a smoothie that I make once or twice a day, and that is one of the key ingredients that I put in every time I use it. It's great. Oh, amazing. We're huge fast. You are correct, though. It's very bitter. It is very bitter.

Yes, it is. I add it to everything that I put in my smoothie. Then I add some protein powder. It adds a great texture. Even though it's bitter, it has a... great richness to it. Oh, I'm with you completely. I love the richness.

I'll just have it with warm water myself. You know, and it replaces my morning cup of tea, a cup of coffee or anything else. I'll just have my cacao. And Will reaches for it. If he knows, he's feeling a bit edgy, a little bit anxious. He's starting to recognize this himself. And he'll pop a banana in a blender with his cacao and his oatmeal. And that's it.

He's got a chocolate banana smoothie as far as he's concerned. But it calms him down. Yeah, and that's all that matters, that it works for him. So now are you trying to use foods as ways to help people? Is that the all natural way that you're trying to do? We share our diet. So we worked very closely with the nutritionists around the gut psychology and the gut brain. So we had about six weeks, as I said, it took about six weeks and I had a different child on my hands. And it was intense, but it was lockdown. It was bone broths. It was cleansing the gut. From whatever was distressing it, we couldn't work out. The anxiety was coming from this very upset tummy or the

upset tummy was because of the anxiety. So nobody knew which way around it was. So we decided to try with the nutritionist and he helped us cleanse the gut so I could see if there were foods he was reacting to. And he was so on board. The whole family did it. We all did it with him so he wasn't different in any way, shape or form. We had natural bone broth, organic foods as far as we could possibly do it. Out came dairy, wheat, all of the usual triggers. That all came out until the gut settled. So we had bone broth through about a week every meal a day. But what he loved about it was that he could go to the stove and help himself to as much as he wanted whenever he wanted it. There's no limit on how much of it he could eat. So he was just filling up on bone broth.

It was really amusing to me. I didn't think an eight-year-old would go for that. Yeah, that's great. Now, you said you did it for him, but you said the whole family did it. So I guess my question is, how did it affect the whole family? I said to my husband, I'd had a rash down my arm for as long as I could, both my arms, that have had rashes on them for most of my life. I've always had it. I've never understood why. I've never been poorly.

I've always been very well. And yet, as soon as I changed it, the rash went completely, like it had never been there. And I think I was having some kind of reaction to, it seems to be wheat or dairy. And I think the way we process our food is the thing that has changed so much over the last sort of 50 years. It's barely recognisable.

I really have to hunt to find food that is organic and natural. And it shouldn't be this hard. It should just be food. It's so processed. Yes, it is. And over in the UK and Europe, the stringency of the food is even more than it is here in the US. Yeah. So if you are having a tough time living in the UK to find organic and better foods, just imagine what it is for people around the world. Finding organic foods, you've got one supermarket in Guernsey that would do organic foods. And if the shelves were empty and the ship couldn't come in, that was it. You weren't getting it. Yes, I can fully understand that. Now, going organic or as much organic as you can, you saw a change, even though it took some time. Did you ever think that it was going to be this

kind of change with just changing the food that you was consuming? Absolutely. I never had this in my future. I never had this on the cards anywhere. It was a pivot. I wasn't anticipating, but it was necessary. It's turned out that everybody's benefited. My husband and I feel healthier than we ever have. Our eldest son wasn't too chuffed to start with. He was like, well, what did I do wrong? Well, actually, it's better for you, but his skin cleared up as well. So I'm interested. Has he stayed with it at all? He's experimented a lot more with his diet since we did this. So he was pescatarian for quite some time, realizing he didn't actually like the taste of meat, but he needed fish. He needed a higher

level of protein, so we reintroduced fish. Now he's back, but he was a student for a while, so buying organic meat was not in his budget for ages. I totally get that. Now, I'm not much of a meat eater. I get all my protein from plants, different plants from different parts of the world, give me everything that I need. So I'm as close to being a vegetarian as you can be. without being a vegetarian, all plant base. Amazing. That's where we're experimenting at the moment because of Will's Rugby, too, is like,

how do we reduce it? Because I don't mind having meat in my diet, but I don't want it to be excessive. Yeah, in the same way. I very, very rarely have any meat whatsoever. I mean, I'll go to doctors and they'll say, where do you get your protein from? And I'm going, you're a doctor.

You should know that. I get it from plants. There are side effects, though. You get better cholesterol, you feel better, you just overall are healthier. And people just don't realize that by cutting meat out and going with plant-based, that it can help you tremendously. No, I do agree with you. It's changed dramatically from being shift workers that were kind of grabbing food on the hop

to actually really properly concentrating and being mindful about our nutrition. Absolutely. Now, are fruits a big part of your diet as well? Yeah, we have fruit. So, you know, apples are a big part of our diet. Bananas, fruit, smoothies, lots of grapes, lots of berries. We try to keep it seasonal. More on the veg side. Will's very happy with the salad. As long as it's a plateful, he's fine. It's still got the icing, you know, like it needs to be huge. Well, at least you've taken a situation which you started out thinking was bad. Now it's evolved into something that's turned out to be pretty good for the whole family. It has. I wrote as well as part of the healing process, I think, for me.

I started writing with a lady I was on a course with and asked her if she would sense check it for me for a blog to put on my website. And she said that's not a blog, that's a book. So did you complete it and turn it into a book? Did? I wrote the book. we called it the magic of not fitting in because it kind of summed up what felt like it was hopeless and impossible. There really is a little bit of magic here.

And this little boy, he's just transformed and a determination to go his own way that I think belies his age. He's transformed everybody around him. That's just so inspiring. Now, how can people find the book? So that's on Amazon. And it's on Ingrams Park. So it's on both platforms. Or you can go to my website on.

at Geminiardirections.co.uk. And the links are all on there. Oh, that's great. So in closing, what would you like the listeners to know that you feel is important they hear about what you're doing and of course what you're planning on in the future?

There's a natural way if you can withstand the pressure of conforming and medication. And if you can withstand that and you're listening to your intuition here that there is a natural way to do this that will be supportive of your whole family in this process.

I'm not saying it's a one-size-fits-all thing because I don't believe in that either. But if you're noticing issues with the gut, it's worth looking at the diet because I couldn't believe the change. If you're noticing anxiety, find cacao and give it a go. It's worth a go just to see if it's going to help

and support you in the way that it's supporting us. And I don't think there's enough literature out there around these ways. There's a lot of, there's something wrong. that actually there could be something really right here too. Yeah, yeah, I think that's great. Well, this has been really informative, a good conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on.

Oh, I like Grace. Thank you. I can't believe I'm talking somebody from Nashville. Thank you. Oh, the pleasure's all mine. Thanks again. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you.

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