I am dyslexic. I have never hidden this fact, but in celebration of National Dyslexic Awareness Month, I felt it was important to let people know. With degrees from Stanford, Georgetown and UCLA, people give me the benefit of the doubt and assume I am intelligent. But, it wasn’t always that way. Throughout school, I struggled with reading and spelling. I worked hard and over-compensated by learning to verbally express myself and memorize everything I heard. Thanks to a Kindergarten IQ test (verbally given) my struggles with reading and writing were often dismissed as simply an ESL issue. The problem was English was both my first and strongest language. I remember being horrified when I was asked to read aloud in class. And, I learned to memorize things as I heard them and how they looked on a page to hide the jumbling in my head when I saw things. I worked hard to convince people that I wasn’t dumb, but it was frustrating and time consuming. Thank God for the resources at Stanford. I was taught “real” ways to compensate for my disability – in particular, how to read. Even now if you pay close attention you may notice the work my staff does to make up for my dyslexia. Font size and spacing on a document help me read clearer, although I still feel my heart race when I have to read from a script. People are always impressed that I can give long speeches without notes. It’s not out of skill but out of necessity. And, often, I still mess up the order of words which if spoken with enough conviction and passion, people seem to forgive. I am bad with directions, phone numbers and birthdates – and sometimes, if I look too quickly, letters and numbers still look like another language to me. I misspell a ton of things (usually on social media with no spell check.) And, I am still trying to understand idioms and symbolic language. My staff bought me a book, but I probably only get the sayings right about 50% of the time. Birds in hands or bushes just seem pretty much like birds to me. Still, with all of this, I am now very comfortable telling people I am dyslexic. It took some time, but I don’t feel like I am hiding the fact that I am dumb anymore. A lifetime of experiences have made me realize that being dyslexic is not the same as being dumb. But, I am lucky in that regard. So, when the Mother of a 9 year old asked me a few months back to tell people that I was smart AND dyslexic… I waited for the right opportunity. I hope this month you will help other people share their stories with this learning disability and help us all to understand that different is not dumb.
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 05:51:40 +0000
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