Advocate Adjust Accommodate

Hello and Welcome to Joyfully Walking by Faith. 

Have you ever felt like there was something about you that wasn't the same as everyone else? Maybe you are like me and you feel like your brain works differently than most people's brains do. 

My whole academic life I have quietly struggled. I struggled to learn how to read. I struggle with reading comprehension. I struggle to spell words correctly. I struggle with math. I struggled to learn how to tell time on an analog clock. I struggle to retain information unless it is presented verbally, visually, and physically. Essentially I have an undiagnosed learning disability. 

I'll start from the beginning. My mom is not only a teacher but one who has spent a large portion of her career focused on specifically teaching children how to read. I also had an incredible Kindergarten teacher when I was in the public school system.  When I was in this teacher's class she noticed that I was consistently mixing up letters like "b" and "d" and "m" and "w". This issue on top of having difficulty learning how to read are some pretty typical signs of a learning disability called Dyslexia. My teacher made my mom aware of my writing and reading tendencies throughout my time in her class. My mom could see that I was struggling to keep up academically and felt inferior when compared to my fellow classmates. After observing this she made a decision that radically changed my life. She chose to disenroll me from the public school system and homeschool me herself starting my 1st-grade year. This selfless decision gave me a chance to not only survive academically but thrive emotionally. 

I hated school work and looking back now I know it was because I had to work twice as hard as the majority of my peers and it is something that completely drains me. I wanted so much to succeed and achieve levels of success that I had created for myself. But I was limited. I had to oftentimes approach things from multiple different directions before I was able to fully grasp a concept. The hatred that I had for school made me a really irritable child and it made it incredibly difficult for my mom to teach me. Because everything that I was not able to accomplish naturally without accommodations or assistance made me feel like a failure. I was most joyful when I was playing and using my imagination. Because my mom made the selfless choice to homeschool me I was able to have a ratio of imagination to work that helped with the extreme fatigue and frustration that was caused by my failure to reach the appropriate academic benchmarks for my age. I was able to walk outside and completely leave my anxieties behind me and actually enjoy my childhood. I fully believe that I would not have had such a positive and happy childhood if I hadn't had the freedom academically and physically that I was given during those formative years. 

When my time as a homeschooler was coming to a close my family relocated and I began my education in the public school system once again. This time was in so many ways much harder than the first time I had attended school. Because I was older I had developed many coping mechanisms and knew how to accommodate myself silently and in ways that were not noticeable to my fellow classmate or educators. This was when I had to learn how to advocate for myself and ask for help which was something that made me very uncomfortable because that meant that I would have to acknowledge that I was not on the same level as others who were around me. Through middle and high school I worked twice as hard behind the scenes and made it look like I was not struggling. I acted like everything was easy and simple. I pretended I was doing better in classes that my friends were doing well in and I kept my mouth shut when I was struggling because I didn't want anyone to know that I wasn't thriving like everyone else appeared to be doing. 

In my freshman year of high school, I reached a breaking point. I could no longer hide the fact that I was struggling. I had received my first C in a class while fighting incredibly hard to understand the material. You may be thinking that doesn't seem too bad but the C itself wasn't the issue. I was burning myself out physically, emotionally, and mentally trying to keep up. I knew I had a learning disability and I was hoping that I could receive some formal assistance that my stamina so desperately needed. Instead, I was told, by people who didn't know me very well, that I was probably just gifted and was now struggling for the first time and panicking because I had previously had things easy. That could not have been further from the truth. For ten years of my life, I would routinely sit in front of math homework or an English book or a spelling quiz and cry because I was not able to understand what I was doing or I wasn't able to comprehend what I was reading. This is something that my parents witnessed first hand. I was told that I had been accommodating for myself too well and I couldn't get tested for a learning disability. Because I had learned coping mechanisms that helped me reach an average benchmark of education my grades did not reflect the struggle that I was facing every time I picked up a book or faced a math problem.  I felt alone. I felt like the only people that were fighting alongside me were my parents. I felt like I was unsupported. I felt like I was in a silent fight that I could not win. 

As I continued through high school and was honest about my struggles with the teachers that I had built relationships with I was able to receive informal assistance but oftentimes I just continued to silently push through to meet the requirements. I can't even count the number of nights I stayed up until two or three o'clock in the morning working on an assignment just to wake up at 6 and continue it. I would panic when a teacher would assign an assignment that was due the following day. And testing was the worst of all. I have never been good at taking tests. My test scores have never accurately reflected my knowledge or understanding of any topic. When test results would come back I would refuse to share mine with my friends because the scores that they were ashamed to have were scores that I could only dream of having. When it came to testing, my goal was to reach the bare minimum to pass. If I passed I was happy and so were my parents because they understood that it was incredibly difficult for me. 

To this day, reading gives me anxiety. Spelling without spell check is something that I hate doing. And math of any kind can cause panic attacks. I have to constantly reevaluate what learning strategies are still working for me. I have to advocate for myself when I need more time or assistance while crossing my fingers and hoping that my college professors will be understanding and not assume that I am slacking off. I have to accommodate my own needs daily. 

If I am honest as much as this part of my life gives me pain, tears, anxiety, feelings of inferiority, and knocks my self-esteem there are reasons why I am thankful for this struggle.  I know that having an undiagnosed learning disability will make me a more understanding mother to children with special needs. I will be a better mother because I have so much more empathy and understanding for the struggles that my children will face having grown up with struggles and inferiorities of my own. It will also make me a better therapist. I will better know how to relate to my patients as they are fighting to learn how to speak. I will be able to teach them how to advocate for themselves. I will also be able to advocate for my children and my patients just like I learned how to advocate for myself. And lastly, I have an immense amount of love and admiration for my own mother that I don't know that I would have if I hadn't witnessed her sacrifice and all that she did to fight for me and give me a chance at happiness. 

Through this struggle, I have learned how to rely on God when I feel inferior or unqualified. On days when I feel like I am never going to measure up to the expectations that are set before me, I am reminded that my value does not come from my academic success or failure. My value comes from God who created me and loves me regardless of whether or not a win or loses this fight. I am created in his perfect image. I have to remind myself that I am perfect just the way that he made me be. He has made me a stronger, more resilient person through the struggle. I am also reminded that he uses the events and struggles in my life to bring glory to him. I have watched him bring me through this and he is with me as I fight these battles daily. And I have learned how to Joyfully Walk By Faith as I Advocate, Adjust and Accommodate.