Part 1/3. So a little more about me, to get to know who I am and where I’ve come from, I grow up with four channels (no SKY T.V.) I’m a direct result of my environment growing up in a mixed-race family my Mom’s heritage is Italian & Irish. My Dad’s Barbadian and South American, my family empowered me to question everything and expect high standards from people in a position of authority but alway show respect to my elders.
My Mom is a typical Italian hard-working, great cook and fashionable.
My Dad, an ambitious but laid back charismatic man. Cool as a cucumber in all situations.
Imagine a house filled with love and laughter. Not perfect, but who’s is really!
My home environment provided me with the means to navigate well — a mixed-raced child who didn’t fit in most situations. However with positive and supportive mother & father building a foundation where being different was okay, ” who wants to be ordinary anyway, – Not me I hear you say” my Mom is a genuine Alpha leader, lion-S guarding her cubs. The foundation I speak of built upon an environment to allow two children to feel secure, loved and happy. Allowing us to try anything, Mom has a can-do anything attitude. Outside we were different in a world too small to understand how insignificant that difference would become. Words can hurt a child that hasn’t the power to physically change their appearance (so be warned and be kind), they cut deep the names embodied their prejudice, at times it was easier to throw words than get to know us. Mom decided the best place for us after one too many run in’s for the local bullies, and she chose the best place for us was a place where children can go to learn the arts, I mean the only place I wouldn’t get bullied is a performing arts school. Well, that’s what my Mom thought! She was right the children at this School had in common interest their love for performance, I shared that love of creativity, I was what you call a natural performer in the rawest sense, as a huge fan of M.J. (Michael Jackson) at the time the world’s “KING of POP”. I would have done anything to learn M.J.’s skill; however, the skills I would be learning weren’t popular music particular or street dance. Oh no, I would be learning the classics , tap, modern and ballet, a boy who did ballet won’t get bullied, right? So I did what all kids of my age would have done, I kept it to myself, but loved every minute!
In return performing arts and this School equipped me for the world in a way no other would have, for that I am forever grateful! Preparing for auditions and early exposure to work ethic and high standards, to this day hasn’t left me. Another area of difference was about to be discovered if being mixed race wasn’t quite enough! The effect would most certainly affect not only the way I perceived myself for life but how others did too in education or peers. About eight years old, I started to present symptoms of Dyslexia. At the time teaches noticed and handled it so well. It was never a massive issue, the beautiful thing about Dyslexia (if there is such a thing) is children with it may be consider stupid quite the opposite. You might be thinking, “well you would say that, if you have it”, while I blow my own trumpet, sat here typing. Children who display symptoms will all present very differently, backwards letters, low reading age, however their I.Q. and vocabulary can be high with a level of understanding. In short complex problems may seem easy and straightforward task more difficult. My mind works in a way that problem-solving comes easy. Still, an easy task I can sometimes make more complex to cause more difficulty for myself. I’m very much creative in life, good with my hands and should have taken up a building trade, my mom say’s, as I loved to build things from a very young age, with lego and empty boxes. The way I learned (visually) i’m very practical and my imagination is something most young boys have plenty of, I remember fantastic adventures that we had playing as a young boy without leaving the comfort of my home, when we were out in the fields the adventure we could have as pirates, space troopers, “oh the joy of being eight again”. While I think back, being dyslexic is a much a part of me as my heritage is, I wouldn’t change that for the world. I share the amazing and complex disability with some great names here are a few.
Jennifer Aniston
Steven Spielberg
Whoopi Goldberg
Henry Winkler
Muhammad Ali
Richard Branson
John Irving
Jay Leno
Danny Glover
Keira Knightley
For support visit these site, or watch this youtube of a dyslexic person explaining the difficulties someone with dyslexia might have https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dPyzFFcG7A&t=64s
https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/
I hope this helps someone who, either has dyslexia to know they aren’t alone