Stephanie’s exhibition brought forth so many truths of a still raw subject for me. As an artist myself I tried in 2008 to use dyslexia as my subject matter with not a lot of success. I painted walls black like a black board and just expressed all the years of pain. How it made me feel with the written word as I right, so filled with many mistakes. However, the general consensus seemed to be that people would just point out the mistakes and then not bother to read, it was extremely infuriating.
Ignorance regarding Dyslexia is only a part of the problem, the biggest problem we face in our society and in our education systems is the way we view intelligence. There are many different types of intelligence. Everyone has a right to be seen as an intelligent human being. Our thinking is still so linear on the subject and it's getting old.
I received my first shot of pain at the hand of ignorance to dyslexia when I was in infants’ school. I came home crying a teacher had read in my file that I had dyslexia and told me I had an illness. I did not know what dyslexia was yet.
It is actually ironic and the most ignorant comments that are mostly stated are ‘you can’t spell that' 'you miss read that' therefore you must be stupid.
Shockingly this is still a comment I hear today. Sadly in so many places I have been and by people I would never had expected even family members out of lack of knowledge of the subject.
Their words, even though you know that this is not true, penetrate my skin and live in it. It still stands in the way of everything I do there's always their voices still saying I'm stupid , not good enough, lazy.
Lazy that's quite an ironic comment because as a dyslexic child your mind is working faster than others to solve the problems others can solve easily. But the amazing thing about the mind is, it can’t slow down, it speeds up. Have you ever tried reading when the words literally jump off the page and try to hide from you at the same time 100 images of the first word you read flash through your head like spam that won't stop. Well for some reason to try to make sense of the page you are reading your mind highlights random letters with white lights.
There are many advantages of being dyslexic however that is as unique as the individuals that have it. As an adult with dyslexia your mind has formed new mental pathways in completely different places than usual we literally think differently.
Spatial awareness and visual memory is heightened.
My emotional attachment to physical objects is high.
When someone says something for instance, a strawberry, I can see 100 different pictures of a strawberry the texture the taste the smell.
However you tell me what image does a ‘the’ have?
A big elephant-can always use small exits.
Now there that's better I cannot forget an image. Another example, would, should and could what image do they have?
Ooo you love donuts. There that's better.
One of the many discussions I had with Stephanie although sometimes we all started in the middle of the conversation or at the end because we had already finished the conversation inside our heads, it was about this point we sometimes work backwards or just forward which I believe can really be hard to explain, so how do you hope to achieve this? I have no idea however this is how it will end.
I have left many people very frustrated including myself when the person I'm talking to does not understand how we got there. I just don't know.
Is 👍🏻extremely🤚🏻 hard 💪🏻however👈🏻 to stay 👄on 👀subject 🎭🎨🥁🎯🎹🎲🎻🎸🎺🚀🗽🎠when 🙇🏻🙇🏻♀️😂😊👍🏻🤣👀👈🏻😃🎃👎🏻👄👂👱🏼👶🏻👶🏻👯👩❤️👩🚶🏻👨👨👧👨👩👦👦👠🎒🐭👜💼👓🙈🐗🦉🐧🦀🦎🦐🐢🦀🐳🌳🍀🐉🌲🍀🍀100 🐈🦍different 🐎🐕things 🎤🎧🎻🎮🎸🎳🎺🎷🥁🎲📺📸☎️⏰🕰🔌📡🔑🛁🚰🌡📕📘👚👙👡👑🎩👢🎓are 👆🏻🚶🏻♀️🚶🏻🏃🏼♀️🏃🏾going 🏃🏾🚶🏻♀️🏃🏼♀️🚶🏻♀️🏃🏾through 👌🏻your👩🏻⚖️head 🙃🗣👤👥•
