I remember one of my first real jobs working at a credit union.
My title was “First Impression Person,” which was a very nice way of saying I was the greeter.
We were running a campaign to bring in new members, and I was tasked with creating a welcome sign. I made something clean. Professional. Eye-catching.
It said: “Reefer a friend today.”
I proudly stood at the front, greeting people as they walked in. And one by one… they read the sign and started laughing.
Some would say it out loud, “reefer a friend?” and laugh even more.
And I remember thinking:
What is so funny?
I looked at the sign again. “Reefer a Friend.”
I didn’t see it.
At the end of the day, a woman came up to me kindly and said:
“I think your sign might be wrong. I think you mean ‘refer’… not reefer. You know… like weed.”
And in that moment, everything dropped.
My face got hot.
My stomach tightened.
And the internal voice kicked in immediately:
Are you stupid?
Why can’t you spell?
How did you not catch that?
This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.
And it definitely wasn’t the last.
The difference between then and now isn’t that I stopped making mistakes like this.
I didn’t.
What changed was my understanding of why it happens.
I didn’t realize I was dyslexic until my daughter was diagnosed at eight years old. Like any mom trying to help her kiddo, I dove in. I read everything I could about dyslexia. How it works. How it shows up. How to support her.
And somewhere in that process, it clicked. Dyslexia is inherited. And I knew immediately where she got it from. Everything I was learning about her…was actually explaining me.
That realization changed everything. Not because the mistakes stopped. But because the shame did.
Before that, every mistake felt like proof of something.
Proof that I wasn’t paying attention.
Proof that I wasn’t capable.
Proof that I was missing something everyone else seemed to get.
After that, it became information.
My brain processes words differently.
That’s not a failure.
That’s a fact.
Now, when it happens, and it still does, I handle it very differently.
The last time it came up was in a work presentation. Someone pointed out a small spelling error.
And I said, “Oh, thank you for catching that. I have dyslexia, so there might be a few more Easter eggs in here.”
And we moved on.
That moment right there, that’s years of work. Because what changed wasn’t the mistake. It was the story I told myself about what the mistake meant.
I’m very open about my dyslexia at work now. And something interesting happens when you name it.
People don’t judge more.
They understand more.
They support more.
What used to feel like something I had to hide has become something that actually builds connection.
And it doesn’t just show up in spelling. It shows up in how I speak sometimes, mixing up words, flipping the order of things.
It shows up in how I process written information.
It shows up in ways that are visible if you’re looking for them.
But here’s the part that doesn’t get talked about enough. Dyslexia isn’t just about what’s harder. It’s also about what’s different.
I can see things in my head in ways that are hard to explain.
I can visualize systems, patterns, and structures through spatial reasoning.
I can connect ideas quickly with big-picture thinking.
I can creatively solve problems from angles that aren’t always obvious.
The same brain that misspelled “refer”…is the same brain that can build, create, and think in ways that have real value.
For a long time, I only saw one side of that.
The mistakes.
The embarrassment.
The feeling of being behind.
Now I see both.
And I’ve realized something important. The goal was never to eliminate the mistakes. The goal was to understand them. To stop attaching my worth to them. To separate what happened…from what I made it mean.
Because the mistake is real. But the story I attach to it? That’s something I’ve had to learn how to rewrite.
I’m still working on that. There are still moments where that old voice shows up. Still moments where I feel the heat, the tension, the instinct to question myself.
But now, there’s something else there too.
Context.
Awareness.
And a different kind of self-talk.
Not “why am I like this?”
But:
This is how my brain works. Now, what do I need to do to work with it?
And that question has changed everything.
If this resonates, I’m starting to write more about what this actually looks like in real life. Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts. I hope they helped you in some way. Take Care.
