My Facilitation Journey

My Testimony

My story began when I was 17 and beginning to look into future careers.  I was homeschooled and had always struggled with reading, to the point where if there was any reading to be done, I just wouldn't do it. In public, I feared being asked to read something, and when it came to school, my mom provided all of my reading resources through audiobooks. I was able to receive all of my history classes and anything you had to read through an audiobook, it just took a little doing to find them. 

I was looking into engineering or zoology, and I felt I would not be able to receive my textbooks in an audio platform. This created a significant problem for me, so my mom and I decided that we would go to our public school to be evaluated to potentially receive a diagnosis of dyslexia or at least an IEP, which we were hoping would help me with reading at college. The lady who we met with said after evaluating me that there really wouldn't be any need for a diagnosis unless it would be for the purpose of having that title for school, because it was so evident that I had severe dyslexia. We went home after that and since I don't easily get pushed down I started looking up everything I could find out about dyslexia.

I watched Ted talks about it, I listen to books, (some were good, some weren't). One day when I was on YouTube looking up stuff, I stumbled across a video by Axel Goodman, talking about how dyslexia wasn't such a bad thing after all. He listed a whole bunch of famous people whom I knew of such as, Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton. This blew my mind that these two men whom I revered as some of the smartest people I have ever heard of, had the same problem that I did. 

I then went to his website and discovered that he provided a program for people with dyslexia or reading difficulties and could help them to read fluently like a nurotypical person. I learned later on, that that term Neuro typical meant like the rest of everybody else. I saw that he was getting ready to do a trial online reading program for homeschoolers so I talked my mom into signing up; and that is where my life changed after receiving my reading program. 

The changes that I saw, where I was actually able to read for starters, was outstanding to me. I decided that I wanted to share this amazing gift with everybody else who struggles, just like I did. I decided to ask Mr. Axel what he thought of me becoming a facilitator, and he told me that he thought I would make an outstanding facilitator. A few years later down that road of studying, and learning I have now successfully completed my training, and I'm here to help those who struggle just like I did.