JoyGenea- Adult Dyslexia Success Coach gets interviewed by Hans Vroege-Youth Dyslexia Coach. There are three questions that all dyslexic kids should know how other dyslexic adults would answer.
What were the best parts of school when you were in middle school and high school?
What are your top two strengths?
When you were 10, what one thing do you wish someone would have told you until you understood it?
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FULL VIDEO:
PART 1:
PART 2:
PART 3:
PART 4:
PART 5:
TRANSCRIPTION:
Question 1– 00:02:19
Question 2– 00:04:19
Question 3– 00:07:54
Hans
Hey, JoyGenea, it’s good to see you again. We’re bringing you in… oh sorry ok, let’s just…Do it again!
JoyGenea
Na, Just keep going. That’s the beauty of this, we don’t…
Hans
Just keep going. Ok, I can go.
She’s the person that if you felt like you were ostracized in your childhood, you had an IEP and you don’t really feel like you don’t know where you’re going. You feel like you don’t really have the worth. She’ll help you realize the categories in life that you are strong in and figure out a path to create a beautiful life around those categories.
JoyGenea
That was so nicely said. Thank you, I get- your strengths just blossom through. Great work. I love it. I I am dyslexic myself and I come from a long line of dyslexics. We have, we have researched it back and we’re like ‘Oh yeah, that. Ohh, definitely that one. Oh, yeah, look at this writing from great Grandpa so and so’ like. We, we’ve, we’ve traced it back there. So, it’s it’s a it’s a gift within our family that continues to spread.
Hans
Yeah, yeah, I share that with you as well, JoyGenea. I remember one time I got my lefts and rights confused in front of my grandpa and off hand, he was like, ‘You know, I could never get my lefts and rights figured out.’ He became an engineer and became a successful businessman. Those were pretty typical dyslexic hallmarks right there.
JoyGenea
Ohh and it’s so nice, and he was comfortable with it. Yeah, that was nice. He leaned over to be like, ‘hey, kiddo it, just ya, welcome to the club.’
Hans
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, I don’t take, I don’t take or give directions well in the car, but all my friends know that if I tell them to take a left, they just take a right.
JoyGenea
We give directions in our vehicle like if I’m with my family by hand signals. You like sit up-
Hans
Go that way or that way.
JoyGenea
Yep yep, but you don’t listen to a word people say. You’re just like, oh, their hand went right. OK, go that way. Now we’ve been…
Hans
Go towards the red barn, not towards the field.
JoyGenea
Yeah, GPS is a gift for us, for us, not gifted.
Hans
Yeah, that’s definitely funny. Although I can actually navigate just fine on my own, it’s just telling other people how to get somewhere. I’ll just tell them the exact opposite way to go.
JoyGenea
It happens later in us, it just gets messed up. I know.
00:02:19 Hans
Yeah, yeah. So anyways, we brought you here to talk about your experience here with dyslexia, and I got a couple of questions for you. The first question I got is, what’s the best thing about school? I mean, since dyslexics, they hate school. I hated school, but there are also good things about school. What were the things– keep it to three– that you liked?
JoyGenea
I, when I look back at school I went to shop class and I loved it. I remember being, like I did, I I made this mahogany bench. I could show it to you and I like, I remember making it I remember standing. I remember all the power tools. I remember loving every minute of it and and that that was it. Then I wish, I desperately wish somebody had pulled me aside and said one, girls can do this, there’s there’s a world for this, and girls can do this and, you know, with your other things, you probably have a lot of skills, mechanical skills and like, you’re probably gifted at this. I I really I wish somebody said that. So I did. I loved shop class and and thoroughly enjoyed that.
And then I love to sing. And one of the things I always made sure I did, I was in little singing groups that went to nursing homes and sang for people and did little shows.
Hans
Oh fun.
JoyGenea
It was really fun and and then I was always in choir and I did do drama and there was always a musical or something and that’s why I got up, and went to school like without those things it would have been really tough, but I found a few Nuggets in there that I’m like, oh yeah, I want to do this.
Hans
Life life preservers in the Drowning Pool.
JoyGenea
Oh, my God, they were. They were my arm floaties, you know when you’re a kid and you got floaties [laughing]
Hans
Yeah, you could tell- [laughing] yeah, my gosh for me, my life preserver was making my teacher laugh otherwise they couldn’t. I mean besides that if I didn’t get that type of positive reinforcement reinforcement, I was done. I was done.
JoyGenea
I know I hear you.
So what’s your next question?
00:04:19 Hans
Yeah, yeah, I’d love to get it to the second one here. Ok, So what are your, in life, top two strengths?
JoyGenea
Creative problem solving, which-
Hans
Can you give me an example?
JoyGenea
Which ohh man, um so I am, I’m a retired volunteer firefighter. I also plowed snow at some point. I have a degree in civil engineering and land surveying. I have a very diverse background, and what I found out is you could, similar to you Hans, you can drop me into a wide variety of circumstances and I am going to Jenga chameleon, and somehow like I, I’m going to look at things and put the craziest things together and be like OK, we need to do this and then this and then people need to go over here and like I I will just I will see. I will creatively problem solve situations in ways that other people– I can see that I can see the path, but I’m gonna think about 10 other options and bring those all into play and I’m going to literally see them visually, so that’s always part of it. And one of the-
Hans
Having vision.
JoyGenea
Yes, I know you’re high vision too. It’s it’s one-
Hans
Yeah, important being able to look at a plot of land and think of 10 different things that can go on top of that. It’s an important skill to have.
JoyGenea
When I worked in civil engineering and developed land my favorite moment was when people would take me up in an airplane to see around the area because I saw the world from up there. And when we would get up there like ‘Ohh I designed that. I know where all those roads are.’ I’m like I helped build that development. It was really cool. So that spacial thing. I have that.
And then the second, the second thing for me and this actually came because of this because of going to school with dyslexia and their inability to know what to do with my dyslexic thinking and not knowing how to how to grow that and and prosper and stuff, but because of that.
Hans
Yeah, I know.
JoyGenea
I have an immense amount of empathy for people and I have an immense amount of compassion and understanding that I’ve come to understand other people who didn’t experience growth like that at an early age, they don’t have, they don’t have that and it’s made me a good coach. Like it’s what’s allowed me to to get into this and have some really deep, rich conversations, and I’m so I’m grateful for it. It turned, it turned it into a great strength, but I have to admit, while I was building that strength, I was not happy about, I was really upset.
Hans
The amount of tears that I shed. I mean, if you collected them all, they’d fill up bathtubs, in school. It’s unbelievable.
JoyGenea
But we persevered like you just you keep going, though it’s like, I will. I will, yeah. We get through it.
Hans
And then once you get through it, everything else in life is a lot easier to be honest with you, I mean people who struggle early in life are often the most successful people. I mean someone that I think of off the top of my head is my own father. He’s not dyslexic, but he lost his father when he was 15 and that gave him his– Yeah, it was really tough–, but that gave him a specific type of grit and a specific type of drive, and he immigrated from the Netherlands to America, and he made a fantastic life for himself, and he works harder than most people that I’ve ever met, and he’s highly respected in our communities. And a lot of that comes from, the the adverse childhood that he had, you know, so it’s true, I mean dyslexia is the same thing, just not, not necessarily losing a father, but having an adverse childhood makes us strong.
JoyGenea
Yeah, come in handy.
00:07:54 Hans
One more question for you real quick when you were 10,
JoyGenea
Oh, OK, I I can see her.
Hans
Yeah fifth grade. What do you wish someone told you about dyslexia, like, what do you wish someone sat you down and and told you? Like, hey, this is the reality. You might not believe it now, but in 15 years, you’re gonna look back and you’re gonna agree with it.
JoyGenea
Well, I I really wish somebody had sat me down and just explained this, your life is this long. Your life is probably 100 years. This is this little tiny part right here, and even and and nobody’s nobody’s really going to care, and you’re gonna get past this, and you’re going to go off and do amazing incredible– like, really, you are going to go do these, you’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna go off and be a firefighter, and you’re gonna learn accounting and you’re gonna build, you know like you’re gonna plow snow and do all these things. If if somebody had sat me down and said you, you will use these skills you have. If somebody had said you’re just a dyslexic thinker, you got all these things, you got some killer weaknesses and and we’re working on that with you, so you can read this is really, really important, and so we got to fight for this, but Man, this section over here this is going to be your life for the next 80 years, so let’s just get through this little section. Like I really I understand big things big picture, and I wish they’d talked to me in big picture and been like. This is this little part.
Hans
Totally. It’s only 15% of your life if you’re living for 100 years, right? And you know the beautiful thing about being done with the school is that you get to craft your life around yourself. So sure, you’re not strong in school. That’s that sucks. But once you’re outside of school, guess what? Your grades don’t matter. You got a degree in your pocket. A company is gonna hire you. What do you wanna do? You find the job that you wanna do.
JoyGenea
Well, we never stop learning. I know you, Hans, are a constant learner. I’m a constant learner. I just get to learn the way I learn, which is through video through interactive somebody hands me something and I go well, how’d you do that and they show me, and then I do it, and I’m like, oh my God, and then I do it again like you know those types of.
Hans
I know exactly what you’re talking about. I mean, I honestly didn’t figure out how I learned until I graduated from college, simply because there was so much stress and cortisol in my body and I did not have enough time to even explore that, let alone the energy to to to like figure out OK, this is how I actually like to live or learn let me apply this in my school setting, I was never given the opportunity, the space or the breadth to understand that about myself. So the moment I left college, you know, I started. I stopped learning and then I started getting real curious because dyslexics are naturally curious and then I figured out how to learn finally, you know.
JoyGenea
Yes, that’s the that’s the beauty. That’s what I would love to grab my 10 year old and be like, listen to this like this and and listen to it again and again and again, because you are you know, you’re gonna do good things, and you’re gonna be happy. That’s another thing somebody could have told me, I was gonna be happy because at that point, I was not a happy kid that was hard and I could have used somebody being like remember 80% of this, you’re gonna be really happy. Just get through this little sad stint in here.
Hans
Right.
JoyGenea
and don’t drag it with like when you get done. Just walk away like be like, ‘Wooo yeah! We’re done.’
Hans
Ohh do I know that? I know that feeling completely.
JoyGenea
That’s just it. Most all most of us do like that’s exactly how that feels.
Hans
The breath of fresh air that I finally took when I got my college diploma. I was like, finally I do not have to play their game. I can play my game.
JoyGenea
Its graduating- If you’re not dyslexic, or you have not had to overcome some serious adversity, you don’t understand what graduation means. It meant I got to graduate out of an entire system out of an entire way of life that I needed to participate in.
Hans
I got it. I got to graduate from feeling I’m drowning every single day.
JoyGenea
And then I got to start my life, then I got to be in in the space where I had control and I could use those skills and and build them up so, thank you, Hans for letting me share this like this feels so good.
Hans
Well, thank you so much for taking the time and chatting with me.
JoyGenea
Perfect. Talk to you later.