Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of Vet Chat. Today I'm delighted to welcome our guest, Peter Swabe. Kea is a devoted wife and mother of 4 beautiful children.
She is the author of Empowering Dyslexic, Blessed and Gifted, a powerful book written to educate, inspire, and create more awareness of dyslexia. The book shares Keisha's journey of undiagnosed dyslexia and dyspraxia up until her diagnosis at the age of 41. Keisha is also an international inspirational speaker.
She's one of the top 50 influential neurodivergent women on the Northern Power Women Future lists and is part of the We Are City 100 list. He's on a mission to inspire, educate, empower and create more awareness of dyslexia and dyspraia. So welcome to that chat.
It's wonderful to have you with me today. Oh, thank you so much, Katherine. Thank you.
So neurodiversity in the veterinary profession is really starting to get a lot of attention now, which is amazing. So on previous episodes of Vetchat we've discussed, neurodiverse conditions such as autism and ADHD, and they were really well. Received by our listeners.
So we wanted to keep the awareness and the conversations going. So today, it's brilliant to have you here to, discuss dyslexia, which is something that we haven't yet covered. So thank you so much, really appreciate you being here.
Oh, you're welcome. Thank you very much. So do you mind just telling us a little bit about your personal experiences with dyslexia?
Yeah, definitely. I grew up in Jamaica at the age of the age of 14 I got the opportunity to come to the UK. However, when I was growing up in Jamaica, I was having a lot of struggles in school, really, really behind with certain things, having some challenges that I didn't know what was going on at the time.
And in school I redeveloped a phobia of maths because until today I still don't like maths because when we didn't know our timetable we used to get a strike in our hand with a belt, you know, for remembering our timetable. So that was going on at the time and when I came to the UK at 14, things was really difficult. I started coming to a new country, left all my family behind back in Jamaica and when I came in June, I started school in September.
So you can imagine the sun coming from the sunshine, great food, everything else, and then starting school in September when it's so cold and it started school and it was just it just started becoming more apparent really because the challenges were there and coming from a different country with a different curriculum that we were studying and I just didn't understand any of it at all. So, and it started when I started school, I got bullied because of my accent, the way that I sounded. I was a new girl on the block and everybody wanted to take the mick really.
So I got bullied. So that caused me to mute myself for a long time, so I didn't want to speak. I didn't want to speak up in class because I felt stupid and I.
I want to be the one who, you know, really stands out already getting bullied, so why I'm going to put myself out there a bit more. So yeah, that was going on and I also had the undiagnosed condition of dyspraxia which I didn't know about at the time. So hence when I was in school I would often Drop things in PE I'd often struggle, I love netball, but the catching the ball sometimes with my coordination just wouldn't work in my body and my legs at the same time, often trip over as well.
A lot of that was going on, losing things. I remember my aunt used to have to always buy new pee kit for me because I'm always losing stuff and that was due to the the dyspraxia and then you know all my organisational skills. So yeah, and then fast forward I left school without a single GCSE.
I just didn't understand the the the curriculum that was being taught. I didn't get it. I didn't know anything about industrial revolution, I didn't know about the railway industry that was going on in the UK.
So history for me that's one of the biggest struggle. However, when I left school, no GCSEs, I was absolutely devastated. I remember my grand driving all the way from Manchester with my aunt to come to the school to collect that piece of paper that you get with the results, and when I got there and opened it, I just told them what I got, and it was just, you know, you could tell really because no you want, you want the best for your grandchildren or whoever you with, yeah.
So, but I was determined because I actually love reading and I love words. And I thought, you know what, I am not going to not just satisfied with just leaving school without a GCSE. So I went on to achieve my English language when I moved to Manchester in 1994.
Yeah, so yeah, there's so much to talk about, give you a chance now to ask another question. That's good forever. Oh no, thank you for that.
That must have been so, so tough. And obviously because you got diagnosed so later in life, you just had no idea. No, no idea.
So I, I guess. I mean, linking it to the veterans service services that you provide, I mean, it seems like being dyslexic in that area, you have so much more big thinking skills, but we'll come on a little bit more to that later on we'll touch a bit deeper into that. Yeah, OK, brilliant.
So how would you explain dyslexia to somebody who might not be familiar with the condition? OK, so every dyslexic person may have their own different challenges. If you meet 12 dyslexic people, you just met one, you know, you, you just met one, you just met one because we're all so different in our own way and things and the strengths and the challenges that We all have is different and then you have to think about the other things that's against me intersectionalities such as race, gender, all of those things that come with it as well.
So for me, the way dyslexia show in my life and all the way through was, I was always, I always struggled to retain information, so memory was a problem, always been a problem still is today. Because dyslexia is not something that you can get over. It's a hereditary condition.
So if someone has it in your family, what chances are it's gonna pass down to someone in as generations go on. So for me, it was remembering things. I've been writing things but I I put, I missed words out.
Or I put it in the wrong place or it's in the wrong context. So comprehension has always been a difficult thing. So writing reports was a struggle.
So and I'm gonna give you some tips and stuff later on and how you can help with that in regards to the the profession that you're in. But for me, it showed up in the way of I am brilliant at other things like communication, my emphasis skills, networking, connecting with people, connecting the bigger picture, seeing the bigger picture, my creative skills, hence I do what I do in the creative arts, because that's how we work. So for me, the challenge is I'll write something.
I remember when I was doing my degree and my masters, the challenges that I was having there a lot was apparent and it became a lot more apparent recently last week or so and I'll tell you a little bit more about that later on, but for me it's. Comprehension, following instructions. So if you gave me an IKEA thing, don't expect I'm going to sit there and read the whole instruction of it because I'm not going to retain it.
But if I try to do it hands on because I'm a visual person, I'll be able to do it by just do it without even looking at it because my vision sees things differently in my creativity. So there's there's a lot of elements really. I post out on on Facebook and things like that and there's a word missing or there's something not right, so it's my literacy, all of those things, but it doesn't mean that it has anything to do with the intelligence and the way you are, IQ and everything else, but for everyone it's completely different, yeah.
So this, yeah. OK, brilliant. And do you think that could be a common misconception about sexia?
Like, do you think sometimes people think you're not intelligent because of these things? I get that a lot and this is why I'm, I've always been champion awareness, especially in the black community because The simple thing is there's so many myths and misconceptions about dyslexia and the lack of awareness and understanding of it where people think that oh, I cannot disclose that I'm dyslexic, especially in the workplace because people are going to think less of me, you know, they think that I'm not bright enough, not clever enough, I'm not capable, you know, and that comes from the lack of People for a long time people hasn't been championing the greatness of being dyslexic, so I own it personally for me as my superpower and that's what it makes me the person that I am and it's a massive part of me and I can't change that was because of the misconceptions and embarrassment, the stigma, the shame that attached to it, a lot of people just won't open up and and and own it and say that I am dyslexic because of opinions really. Yeah.
Yeah, it must be so tough, and I think it's incredible what you're doing, and I think the more that people, you know, speak up, the more awareness they'll be and the more, you know, they'll be out there, more inclusive workplaces. Do you want to become a part of the largest online veterinary community in the world? The webinar vet's membership is the perfect tool to easily complete your veterinary CPD or CE.
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OK, brilliant. So you touched on it briefly, just before, but what sort of ways, have you found to kind of work around these challenges? Any sort of tips about how to overcome them?
Definitely and I'm going to, going to touch on the side of the profession and the industry that you're in. I mean, for example, you may have people within that that service that they don't even know that they're dyslexic, you know, they might be, they might have seen things in their life that show keep showing up, but they've not looked deep and think, you know, I might be dyslexic and I'm going back again to the to the to the awareness, the understanding of it, people just not getting what it is. But for me, .
In the work tips it's like reports, so someone who is dyslexic or suspect suspected on diagnosed dyslexia, you would, I'm going to give you tips in regards to the workplace and profession now. So things like writing reports, ensuring that you have somebody else to check your work because we often make silly little errors in there, doesn't mean that it's got anything to do with the quality of the work, but it's just that bleepers might get in there somewhere. So having in the work.
Having that support, having that openness as well and awareness so that people don't feel ashamed to come and speak to the team leader, the manager or the or the boss, whoever it may be in that workplace and say, you know what, I've noticed something going on with me or the fact that I may have dyslexia or I may have something going on. Because what happens is with neurodiversity, once you have something going on, there's possibly an overlap of of other conditions. For example, for me, mine is, I also have a bit of ADHD thrown in there as well because of the overlap of the way things are with the conditions.
So yeah, in the workplace, ensuring that things are checked properly, ensuring that you create an atmosphere that people can be open to talk about a diagnosis, whether they're undiagnosed or they know they have been diagnosed and Ensuring that the workplace is kind of welcoming and understand these things so that the colleagues can support them, you know, it's a simple little thing like asking another colleague to say, you know, I've written this report or can you check this this pets report and what I've written around about it to make sure that all the everything makes sense and also ensuring that the not too much information overload as well if you're giving that information, not chunks and chunks of. Of paragraphs, bullet point, bullet point, bullet point, straight to the information. No long meetings either because your brain gets really tired in a while after a while and some meetings can really take a lot of energy out of you, ensuring that you are taking time out as well, that's very, very key, especially self-care, taking the time out to look after yourself and because you can become overwhelmed with all the information that's going on around you and having things like sensory as well, yeah, lot of that.
OK, brilliant. Oh no, that's great advice. Thank you.
Do you mind if we touch a little bit on now about your, diagnosis? Like how did that happen at the age of 41, because that is a lot of people might think that is quite late on. Right, OK, so I was in the workplace and I worked for local government for a long time, so I spent 17 years in the corporate world.
However, in local government, 2016, there was a lot going on and I started going through a lot of things, so, firstly I was suffering from anxiety, really bad anxiety because I was just struggling, really struggling on my own and not knowing what was going on. Then I had depression also going on at the time. And so when I was in the workplace, I decided, I remember driving to work one day and I had to pull over on the on the on the sidewalk and call my my husband and I was crying and then I call my workplace and said, I really can't come in today because I was just palpitations.
I'm really struggling and We had a chat with me and my husband because we got 4 children. It was his decision. So he said you have to do something about this.
This is really, you know, it's affecting your health in a massive way, affecting our home life. So I decided to always had a dream of achieving a degree. Because when I came to the UK, my grandma always sent to houses and they always have this cap and gown thing and I always thought one day, you know, I'd really like to know what you need to do to get that and one day I'm going to do it.
So 2016 I thought, right, this is the time now I need to go and do my degree. I need to continue studying, gave up my job, applied for a foundation degree because I left school with no GCSE so I had to start from the bottom. Did my foundation degree, passed that.
Still going on with the with the struggling in the background whilst I was studying because imagine spending 17 years in the corporate world and then having to learn how to reference, how to write academically to sound in the way that it should do, and there was all this going on at the time. So after I done my my foundation degree, I went out to do the top-up degree that gives me the full BSA. So when I was doing it, I was still struggling, lot of things and I was I was getting through it, but I was working really hard, really, really hard.
And then one day I thought I'm gonna make an effort to get someone to check my work because I'm coming up to the end of it now, dissertation is done and during my dissertation and I had this lady in the library called Leslie and we became really good friends and she always said to me, you know, if you want to know where to check just bring it in and check it. So I did that one day I thought let Leslie check my work, sent it to Leslie and lo and behold the spell checker wasn't working on my laptop. So when she got it, I, she read it through and put all the stuff that I highlighted in there and she said to me, I went back to her and she said to me, Keisha, I didn't know that you're dyslexic, and honestly, Catherine, that was the most life changing moment that woman has, she's changed my life so much.
Even last night I was speaking to her because She made it and she said, Yeah, I see the way you write things because I have a brother who is also dyslexic. And I was like, Right, well, it's like the light came through the ceiling in the library or something and I was like, God, dyslexia, right? So I was leaving, so I had to get everything done because I'd have to pay for it.
So they got me diagnosed, 3 hours of tests, and I remember the lady saying to me, I don't know how you got this far in your studies. You are severely dyslexic and dyspraxic. And I was like, OK.
Right, so that changed everything for me, totally changed my life because finally, finally, finally I knew what it was and I was able to understand myself more, why did I do things the way I do things and when I found that out, it was life changing because then I thought. Have to go on now and be an advocate for not just myself. My children are also neurodis, so I've got a daughter who is 22.
She's dyspraxic, my one is dyspraxic and dyspraxia, and boy going through ADHD testing. So it's in my family, so it's very close to my heart. So when I found out that changed.
And start all my advocacy work and doing all the work to make things better for people who are dyslexic really. Wow, that's incredible. So had it not been for your spell checker not working, you still might no, it's all.
I put it down to the way things work in your life is sometimes you have to give up the good for the great because I was in a good job, everything else, and then if I, I could have stayed in that job forever and just get my pension and just retire my walking stick from there, but. There was something else that was calling and out of all the pain that I've gone through, it's called amazing purpose and the passion and to make a difference really not just for myself but everyone. I don't want anyone to go through their life and be diagnosed in the 40s with dyslexia or dyspraxia.
Like, it's incredible. So if people are listening to your story now and they may be thinking. You know that that could be me.
I could be struggling in this way because of this. And are there any sort of like support systems out there or what sort of steps would you advise? Definitely.
Any anyone out there who suspect anything, especially with your children as well, also that's a massive thing. If you have children, keep an eye on them and their learning styles, keep an eye on what they're passionate about, keep an eye on what they struggle with, you know, in the school and that's how I identified what my children to support them and help them. I that's key.
So anyone who's out there, the most important thing is to talk to other people who are going through the same thing. It's so important that you can have that relatability because what I found when I speak to another dyslexic and when we share our story, it's so relevant, different in various elements, but very, very close to what we both, what we go through. So speaking of.
Getting the right support, so you have organisations like British BDA, which is the British Dyslexic Association, and they can go on to that. They can reach out to me if they wanted to help because what I find a lot of people who are studying. Then to reach out to me that's struggling in the in the in the academia with the work support as well.
So it's important to get that, have that network around your people who understand and don't be ashamed, don't be ashamed, not just you that's going through that. I noticed when I opened up and came out that I was dyslexic. So many people were coming to me and saying I've been struggling for so long, but I didn't know because no one was talking about it and now here you are talking about it and we can connect, you really do connect.
So getting that support, talking to persons, talking to people and if you do get diagnosis. Learn to understand and work with your strengths rather than focus on your weaknesses, you know, the challenges that you have, don't, don't get hung up on them if you are hung up on certain things in your work or whatever. These things like skill swap, I'm really big on this where if Catherine, you've got a task that you want doing, but I, I might be able to do it better because that's my forte.
It might be a flyer to do, but I'm more creative in that way, so. You can swap vice versa and get somebody else to. If you don't like do reports, get somebody else to do it and then you do something that they don't like.
So those all the things that they out there can help you really and just be open, be open, don't hide in silent and so forth. Yeah, that's brilliant advice. Thank you.
And you're on Facebook, did you say that I'm on LinkedIn. My whole network is on LinkedIn of neurodiversity. So I'm Keisha Adewabi on LinkedIn, same on Facebook and also on Instagram and empowering Dyslexics 777 on Instagram as well.
You can connect with me and reach out to me. You may just have a question. You may think that's a silly question, but no question is a silly question, so just reach out and ask me.
Oh, thank you. And what we'll do when we release this on the blog, we'll put the links to all those so people can find you easily on the there. Thank you.
OK, wonderful. We're just running out of time already, but is there anything that we've not kind of gone over that you'd really like to mention to our listeners? Yeah, I'd like to touch a little bit on on dyspraxia because we, yeah, but a lot of people don't know much about dyspraxia.
So dyspraxia is like a coordination coordination and development disorder. And what happens is, is when your, your brain is not connecting with your, your sense is not connecting with your body at the same time. For example, challenges I have is I may be walking up the stairs and I trip up the stairs or I trip down the stairs because my mind is not telling my feet to step in when it should step.
So those things catching a ball, simple little things like I always have this as a joke. I'm the only black woman who is unable to do the candy dance with the traditional dance that would do. In our culture and I have the rhythm, but my coordination to do it is just not there was you know I so great all the things, dropping things as well.
I used to when I was growing up I used to get all clumsy quite a lot because I'd walk into chair, walk into the road, yeah, I do walk into the road as well and walking doors, everything, you know, so it's those things trip over, you know, might be just walking and just tripping over myself constantly, yeah, remembering things as well, yeah. OK, brilliant, thank you. Oh, well, thank you so much, and I just also wanted to mention your book because I know that you've incredibly written a book amongst everything else that you're doing, so again, we'll put that, on the blog.
I'm gonna get a copy myself for my holidays. I'm really looking forward to reading it. Oh, no, thank you so much for joining me today and to talk about dyslexia and to such fun dyspraxia as well.
Maybe we should do another podcast on that as well and yeah, because, dyslexia tend to get a lot of attention. However, dyspraxia is often not so much is known about it, yeah. OK, brilliant.
That would be great. Thank you so much. I've really, really enjoyed.
You're welcome. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you.
Oh, no problem. Thanks. Bye.
Bye.
