Emerging Courageous Online Magazine - Stories/Testimonials
Overcoming Life's Obstacles - Cynthia Ward
I was seven years old when I was
diagnosed with the learning disability called 'Dyslexia'. I didn't
understand what it was, all I knew was that it made school and learning
very hard for me. No matter how
hard I tried, I was always wrong. I would sit and work on something
with everything in me just to turn
it in and have the teacher mark it wrong. There were test I made
pure zeros on because I couldn't read the
questions. I recall once I had been working a math sheet all
day. I'd take it up to the teacher, she'd
tell me to work it again. I hadn't gotten any right. We went back
and forth like this until I had rubbed
holes in my math sheet from working and re-working the problems. I
was near tears and she was at her wits
end. I would feel sick and couldn't even eat I was so upset.
I would sit in the bathroom and cry until the
teacher had to come and get me or send one of the other pupils after me.
I made it to the 3rd. grade
when I was 9-years old. I sill could hardly read. I learned to
despise school.
On top of a learning disability, I had many
medical problems that forced me to be absent a lot. My
doctor told my mother that if nothing changed I would be on dialysis before I
was grown. I was always sick with a kidney infection. The bone
structure in my nose had been deformed from a bad fall I'd had when I was just
an infant. In my walker I walked through an open door and fell down two
flights of stairs. I couldn't
breath through my nose and I kept sinus infections because the fluids
couldn't drain. It seemed I was
always having some type of operation. I was always being poked
and prodded to see what was wrong with
me. Eye doctors, ear nose and throat doctors, kidney specialists,
intelligence tests. But not one 'specialist' could fix any of my problems
until we moved to this small little back woods town in Mississippi
about 20 miles south of Jackson. This small town doctor said that the
kidney infections stemmed from all the ear and sinus infections I had. He sent
me to Jackson to have tubes put in my ears. After that I never had another
problem with my kidneys. If it hadn't been for that small town doctor, I
don't know where I'd be today. By this
By this time, I was 12-years-old and was still in the
3rd grade. I felt completely lost. Always in a daze. Never
knowing what was going on. How to do my work. Even in special
education class, I was behind. My Mother went to my Special Education
teacher to discuss the problems I was having. That's when the teacher told
my mother what she'd already told me. I "would never read past
pre-primmer". After this I told my Mother I wanted to quit
school. And she supported me in that decision. The teacher's
had already given up on me, why should I stay? When we got home that
evening my mother went to our book shelf. She picked one and sat down
with me. "You will fall in love with this story" She said.
"Don't worry about anything, just watch the words. I'll read."
We sat together and she read me the story of Virginia Dare. The second
time she read it to me, she told me I should read any words I knew.
The third time I read the book to her, even though she
had to help me with most of the words. The fourth time I read the book by
myself. I'd spell out any word I
couldn't recognize and she'd tell me what it was. I did fall in love with
that book. It was the only thing I could read, it was mostly because I had
memorized it, but it gave me confidence and made me feel as if I 'could' do it.
I could read. I carried that one book with me for two years and read it
over and over and over. Until I'd see the words and recognize the words
from this book in other books.
Then I picked up Other books, Clara Barton, Molly
Picture, Dolly Madison and I could really read them.
By the age of 16 I was reading novels like Gone with the wind and
anything else I wanted with no trouble.
It was a great feeling. I had also took up writing even though
my spelling was terrible. Everything
was 'sound spelled'. The first thing I ever wrote was a new ending for my
favorite book, 'Virginia Dare'. I
didn't like how it ended, never knowing what really happened to the little
girl or the people of Roanoke
Island, so I simply 'created a new one'. From there my love for
writing grew. I started writing more
seriously when I was 16. That's when I wrote the first draft of
'Sometimes There's A Dove', among many
others yet to be published. I finally received my high school
diploma on my own when I was 26-years-old.. I think every child with
this learning disability needs someone who will be patient and wait for the
child to 'find their nitch'. Everyone has different ways of learning, but
they all 'can' learn.
In August of 2001 I received a contract from
Twilight Times Books for Sometimes There's A Dove.
My life has been a struggle, yet I found the strength to press on and to
overcome. Now I am a published
author, an author who was never supposed to be able to read. I
credit God and His love, and the strength
of my Mother with my accomplishments. When I'd get down, she'd always say,
"Don't give up. Don't quit. Stay in there. No one can
call you a failure if you never quit. How can you fail if you never
quit?" These
words hit me and gave me strength to persevere in the face of everything.
Honestly, I don't know what I
would have done if I hadn't had her for my Mother.