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My name is Naomi Louise Rae B.A.(Hons) P.G Dip, M.Sc. and I have lived within the Lancaster and Morecambe area of Lancashire for most of my life. I was born and was raised here and after leaving Ripley C of E Secondary School, Lancaster and later leaving Lancaster and Morecambe College, I lived in the South of England for many years. During this time, I studied my first degree in Art and Design. On completion of my degree, my designs featured in Vogue and many interior design magazines and during this time I held contemporary art shows around the country including a show of my art work at Lancaster Museum.

After this, I moved back to Lancaster to focus on further training to enable me to work therapeutically with people and have been in this field since then. As part of this journey I have developed my own relationship with expression using the written word word. I am dyslexic and this has been a major part of my life’s journey. Struggling with writing and numbers at primary school along with and innate determination to achieve and belong. Led to a lifelong engagement with learning and commitment to academic study developing my skills and capacity to write along the way. I have always been able to express myself in other ways, such as verbally communicating and using the arts but historically the written word was difficult. Finding my way around sentence structure and spellings along with a propensity to go into detail made writing challenging and sometimes frustrating especially when it is the mode in our culture in which belonging is measured.

My relationship to the education system has been an interesting journey of its own having experienced schools, colleges, Universities and their teachers both as a pupil, student and learner but also as a member within their teams. I have been fortunate enough to have met and had teachers who were able to see me for who I am and in understanding my difficulty support me to achieve. Most importantly valued me and encouraged me in gaining the required skills even in the face of being dyslexic.

In those early days being dyslexic was far for being understood or supported it wasn't until I reached University that my dyslexia was diagnosed.

In finding the help and support I will never forget the moment when I as preparing myself to receive an imagined resit from my tutor. How delighted was I to discover I had achieved a first for my essay at University. This was a pivotal moment as this journey of writing academically has been an arduous one and had been a very long journey of struggle and this meant a great deal to me to have achieved this. It also gave me the much needed encouragement to believe in myself and this journey led to years later engage in achieving my M.Sc.

My understanding and observations of how neurodiversity is understood or not through lack of understanding, education and or empathy within the education system still has many gaps and there is still a real lack of appreciation of the challenges that impact upon a person with learning needs. This of course is well documented. Fortunately, there is still is a commitment to research to help make better sense and understand within education systems. However, even so it is still an environment that is still lacking in understanding and is still failing people, shaming them and still holding the written word as the most valuable of which identify is formed or celebrated.

The writing and poetry of Emily Dickinson has been an inspiration to me particularly her book called 'The Gorgeous Nothings’; Being dyslexic and finding your voice can be difficult to do but I have found my way both through the therapeutic and creative by being dedicated to what I love and not giving up.

It is my hope that others facing such challenges don't give up either.

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Naomi Louise Rae B.A. (Hons), P.G. Dip, M.Sc. 'The Gouise Rae B.A. (Hons), P.G'The Gorgeous Somethings'