When I thought about starting a Substack, I wanted to share our family’s story about dyslexia, learning, and a love of stories. And yet, when I sit down to start writing, I find that I only want to write what is on my mind at the moment. I notoriously overcomplicate most everything, and then get stuck, so here’s to writing for joy, and maybe others can find something here as well.

Stories: An Exercise in Practicing Grief

My father passed away in March. When the call came, his death felt grossly unexpected, and I could barely process what I was hearing. He had a blood cancer called multiple myeloma and was in his final month of chemo treatment. The doctors were shocked by how well he was doing, and we were all dreaming of what would come next when he was whole and healed. This hope gave us all the strength to endure, but I know now that my dad had carried this cancer in his bones for years- suffering with fatigue and pain, and even though the chemo was working, the damage was done.

There is much I can say, and I will at some point, about all that my dad meant to me, but for now, this is about how a story held me through.

The day after his death, my husband and I deliriously packed our bags, van, and our kids, and at 5:30 in the morning, we began the drive to my hometown in North Florida. We have made this drive more times than I can count, and know every exit and gas station along 95. Normally, my kids’ excitement can’t be contained, but a subdued silence hung over the car while I cried in the front seat, knowing that this drive would never be the same.

As we drove, our family audiobook was Anne of Green Gables. We had started the book a month before, and in the still dark of the morning, the familiar story wrapped her arms around me. The landscape of Prince Edward Island unfurled in my imagination and gave me a place to go, but even more so, as we drove, I remembered Matthew.

When I first read the story as a child, I climbed into my bed and wept for the gentle man who took an orphan into his home and loved her. I wept for Anne’s grief and Marilla’s loneliness. I wept for myself, as I, too, had come to love him. In Matthew’s death, I practiced grief, and over the years, I would mourn in small ways the death of many characters to come. And now, on this drive home to a house that will now feel unknown with his absence, I was handed back a story that had already taught me how to grieve.

My dad was a pastor, and he often took my sisters and me with him to nursing homes and funeral homes. I would later have the honor of being with two of my grandparents as they passed. My dad often said that one of the greatest disservices we do to children is not allowing them to see death. We hide it in hospital rooms and protect ourselves and our children from unnecessary pain, but then we have no idea what to do with death when it comes.

I am thankful for his wisdom. His life prepared me for his death.

Now, as an Anglican priest, on Ash Wednesday, I lead our people year after year in remembering our death, and then on Good Friday, we bear witness to the death of Christ, so that in this grief, we can find our hope knowing that one day, our great enemy, Death, will be defeated.

As I reflect on grief and pain, this litany of practice has given me a road to walk on, and on this road I am not alone. The stories have been woven into my imagination and bones, and so, when we turned into the long driveway of my parents’ home, and the sobs wracked my body, I was able to draw upon something larger than myself. In the days, weeks, and months that have followed, the grief remains so draining- draining because it is unexpected and surprising. Memories sneak up on me, bringing me to the ground, but I live and endure and tell my kids stories about their Papa Johnny.

I had been given a story as a child that would one day be handed back to me at just the moment I needed, and now, without knowing it, I was giving this same story back to my children. We didn’t finish Anne of Green Gables until we returned home from the funeral, and we all sat in the living room listening as Matthew died. We sat together and cried for Matthew and Papa Johnny, and maybe one day in the far future, this memory will be a place of strength for them as it was for me.

Now, like my father, I, too, am a pastor, and like my father, I will not hide my children from death, but rather we will walk the road together with ashes, and crosses, and stories that teach us to live and die.

In the stories we give our children, we are not simply giving them something to read, but a way of living, and an imagination large enough to hold the vastness of our lives.

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Cut to thirteen years later.

I have a 9-year-old boy, an 11-year-old boy, and a thirteen-year-old girl. My oldest and youngest are dyslexic, and my oldest and middle have ADHD. I assure you there have been very few moments of lying on blankets or all of us on the couch that don’t, within seconds, devolve into wrestling, kicking, or a blanket whirlwind.

And yet, the heart of the vision remains the same- a family who loves to read together. A family transported together to far-off lands and new adventures. Like all good stories, ours involves treacherous roads of testing, IEPS, and battling Minecraft addictions. And yet, it is my conviction that stories don’t live in classrooms or even trapped between the bindings of books- they are meant to be lived and listened to and embodied.

Last night, we watched Disney’s The Sword in the Stone, and there is a scene where young Arthur, also called The Wart, is turned into a squirrel by Merlin. Wart, the squirrel, runs and jumps and chatters with the other squirrels, while grumpy Archimedes, Merlin’s owl, sits on a branch overexplaining everything. Before I could say a word, the kids started dying laughing and exclaiming- that’s us!

My two children with ADHD rolled with laughter as they saw themselves as the squirrels, and my youngest saw himself in grumpy Archimedes, who just can’t stop explaining every detail.

It was one of those moments that felt truer than any diagnosis. They found themselves in this story.

Motherhood has forced me to reckon with my own judgments and expectations for my children, myself, and others. At some point, I faced a critical decision- would I love and accept my children for who they are, or try to make them into my image? Some days this is easier than others, but my journey and story have been about how to best love, know, and travel with my kids as they are. To learn about how their brains and bodies work, and what it means to be a family.

I believe that stories are essential to who we are. As humans, we are meaning makers, and stories give us much more than entertainment- they help us make meaning of our lives. The power and gift of a good story is that we can live hundreds of lives; we can have guides and mentors. We see ourselves in the lives of others. We become connected with the wide world. Education becomes endless.

And so, for a moment, let us go to the Forest Savage and sit with young Wart, who will one day become King Arthur. T.H. White’s The Once and Future King is one of my most-read books, and I could spend hours waxing poetic about King Arthur and his court. On our summer trip to New York, I decided that we would listen to the first part of the book, “The Sword in the Stone.”

Because of the dyslexia, we mainly listen to stories. In fact, my kids have listened to stories far past their reading level because listening is easier than reading. And as a side note, don’t let anyone tell you that listening to an audiobook doesn’t count as “real” reading. But that is a soapbox for another day.

The story tells us about young Wart, an orphan in the care of Sir Ector, and Merlin has come to give Arthur the education he will need as king. Wart learns to be a king, not by learning courtly manners or politics, but by learning to love the world he inhabits. As Merlin transforms Wart into different animals, Wart learns to be king by paying attention to the smallness of a frightened hedgehog or the perspective of the ancient snake. Wart learns to be king by learning to listen and to love.

As we listened on the car ride, I would pause now and then, asking what it was that Wart learned, allowing my children to work out the power of the natural world, the power of listening, and the power of serving.

As a former English teacher, I am always tempted to explain and teach, and yet I have come to learn that in my eagerness, I steal the magic. Rather, I have come to learn that asking good questions is the key. Over the hours of listening, they noticed and loved the life Wart had. Adventures and quests that were full of wild imagination, and they saw their own lives intertwined in Wart’s.

Their own love of snakes roared to the surface when Wart was turned into a snake, or their ability to sneakily crawl through our woods just like Maid Marian and Robin Wood. It’s a story of magic and kings, and yet, it is a story quite similar to their own childhood. For Wart and my children, sitting at a desk is dreadful. Roaming the wide world is where the learning lies.

This is my story, our story. A story of squirrelly children, unlikely places of education, and along the journey, ways I have tried to figure out how to help my ADHD and dyslexic children flourish. It is a story of how journeying with my children allowed me to expand my imagination and bring stories back into the wild

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To say that I believe stories are essential to our human growth and flourishing would be an understatement, and so, as a mother, I could not wait to pass these stories to my children.

And then came two dyslexia diagnoses and two ADHD diagnoses, and reading became synonymous with frustration and not belonging. Books were a threat rather than a world to be entered into, and school became a place of defensiveness rather than curiosity.

This is not a Substack about understanding disabilities, though I have learned a lot; rather, it is a story of how journeying with my children allowed me to expand my imagination and bring stories back into the wild.

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