Finding My Way Back

Thank You, Jamie Oliver – From Someone Who Knows

I've just watched a wonderful, much-needed segment on BBC Breakfast about dyslexia. Jamie Oliver - recently diagnosed himself - is now on a mission to get greater recognition of dyslexia and other neurodivergent conditions into schools. Watching him speak with such passion and vulnerability stirred something deep in me, because I know what it's like to grow up feeling different, feeling wrong, without understanding why.

I'm not dyslexic, but I am dyspraxic. I'm also ADHD. At nearly 68 years old, I've lived most of my life not knowing these things about myself, because when I was growing up, none of this was recognised. Children like me were simply labelled as difficult, lazy, or not trying hard enough. The truth only began to unfold when two of my sons were diagnosed - one dyspraxic and ADHD, the other dyslexic, ADHD, and beautifully complex in his own way. Looking at my eldest son was like looking into a mirror of my own childhood struggles.

But even then, the "aha" moment didn't come until my mid-fifties. Why the delay? Because I had spent a lifetime learning to mask.

Masking is like wearing an invisible costume every day - camouflaging who you really are to blend in with a neurotypical world. It's adapting your behaviour, suppressing your needs, even changing how you move or speak, all to avoid standing out or feeling unsafe. Sometimes you do it consciously, sometimes it becomes so automatic you don't even realise you're doing it.

The Little Girl Who Couldn't Be Good

There's a family story that's been told for decades, one that now makes perfect sense. When I was seven, my grandmother - Nandy - came to live with us to help my mother, who we now understand was bipolar. My father travelled often for work, so Nandy became my anchor. On her first day, she watched me, through a window, arrive home from school, throw my satchel to one side, cartwheel up the drive, burst through the front door, cartwheel through the kitchen, and straight down the corridor to her little snug where she sat waiting.

She turned to my mother, and in complete astonishment asked… "What is she doing?"

My mum replied with the wisdom of someone who'd been watching me struggle: "Oh, she's had to be good all day - she's just letting off steam."

And yes, I had tried so hard to be good all day. I usually failed.

Much of my primary school years were spent with my hands on my head - either sitting in class or, my preferred punishment, standing under the enormous stags' head in the hall, facing the wall. Why was that my preference? Because it was less humiliating. Only staff members would see me there, not my entire class watching my shame.

I never talked about these experiences at home. That was masking in its purest form - not shame exactly, but profound confusion. I couldn't understand why teachers seemed to single me out, why they could make me feel so small. I clearly remember thinking, with all the defiance a child could muster: Who are you to make me feel like this?

Then came parents' evenings - those dreaded appointments that made my stomach churn. The feedback was always the same: "Meriet doesn't concentrate. She could do better if she tried harder." My parents weren't angry with me, just quietly exasperated. I never seemed to settle down, to buckle down. Why? Because I couldn't. But I didn't know that then. I was just a child who felt confused.

Finding My Superpowers

Thank goodness for my saving graces. I was quick—lightning quick! I won every race: skipping, sack races, obstacle courses, the flower pot race. In fact, famously, I came through the finishing line of the flower pot race before the other children had even found their balance on theirs!  I could outrun most of the boys during Kiss Chase and rarely got caught in Tag. In the playground, I had kudos. I was somebody.

I could sing too, which endeared me to the choir teacher - one adult who actually seemed to like having me around. And I had a sense of humour that could defuse almost any situation. You need something, something to keep you safe, something that makes people want you around despite everything else.

The Grammar School Dream That Became a Nightmare

Then came Watford Grammar School for Girls. Somehow, miraculously, I passed the 11+. I'm still not entirely sure how, though I've since learned that many dyspraxic children excel in verbal reasoning and problem-solving. Perhaps that explains it.

But before I left Stag Lane Primary, something happened that carved itself into my soul. I was standing - yet again - under that familiar stags' head when the school secretary walked through the hall. Her kitten heels clicked closer and closer until they stopped right behind me.

"Ah, Meriet," she said, and then as she continued walking, she added with casual cruelty, "how on earth you got into Watford Grammar, heaven knows. Your parents must have paid someone."

I was eleven years old.

I went home that day and asked my mother if they'd paid for me to get into the school. She laughed, genuinely puzzled. "Of course not. Why would you ask that?"

I shrugged, already learning to bury the hurt. "No reason. Just wondered."

Watford Grammar was a disaster for me. This was a highly academic school - top in the county - and I was completely and utterly lost. I had nothing they valued. My teachers didn't like me, and gradually, the feeling became mutual. I wasn't disruptive to others - just to myself, drowning quietly in my own confusion.

I kept my head above water with classmates by becoming the clown. I perfected impressions of our teachers and made my friends laugh. It was pure survival.

When Trying Your Best Isn't Enough

Exams were my personal hell. I would revise diligently, desperately, but by the time I sat down to take the test – poof - everything vanished. Panic would flood in, and I would fail. Over and over again.

Mathematics was a complete mystery, like trying to read a language I'd never learned. English broke my heart – I loved reading the books that were set, but was a very slow reader. I adored writing stories, poured my soul onto the page, only to be marked down for spelling and grammar: "B-", "C+", "See me." Those red pen marks felt like wounds.

In my desperation, I even tried copying from my friends during exams, but the terror of getting caught was worse than failing. At least failure was familiar.

I left Watford Grammar with nothing tangible - no qualifications, no achievements to point to. But I carried something much heavier: no self-worth and that familiar refrain echoing in my head: "Meriet doesn't concentrate. She could do better if she tried harder."

But I was trying. I was trying with every fiber of my being.

Eventually, I became the person they said I was - the fool, the joker, the one who couldn't quite get it right.

The Long Journey to Understanding

This identity clung to me like a shadow well into my fifties. I never pursued a proper career - what did I have to offer? In my forties, I discovered photography and slowly, carefully, built a small business around it. People told me I was brilliant, but I couldn't hear them through the noise of my own self-doubt.

Every job was torture - from the moment I arrived at a shoot until I handed over the final photos. I would lie awake at night, sick with worry that clients wouldn't like what I'd created, that they'd see through me and realize I was just pretending to know what I was doing.

The turning point began when, one day, I was working with my nephew, who amongst other things, is an extremely talented photographer.  He's genuinely gifted and quickly surpassed my abilities - and that’s not me being self-depracating - that’s a fact!

We were photographing a well-known couple, and I was holding the light reflector, struggling to angle it properly. My nephew, understandably frustrated, handed me the camera and said… "You take the pictures, I'll handle the lighting."

This was completely reasonable. Professional. Logical.

But in that moment, I froze completely. I couldn't figure out how to hold the camera properly. I couldn't focus it. Everything I thought I knew evaporated, and suddenly I was that little girl again, standing under the stags' head with my hands on my head, feeling utterly, completely worthless.

I quietly excused myself, walked around the corner, and sobbed - deep, wrenching sobs that came from decades of feeling not quite good enough. Eventually, I pulled myself together and returned to the shoot. No one said a word, I don’t think they even noticed, but inside, I was completely crushed.

That moment told me everything I needed to know: it was time for a change.

I stepped away from photography, but more importantly, I finally began the journey toward understanding myself.

How Beekeeping Helped Me Reclaim Myself

That journey started with the most unexpected gift. A friend had randomly given me a hive of bees - a gesture that seemed almost absurd at the time. But somehow, these remarkable creatures captured my scattered attention in a way nothing ever had before. They made me focus. They kept me calm. In their gentle, purposeful buzzing, I found something I'd been searching for my entire life: peace.

The honeybees became the gift that kept on giving. Through them, I discovered I could write - children's books about these fascinating creatures that had saved me. Through them, I found my voice - standing confidently before large audiences, sharing stories about honeybees with a passion I never knew I possessed. Most remarkably of all, I even returned to my old primary school to give an assembly about honeybees, standing in that same hall where I'd once faced the wall in shame, now brimming with confidence and purpose.

I have yet to return to Watford Grammar - but perhaps one day, armed with my bee knowledge and newfound self-understanding, I will.

 A Message of Hope

Today, watching Jamie Oliver speak so openly about his own diagnosis, I feel something I've rarely experienced: hope for the children who are struggling right now in classrooms around the world. Hope that they won't have to wait sixty years to understand themselves. Hope that they'll be seen for their unique gifts rather than judged for their differences.

To any parent, teacher, or child reading this: you are not broken. You are not lazy. You are not "not trying hard enough." You are beautifully, perfectly neurodivergent in a world that hasn't learned how to celebrate that yet.

But it's learning. Thanks to people like Jamie Oliver, it's finally learning.

And that gives me hope for all the cartwheeling children who are just trying to let off steam after being good all day.