When I was growing up, my dyslexia made me feel stupid. Or rather, other people used my dyslexia to make me feel stupid. I really believed teachers and parents of friends when they told me that because of my learning disability, I would never amount to much of anything.
Now I know so much better.
Not only have I amounted to a hell of a lot, I'm succeeding in a field — writing and editing — that I was always told I should stay the hell away from. And I'm not alone. Here are nine awesome women who are killing the game — and who also happen to have dyslexia.
Cher
Cher was one of the first famous people that I ever knew was dyslexic, like me. She dropped out of school at 16 after years of constantly being told that she wasn't living up to her potential. To this day she's incredibly outspoken about her cognitive differences, showing that it's nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed by.
Agatha Christie
Dyslexia didn't stop Christie from becoming the bestselling novelist of all damn time. "Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me," Christie said. "My letters were without originality. I was an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so."
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi believed for most of her life that she was abnormally slow — she told Ebony magazine that she was even labelled "retarded" in school. But this EGOT winner was dyslexic, and credits her mother with helping her overcome the insanely negative messages she was getting about her learning disability. "I knew I wasn’t stupid, and I knew I wasn’t dumb. My mother told me that,” she told The Academy of Achievement when she was inducted in 1994. Dumb this: Whoopi is one of only 10 people in the world to achieve the elusive EGOT.
Keira Knightley
Keira Knightley's dyslexia is the reason she's an award-winning actress today. In an early interview she said, "I'm dyslexic and when I was six my parents realized I couldn't read and had been fooling everyone. The only way my mum could get me to work at my reading was if she promised to get me an agent." And just like that, a star was born.
Caitlyn Jenner
Jenner's speech at the ESPY Awards was a triumph for transgender people everywhere — but actually delivering that speech was a whole other story. "As a dyslexic kid, my biggest fear in life was to go in front of the class and read because I just wasn’t very good at it — and that stays with you through your whole life," she wrote on her website. "I practiced, and practiced, and practiced, and practiced to make sure I’d nail it."
Ann Bancroft
Ann Bancroft is a legit Arctic explorer. She's the first woman to cross the ice to the North Pole on dogsled. She headed an all-woman team to the South Pole in 1992, which makes her the first woman to travel to both the North AND South Poles. As if that wasn't rad enough, she then teamed up fellow badass Polar explorer Liv Arnesen to sail and ski across Antarctica. And yep, she's dyslexic.
“My dyslexia and my challenges through school were the absolute perfect training for an expedition," she says. "Expedition people are all about one step in front of the other and not going very fast, just doing the hard work. What better way to get the work ethic than by having a learning difference?”
Jennifer Aniston
Our eternal hair inspiration wasn't diagnosed until she was in her twenties and went to get glasses. "I thought I wasn't smart. I just couldn't retain anything," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "Now I had this great discovery. I felt like all of my childhood trauma-dies, tragedies, dramas were explained."
Jerry Hall
Supermodel Jerry Hall doesn't look at her dyslexia as a disability — she looks at it as a blessing. She told The Daily Mail, "Being dyslexic is very difficult in the beginning, but as you get older you learn to cope with it and I think it's great. It's like a gift because it makes you think differently."
Florence Welch
The lead singer of "Florence + The Machine" was diagnosed with both dyslexia and dyspraxia (a coordination disorder) in school. In an interview with The Guardian, she says that her childhood challenges with learning have influenced her unique style — in both music and fashion — today. "I had dyslexia, which made me feel different than everyone else," she said. "As I got older I experimented with my hair and types of clothes, from Spice Girls to Little House On The Prairie styles."
