Hi, I'm Rachel.
This one's personal.
I didn't set out to build a dyslexia advocacy platform. I set out to make baby hats. But somewhere along the way, I did the math, and the math changed everything.
I'm a mom, an accidental entrepreneur, and someone who has spent a decade putting beautiful products into the hands of parents with young children. My business, Briar Baby, has been part of families' lives since 2014.
And my son Noah, who is now a sophomore in high school, has dyslexia. He was diagnosed in first grade, the result of years of trusting my gut when the answer from every direction was "wait and see." That decision changed his trajectory. I'm certain of it.
Dear Dyslexia exists because of both of those things at once.
I did the math and couldn't un-do it.
Briar Baby reaches hundreds of thousands of families with young children. That audience is largely parents of kids ages zero to four, maybe five. They're the exact people I love connecting with and the exact people who need this information most.
Children have dyslexia. That's 20% of every audience, every classroom, every baby shower.
Are ever formally diagnosed. The gap between those two numbers is where kids fall through.
When I put those two things together, it was hard to look away. Twenty percent of the babies my hats land on will have dyslexia. A significant number of them will go undiagnosed. They'll spend years in classrooms feeling like something is wrong with them, when actually, nothing is wrong with them at all. They just haven't been found yet.
Start a dyslexia zeitgeist. No small feat.
Here's the vision, said plainly: I want parents to rush to get their kids diagnosed. Not because it's scary, but because they understand the value of knowing. Because they know that a dyslexic brain is a creative, spatial, big-picture-thinking brain that the world genuinely needs. Because they know that early intervention closes gaps and builds kids who know themselves.
When enough parents are informed and advocating, the school system has to respond. That's how systemic change actually happens. One informed, empowered parent at a time until there are too many of us to ignore.
Not a doctor. Very much a person who did the work.
I want to be clear about who I am and who I'm not. I'm not a neuropsychologist. I'm not here to diagnose anyone's child. What I am is a parent who has navigated this for over a decade, who takes Yale research seriously, and who built a business from scratch precisely because she doesn't give up when things are hard.
Here's what I actually bring to this:
And for what it's worth: over eight years watching Noah navigate dyslexia from first grade through high school. The tutoring tantrums, the parent-teacher conferences, the 504 meetings, the CLASS Act Award, qualifying for Nationals in his first season of crew. The credential that doesn't fit on a list is the one that drives all of it.
Yale or bust.
Everything on this site is grounded in the work of Dr. Sally Shaywitz and the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. I'm not interested in passing along information I can't stand behind, and I've found that the Yale research is the gold standard. Clear, compassionate, and intelligence-first.
When I share that dyslexia is "an unexpected difficulty in reading for an individual who has the intelligence to be a much better reader," that's Shaywitz. When I say slow reading does not mean slow thinking, that's Shaywitz. When I talk about the Sea of Strengths, that's Shaywitz. She did the work. I'm just making sure more parents hear about it.
Now you know who I am.
Start wherever makes sense. Read Noah's story or see what the early signs can look like.