Dear Dyslexia,
I have some things to say.
Writing a letter to dyslexia is one of the most unexpectedly powerful things you can do. Not because dyslexia will read it. But because you will. This page is an invitation to sit with your relationship to dyslexia, wherever you are in it right now, and put some of it into words.
Your relationship with dyslexia changes over time.
In the beginning, dyslexia might feel like an intruder. A thing that arrived and rearranged everything. For parents, there is grief in the early days, even when you know better. For kids, there is confusion, and often a quiet fear that they are somehow the problem.
But the relationship shifts. It doesn't always shift easily or quickly. But it shifts. And the act of writing to dyslexia, of externalizing it and actually addressing it, creates space for that shift to happen.
I discovered this by accident. I came up with the name "Dear Dyslexia" and found myself doing the exercise in my head, not even on paper. I was thinking through what I would say to dyslexia if I were writing it a letter, and I started to cry. Not from sadness, exactly. More like release. Like something I had been carrying for years was finally being put down.
I thought about how differently that letter would have sounded when Noah was first diagnosed in first grade. How differently it sounds today. That evolution is the whole point. Wherever you are right now is exactly where your letter should start.
There are two sides to every coin.
A Dear Dyslexia letter doesn't ask you to minimize the struggle or perform gratitude you don't feel yet. It asks you to hold both sides at once. That's where the real processing happens.
The struggle is real.
The reading challenges. The spelling battles. The advocacy work. The IEP meetings. The days your child didn't want to go to tutoring. The days you cried in parking lots. The exhaustion of fighting a system that moves slowly. All of it counts.
The gifts are real too.
The creativity. The problem-solving. The empathy. The resilience built through years of hard work. The way a dyslexic brain sees what others miss. The human being your child is becoming, partly because of this, not just in spite of it.
Both sides can exist at once. You don't have to choose. That's where healing happens.
Write your own Dear Dyslexia letter.
Imagine reading your letter again in five years.
The letter you write today reflects exactly where you are right now. Scared. Hopeful. Exhausted. Grateful. All of it is valid. And the letter you write in a year, or three years, or when your child graduates, will be different. That evolution is the whole story.
Consider keeping your letters somewhere you can find them. Print them, save them, put them in a folder. Not because you have to share them with anyone, but because watching your own relationship with dyslexia change over time is one of the most powerful parts of this journey.
Using this tool with your child.
The child version of this letter works beautifully as a check-in tool. Not just once, but over the years. Sitting down with your child to write a Dear Dyslexia letter together, or inviting them to write one on their own, can open conversations that are hard to start any other way.
You don't need to share the letters with each other unless you both want to. Sometimes just knowing you each did it is enough. The act of writing is the thing.
I think about what it would have been like to do this with Noah in first grade, when he first got his diagnosis. And then again in fifth grade when the gap finally closed. And again last year when sophomore year hit us like a wall. Each letter would have been so different. Each one would have been true. I wish we had them all.
You've done something brave today.
Ready to keep going? Read Noah's story, or explore what life looks like after a diagnosis.