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Episode 145: My Life So Far with Dyspraxia – with Rosemary Richings

Carolyn Kiel | January 31, 2022
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    Episode 145: My Life So Far with Dyspraxia – with Rosemary Richings
    Carolyn Kiel

Rosemary Richings is a writer, author, panel member of Dyspraxia Magazine, and co-founder of Dyspraxic Alliance, a global online support network by and for dyspraxics. When she was four years old, she was diagnosed with dyspraxia (developmental coordination disorder). In 2014, Rosemary started her own freelance writing business to reduce the stress of finding an accessible work environment. Her debut book, “Stumbling Through Space and Time: My Life So Far with Dyspraxia” is being published in the fall of 2022. Recently, Rosemary joined the board of trustees of Dyspraxic Me, a peer group for dyspraxic youth.

During this episode, you will hear Rosemary talk about:

  • Her dyspraxia diagnosis, and how dyspraxia affected her at school
  • Her struggle to find a supportive working environment where she could truly thrive
  • How she developed her longtime passion for writing into a freelance writing business
  • What had inspired her to write her book about dyspraxia, and how social media connected her to a publisher

To find out more about Rosemary and her work, you can find her with the following links below!

Rosemary’s Twitter

RosemaryRichings.com (Rosemary’s consulting website)

RosieWritingSpace.com (Rosemary’s writing blog)

Official DyspraxicMe Twitter

Official Dyspraxic Alliance Twitter

 

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*Disclaimer: The views, guidance, opinions, and thoughts expressed in Beyond 6 Seconds episodes are solely mine and/or those of my guests, and do not represent those of my employer or other organizations.*

The episode transcript is below.

Carolyn Kiel: Hello, and welcome to the Beyond 6 Seconds podcast. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel. And today I’m really excited to be speaking with Rosemary Richings. Rosemary is a writer, author, panel member of Dyspraxia Magazine and co-founder of Dyspraxic Alliance, a global online support network by and for dyspraxics.

When she was four years old, she was diagnosed with dyspraxia or Developmental Coordination Disorder. In 2014, Rosemary started her own freelance writing business to reduce the stress of finding an accessible work environment. Her debut book, “Stumbling Through Space and Time: My Life So Far with Dyspraxia” is being published in the fall of 2022.

Recently Rosemary joined the board of trustees of Dyspraxic Me, a peer group for dyspraxic youth. Although she grew up in Canada, she’s currently living in Morocco with her husband, James. Rosemary, welcome to the podcast.

Rosemary Richings: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Really excited to talk with you about your story today. So tell me a little bit about what dyspraxia is and how you experience it day to day.

Rosemary Richings: So an OT I follow on Twitter, she sums it up so beautifully, she also happens to have dyspraxia herself, as a disconnection between the brain to the body and back again, and that applies to the movement and coordination side of things.

So to use a very broad example, you might see that someone is coming down an alley and they’re going straight towards you, but it might be a bit of a delay in terms of figuring out, oh, I should move to the left so that that person can move where they need to go. So it’s yeah, it’s about movement and coordination and things like your fine and gross motor skills. So fine and gross motor skills would be everything from like doing an arts and crafts activity to tying your shoelaces, to learning how to dance.

Carolyn Kiel: Okay. All right. And that’s generally how you experience it, those types of challenges as well.

Rosemary Richings: Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. So you got your diagnosis pretty early in life. Were you diagnosed through the school system or how did that come about?

Rosemary Richings: Well, basically it started a bit, how I’m starting to notice is quite a common thing for childhood diagnosis, is where it’s a delay in how you learn your, your milestones. So I learned how to walk a little, a lot later than most other children were. And I had some, apparently I had an incident when I was a child where I fell down the stairs. And my parents took me to a GP who then referred me to a neurologist and things like that. And after so much testing, there was a period in my life for, I was like in hospital a lot, getting test after test, after test. They saw that it was this fairly new thing called dyspraxia. A fun fact about that is that actually, it wasn’t formally recognized by medical professionals until the mid nineties. And that was exactly when I got my diagnosis.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, wow. Yeah. So, you know, with that diagnosis then, like just tell me about your experiences in school. Like what kinds of things did you struggle with or what kind of supports were there for you?

Rosemary Richings: I struggled with things like that children were considered to be really good at, and were expected to be very independent and good at. Like I, I learned basic things like tying my shoe laces and personal grooming and things like that a lot later. I had to get extensive occupational therapy for that. I got a lot of physiotherapy, because diagnosis that came with it was hypotonia, which is low motor tone. So when we’re relaxing, there is a part of your body that tenses up and it doesn’t de-tense if you have hypertonia. And so the physio-therapy did sort of deal with the movement side of things and that side of things.

But I also had in the classroom setting, because there was a lot of sensory sides of things like if I’m processing too many, too much stimuli at once then it’s very hard for me to focus. I had extra time on tests and could use a computer later on, but this was pre-computer. So for awhile, I was even using a typewriter until computers started to be a more common thing.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, wow, so dyspraxia impacts, obviously not just motor coordination and movement, but I guess also learning and sensory processing or, or sort of filtering out stimuli, it sounds like.

Rosemary Richings: Yeah, a very high percentage of dyspraxics have that symptom. But I have definitely noticed that it’s not everybody who gets that, but that’s definitely a very common thing.

Carolyn Kiel: Okay. Wow. So I see. So, you know, throughout school, it sounds like you had, you know, some supports and as you worked through things, and I know now you’re a freelance writer that you kind of built this career based on you know, just having the freedom and being able to structure and build the work environment that you, that works for you. But after school, did you start working like at, at other companies and what was your experience like when you actually got into the working world?

Rosemary Richings: Yeah, so I tried out a lot of different jobs, from working with kids to working in office environments. And I really found that there was a real element of stigma and it was really hard to get people to take it seriously. And there was really an element of like having a high pressure element and having to prove yourself and keep up with the very fast pace. And that was very difficult for me. I was good at the work, but it was the people and the relationships element that it made difficult.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, wow. So yeah, I guess tell me more about that in terms of the, the social aspect of it. Like, was it, was it something that you were able to be open about at work, your, your diagnosis, or did you feel like you had to mask that when you were working with people?

Rosemary Richings: Oh, I really felt like I had to mask that when I was working with people. With, with the customer service and jobs working with kids, there was a real pressure to be this very outward presence and to be ready to react to anything. So it was discouraged to be anything but that. But once I got to office work, that was really where I felt a bit more comfortable and I could at least like do small things, like put headphones on and all that. But even then, I was lacking control over my own environment and that made it very difficult to thrive enough.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, I think as I talk to more and more people on the show, especially ones who go into like an office work environment or really any other kind of work environment, sometimes it’s challenging to either ask for the supports you need, or get the supports, or sometimes even know what kind of supports are available and what is helpful for you. So it sounds like at least you were able to do things like use headphones, but that it really wasn’t like sufficient to really make that working environment work for you.

Rosemary Richings: Yeah. Yeah. There was a real pressure to work in a certain way and it wasn’t what was natural to me. And it was, it was a fairly new condition by the time I was working still. So it was very hard to explain it to people.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Wow. So how long did you work at, you know, in those roles before you started your own freelance business?

Rosemary Richings: I started my own freelance business pretty soon after I finished university. And I really like, it was a period of time where I was really having a hard time with job interviews and things like that. And I really, something clicked in me where I said, I know what I’m good at. I know what I offer to the world, but I need a lot more control. I was raised by very creative parents. My dad’s an actor and my mom’s freelanced a lot on and off over the years. So I knew what I was signing myself up for. And I always kind of knew in a way I could, I could do it if I really went for it and I had the skills to do it, and I had the connections by then.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s great. Yeah. And your freelance business is around writing and it, it sounds like that you’ve always enjoyed and loved doing writing. So I’d love to learn about sort of how you found your passion for writing early in life and how it led to your career.

Rosemary Richings: Yeah. Language was always really a big thing for me because I really had an appreciation for it because I learned how to read at a slower pace. So as soon as I got it, language almost became a bit of an obsession in a way. And still, whenever the dyspraxia stuff is hard, the first thing to fail is always language. So I always have this real appreciation for language, and I’m always curiously trying to learn other languages whenever I travel and go abroad and such. Cause it started from a place of struggle, but then became something that I was obsessed and appreciated a great deal.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s great. So in school, did you do a lot of creative writing or even in your, your first jobs was writing part of that as well?

Rosemary Richings: Yeah. Yeah. I really started to see a way I could do more with it as soon as I got into blogging and social media marketing, and that is really where I found I could find a really interesting intersection of that and start to include that more. But I was, I was doing all kinds of writing for years. I was, I was always part of like things like theater clubs and things like that. And I was excessively diary writing for years and years and years and writing a lot of poetry and I took courses on it for years. So yeah, it goes very far back.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s cool. What’s your favorite kind of writing to do either personally or professionally?

Rosemary Richings: Well, it used to be poetry, but then I found that it’s really just, just more about giving disabled people a voice more and, and really like giving that more of a platform. It’s really interesting to me. That’s where my book was really important.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, that’s great. I think it’s just so important, one, to have dyspraxic characters and voices featured in writing and literature and two, to have actual authors who are dyspraxic writing it and having the representation that way as well.

Rosemary Richings: Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. So, yeah. So you mentioned your book, your debut book, which is coming out in the fall, in next fall 2022. So what inspired you to actually write a book?

Rosemary Richings: Well, for years, I mentioned about the diary writing earlier, and for years I, how I started to know how my dyspraxia affected me is I was obsessively keeping a diary. And I thought on the surface, it just looked like your average sort of way most young people start a diary, which is, they would talk about boys and school and things like that. But I started to notice that it was more about what I was noticing about my own behavior and really from there that gave me the language and vocabulary to advocate for myself.

And from there, and years later, I just really wanted to help people because I was involved in the community and there was a lot of people who felt really on, on their own with their diagnosis. And it was just about helping people and using what I’d noticed to help people.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, absolutely. And it sounds like from the title of the book, “Stumbling Through Space and Time, My Life So Far with Dyspraxia,” that it’s it sounds like largely a memoir. So is it, is it mostly your own stories sort of drawn from your earlier writings and diaries? Or do you have other themes in there as well?

Rosemary Richings: It’s mostly from my own story and experiences. But the thing is, when you’re looking as far back as when you’re like four years old or 14 or things like that, it’s really hard to be really sort of reliable and objective. So I, I started to use in it a lot of studies that I’d found about the subject matter over the years to sort of build on it a little bit more. I was reading a lot of my medical records for a long time to kind of like understand a little bit more. So it mostly is my own story, but like, it also adds in all those elements as well, to make it useful to everyone from a parent of a dyspraxic child to recent diagnosis.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, I think that’s great. And yeah, as you mentioned before, dyspraxia is, is relatively a new type of diagnosis that wasn’t recognized until like the mid nineties or so. So I think there’s just such a need for more education and awareness and representation when it comes to dyspraxia and dyspraxic authors and, and people.

And I was curious, because it’s being published next year by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, what was the experience like finding a publisher for the book?

Rosemary Richings: Oh, it was really tough. I’m not gonna lie. I had to send 90 different queries for anything to happen. And I just happened to Jessica Kingsley, a wonderful editor by the name of Amy Lancaster Owen. She followed me on Twitter. I happened to be, I was getting to the point where I was a bit fed up with the process and I was like, “I’m just going to try this. I’m going to put a tweet out there and I’m going to say what I’m writing about.” And she found it weeks later and she said, “oh, well, this is the kind of thing I typically publish. Let’s talk.” And yeah. And then from there it took about a year for it to go anywhere. But she took it to a meeting about a year later and then one of my 90 queries also made an offer. And I liked her the most, so that’s the one I went with. But it was really, really anxiety-inducing process. Because it’s a harsh industry where silence can often mean no, but silence can also also mean yes. So you just never know.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, that’s amazing because yeah, when I speak to other book authors who have worked through publishing companies, yet they, they echo the same thing, that it is a tough and a long process often. So that’s great that you made that connection with her and that she found you on Twitter.

Rosemary Richings: Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Fantastic. Wow. So, you know, you also, in addition to being a writer and now soon to be published author, you’re also quite a vocal and active advocate for dyspraxia and dyspraxic people. So you are, you’re the co-founder of the Dyspraxic Alliance and a panel member of Dyspraxia Magazine. Tell me a little bit about, I guess maybe starting with Dyspraxic Alliance, what was the inspiration for that and how did that come together?

Rosemary Richings: So that started back in the, sort of the very early days of the pandemic. That was because a bunch of independent advocates were trying to get involved in the awareness week. And they felt very unsupported and experienced a lot of hostility, but they just wanted to get the message out there and they felt really on their own. So we happened to be talking, because a lot of us were doing very similar projects, and we started to do regular Zoom meetings to just kind of talk over what we were doing and figure it out. And someone said, Hey, well, why don’t we start a group for this? So it really just went from there.

Carolyn Kiel: Really cool. So is it mainly a meeting group, is there an online platform? Like what does it look like now?

Rosemary Richings: Right now it’s it’s over Facebook. There’s a Facebook group that has very strict rules to make it as safe as possible. But we also have been running social events over Zoom and over something called Kumospace to sort of build a supportive network for people and help people who are still finding a lot of uncertainties with their symptoms and et cetera.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s great. Yeah. It’s really great to build that, that safe space for people to talk about their experiences. And is it an international group?

Rosemary Richings: Yeah. A majority of the co-founders are all in the UK, but yeah, it very much is international.

Carolyn Kiel: Right. Yeah. That’s, that’s really awesome. Really good to have that support. And you know, in addition, you’re also a panel member of Dyspraxia Magazine. So yeah, tell me about how you got involved with that.

Rosemary Richings: One of the co-founders of Dyspraxic Alliance, she is the YouTuber called Krystal Shaw, and she does a lot of YouTube stuff about her experiences as a neurodivergent person. And she wanted to start an accessible resource and she was, she was doing the magazine on her own for a while. And then she got together a group of people that she trusted to kind of help with some of the things she was experiencing with the magazine. Cause she was also trying to do that while working full time and having multiple health issues and things like that. So it was proven to be very overwhelming.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that’s great. So what kind of things do you do with the magazine? Like do you write for it? Do you help manage it? Like how does that look like?

Rosemary Richings: Yeah. So she brings us in as somewhat of an advisory panel to help with figuring out what we’re going to cover, what we’re going to write about, any issues that might come up, proofread when necessary, help plan events, help her coordinate events, that kind of thing.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. That’s really cool. It’s so awesome to have all of these different venues where you can connect with other dyspraxic people and either provide support or even just help educate other people about dyspraxia in general. So looking forward, what are your sort of more long-term goals for either your writing or your advocacy?

Rosemary Richings: I’m looking forward to this book coming out because I really want to build on helping people understand dyspraxia a little bit better and build a stronger sense of community while still getting stories out there about a lot of talent that is out there in the neurodivergent space, in the disabled space. Yeah. So I really just want to keep doing both writing projects and also building resources and events and things like that, that are in that sector.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. Very cool. So yeah, Rosemary, you’re involved in so many really interesting and very influential projects around dyspraxia and the dyspraxic community. How can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more about your book or any of the other projects or initiatives that you’re involved with?

Rosemary Richings: Yeah, Twitter is my most accessible social media platform. I’m on a few others like LinkedIn and Facebook and things like that. But @rosiemay_r is my most accessible social media one. But I also have a blog, RosieWritingSpace.com, and my consulting website, RosemaryRichings.com.

Carolyn Kiel: Okay. Okay, great. So from those links, can people learn more about Dyspraxia Magazine, the Dyspraxic Alliance, your book, things like that?

Rosemary Richings: Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Okay, cool. So I’ll put links to your Twitter and your websites and blog in the show notes so that people can, can find more information there. That’s really great.

Cool. Well, Rosemary, thank you so much for being on my show today. As we close out, is there anything else that you’d like our listeners to know or anything that they can help or support you with?

Rosemary Richings: Yeah, really just, I mean, I close my book with this point too, which is just that, medically, we have a lot to learn about how the brain works. And there’s a lot of really clever, intelligent people out there who, who are neurodivergent, who aren’t being recognized and supported enough. So I just encourage as much education, open-mindedness as you possibly can to kind of figure out how we can get more amazing people out there represented in all sectors.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, absolutely so important. A great sentiment to leave off with. Well, Rosemary, thanks again for being a guest on my show. I really enjoyed talking with you today.

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