Tyler - 44

I was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia when I was young. Doctors put me on medication — Ritalin, mostly — like that was supposed to fix everything. No one really asked how I felt about it. It was just what you did.

When I hit my teens, I decided I didn’t want it anymore. I still remember one morning clearly: my parents asked me to paint a closet door, and they made sure I took my pill before starting. I didn’t. I spit it out quietly and picked up the brush anyway.

I painted the door. It wasn’t perfect, but I finished it — on my own terms. That small moment stuck with me. Because for the first time, I realized I wasn’t broken. I didn’t need medication to do hard things. I just needed to figure out my way of getting through them.

It hasn’t always been easy. Even now, ADHD and dyslexia are part of my daily life. There are days where my brain feels like a storm I can’t calm down. Other days, it’s the dyslexia — when the words twist on the page or instructions flip around and the simplest thing feels ten times harder than it should. But that day — that closet door — showed me I could work with my brain, not against it.

Growing up, a lot of teachers had already decided who I was going to be. They saw a kid who couldn’t sit still, who struggled to read out loud, who couldn’t seem to follow the same straight line everyone else was on. They said I wouldn’t amount to much. They didn’t see a future for someone like me — someone with ADHD and dyslexia.

They were wrong.

But even when school made me feel like I wasn’t enough, there was someone who always made me believe I could handle hard things — my dad.

My dad was a real rodeo cowboy. Not just boots and a hat — he lived it. We spent weekends traveling from rodeo to rodeo, him riding bareback, chasing the next buckle. Some of my best memories are from those long road trips — just the two of us, cruising down the highway, rodeo gear packed in the back. It felt like freedom.

In 1989, I became the BC Peewee Steer Riding Champion. Back then, that buckle meant the world to me — it felt like I was following right in his footsteps.

My dad gave me a lot of tough love. He never laid a hand on me — but I was scared of him in a good way. Just the idea of disappointing him was enough to keep me in line.

He taught me what it meant to hold yourself to a higher standard, even when no one’s watching.

I carried that feeling with me everywhere — that quiet fear of letting him down — and it shaped almost every choice I made growing up.

He was my compass.

And my mom — she was my anchor.

My mom was steady when everything else felt shaky. She made sure I kept moving forward, even when it felt impossible.

I worked with my mom at McDonald’s from the time I was fifteen until I was twenty. Those years taught me a lot — about responsibility, about showing up even when you didn’t feel like it, about putting your head down and getting the job done.

After that, I bounced around a few different jobs, still trying to find my place in the world.

It wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I found the thing that fit — ironworking.

Long hours, real pressure, and problem-solving on the fly — it fit me in a way nothing else ever had.

That’s where my career really started.

Showing up, figuring it out, grinding through the tough days — it wasn’t new to me. And because of the way my brain works — the way I see problems differently — I moved up fast. Within six or seven months, I was a foreman.

I didn’t realize it at first, but ADHD and dyslexia actually made me one of the smartest guys on site. Not book smart — different smart.

I could spot problems before they happened. I could figure out better ways to get things done when other people got stuck.

It took me a long time to see that as a strength. But it was.

It wasn’t a straight road. I made mistakes. I started over more times than I can count. But every time I got knocked down, I figured out a way to stand back up. Maybe that’s what ADHD and dyslexia really taught me — how to survive the hard days when it would’ve been easier to quit.

Eventually, I worked my way up to senior project manager. Not because I had a degree hanging on the wall. Not because someone opened a door for me. Because I showed up every day and outworked the doubt.

Climbing the ladder on the outside was one thing — fighting the battles inside was another.

I still had to work through the same storms in my head — figuring out how to survive, how to adapt, how to build something out of the parts of me that didn’t seem to fit.

And then, just when I started putting my own pieces together, life gave me someone else to fight for.

My son.

Watching him step onto the jiu-jitsu mats for the first time hit me harder than I expected. I was proud, but I was also scared — scared that if I stayed on the sidelines too long, I might lose the connection we had.

Pretty quickly, I realized that if I didn’t find a way to walk that journey with him, he might outgrow me — physically, maybe emotionally too.

I made a decision early on: I wasn’t going to just stand back and hope he figured it out. I was going to walk the road with him.

So in October of 2020, I stepped onto the mats myself. At first, it was just about staying close. But it turned into something bigger.

By the end of summer 2021, I entered my first tournament. I ended up winning two gold medals and a bronze. Not because I was the most technical guy out there — but because, just like the rest of my life, I refused to quit.

In December 2021, after a little over a year of training, I earned my blue belt. That promotion meant a lot. It wasn’t just about moving up — it was proof that even starting late, with everything stacked against you, you could still climb.

Not long after getting my blue belt, I started helping coach. At first, it was just assisting — a little guidance here and there, helping newer students settle in. But something about it clicked with me right away.

Over time, jiu-jitsu kept shaping me. I kept showing up, kept learning, and eventually earned my purple belt.

It was during my time as a purple belt that something inside me shifted deeply: I realized I felt more joy seeing one of my students earn a new belt — or even just a single stripe — than I ever felt standing on a podium with a medal around my neck.

Watching them understand what that moment means… seeing the pride on their faces… it hits deeper than anything I’ve ever won for myself.

Their success, their growth — it’s become bigger than my own goals. That feeling — being part of their story — is something no medal could ever replace.

The truth is, it’s not just jiu-jitsu that taught me that. It’s life.

Every hard day, every setback, every small win I fought for — they all taught me the same thing:

Adapt. Adjust. Move forward.

Jiu-jitsu just gave it a place to live out loud.

On the mats, it didn’t matter if you could sit still or spell a word right. It mattered if you could figure it out, if you could keep moving. Exactly what my brain — and my life — had been built to do all along.

In a way, my dyslexia even helped. It made me better at seeing the patterns most people miss — better at finding openings, better at adjusting when something wasn’t working.

Just like off the mats, when everyone else saw one answer, my brain always found another way through.

The same thing started happening at work. When deadlines piled up and things got messy, my ADHD didn’t slow me down — it pushed me through. When others saw one way out of a problem, my dyslexia made me see five.

Different didn’t mean broken. It never did.

The world told me my brain was a problem — ADHD, dyslexia, all of it.

They were wrong.

My brain just speaks a different language. It took me a long time to learn how to listen to it.

Even longer to be proud of it.

Now, I wouldn’t change a thing. ADHD and dyslexia didn’t hold me back. They carried me forward.

This is my story. And it’s still being written.

Music - Tyler’s music choices during our photo session included Wu Tang Clan, Tool, The Dead South and Logic.