‘I was a teacher for 17 years, but I couldn’t read or write’ | SENTENCE MINING 08

1. I was deceitful. 
2. I was teaching my students to be seekers of truth and I was the biggest liar in the room. 
3. I was at this desperate spot in my life. 
4. I wanted to tell somebody and I wanted to get help and one day in the grocery store I was standing in line and there were two women in front of me talking about their adult brother who was going to the library. 
5. He was learning to read and they were just full of joy and I couldn't believe it.
6. So one Friday afternoon in my pinstriped suit I walked into the library and asked to see the director of the literacy programme and I sat down with her and I told her I couldn't read.
7. I had a volunteer tutor - she was 65 years old. She wasn't a teacher, she was just somebody who loved to read and didn't think anybody should go through life without knowing how to.
8. She got me to about sixth-grade-level reading - I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. 
9. But it took me about seven years to feel like I was a literate person. I cried, I cried, and I cried after I started learning to read - there was a lot of pain and a lot of frustration - but it filled a big hole in my soul. 
10. Adults who can't read are suspended in their childhoods, emotionally, psychologically, academically, spiritually. We haven't grown up yet.
11. I was encouraged to tell my story by my tutor to motivate others and promote literacy, but I said, "No way. I've lived in this community for 17 years, my children are here, my wife is here - she's a professional, my parents are here, I'm not going to tell this story."
12. But eventually I decided I would. It was an embarrassing secret and it was a shame-based secret, so it was a big decision.
13. It wasn't easy but once I'd made up my mind I was going to tell the story I told it all across America, I spoke to anybody that would listen. I guarded this secret for decades and then I blasted it to the world.