Lauren Sánchez Bezos is sharing a candid look at her early broadcasting career, revealing that while she often laughed off mistakes on camera, she was struggling with insecurities and the sting of public criticism behind the scenes.
In a recent Instagram post, the 56-year-old former TV journalist uploaded a montage of her past on-air flubs alongside a message about perseverance and living with .
“I made a lot of mistakes on air. You can see me laugh and say oops. (A lot) But behind that smile? Fear. Embarrassment. Critics said I didnt deserve to be there,” Sánchez Bezos wrote in the caption.
“That one hurt,” she admitted. “I tried not to show it and I just kept showing up every single day.”
“I still mess up words,” Sánchez Bezos continued. “I still reread things three or four times. But Im not embarrassed anymore. Took me a long time to get here. If you or your kid is struggling with dyslexia, know this: you may learn differently, but different doesnt mean less capable.”
“Oops is the sound of progress.”
Sánchez Bezos has previously shared that she was not diagnosed with dyslexia until she was a 19-year-old student at El Camino College, a in Torrance, California.
While being honored at the This Is About Humanity’s 5th Anniversary Soirée in March, Sánchez Bezos opened up about how her diagnosis came after her journalism professor recognized that her difficulties with reading and writing might be related to a learning difference.
“Someone out there looked at me and believed in me. My journalism teacher,” she said during her speech, per People magazine.
“She noticed I was struggling in school, getting in trouble, and that I didn’t sign up to write for the school paper, Sánchez Bezos continued. “So she questioned my reluctance. She’s like, ‘Hey, why aren’t you signing up for this?’ And I go, ‘I don’t know why I’m even in school. I can’t write.’ And she said, ‘Let’s see about that.'”
Sánchez Bezos recalled that her professor assured her that she wasn’t “dumb” and encouraged her to get tested for a learning disability.
The native said that after receiving her diagnosis, the “doors that once seemed shut swung wide open” and her college GPA jumped from a 2.0 to a 3.8.
“So why am I telling you this story? Because of that one person who took an interest in me. One person, one, who treated me with kindness, respect and humanity,” Sánchez Bezos said. “One person who believed in me. I learned how to believe in myself.”
Sánchez Bezos later transferred to the University of Southern California, where she studied communications and journalism. She worked as a desk assistant at the Los Angeles-based Fox affiliate KCOP-TV before becoming an anchor and reporter at the independent news station KTVK in Phoenix, Arizona.
In the late 1990s, Sánchez Bezos worked as a correspondent for the syndicated program “Extra” and as an anchor and reporter for Fox Sports Net, where she earned an Emmy nomination.
Sánchez Bezos returned to KCOP-TV as the co-anchor of “UPN News 13” alongside Rick Garcia in 1999. During a March appearance on “Today,” she shared that she concealed her dyslexia during those years and named Garcia as the only colleague in which she had confided.
“I went through life hiding it,” Sánchez Bezos said.
“Even when I was a news anchor, no one knew I was dyslexic except my co-anchor,” she said. “He would help me.”
She went on to describe how Garcia quietly assisted her during live broadcasts when she encountered a difficult word on the teleprompter.
“He would see a word on the screen and I would go like this, and he would whisper in my ear,” she said.
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