Did those people go to university or try to learn on their own? I absolutely would not have been able to learn upper mathematics outside of the structure (and intrinsic pressure!) of an academic environment. I would never have had the motivation or persistence on my own. Even within an academic system, generating the motivation to persist is a daily struggle, but a lot of my identity is around "being a good student", so that really works in my favor to counteract the difficulty of being a non-traditional student.

This learning adventure has been very, very hard. But it is possible.

Because if I can do it, seriously anyone motivated can. I was the epitome of "bad math student".

My precalc teacher in high school actually discouraged me from going on to calculus (I took his advice and took trig, not calculus, in senior year of high school), and I decided during that meeting that I would never take a math class again.

As an adult, I really take umbrage with that lack of faith. I wish someone had told me that math is not any harder than learning a new language (something I was very good at).

It would have given me courage and helped me see math as not some kind of untouchable, elite pursuit, but just a learnable skill set like any other.