What if you could learn what it’s like to stutter as you grow older, and then, once you understand, share it with others? This question remains the biggest problem still challenging the experience of stuttering. How come few who have navigated and transcended the afflicted state of stuttering turn back to pull others like myself forward into the
Category: Change
No one had ever told me that it was okay to stutter. When I learned that it really was okay, I never looked back. I could be filled with resentment and regret for having pursued fluency in speech therapy for a majority of my life. Fluency was always a far off mythical reality that was incomprehensible. Everything I
When I pull back the aperture from the grind of my journey towards change, I see clearly the catalysts that propelled me forward. The catalysts were the people who came and went or remain in my life that left an indelible mark. If you have been following along as I’ve deconstructed my journey through stuttering
Stuttering, to me, is a behavior of inaction and avoidance, rather than a stigma-laden disorder of speech. I fought for years against the inner life of stuttering and its side effects without a reprieve. I never won. Until I did. After many years failing to become fluent, I fatefully found a different approach that had been missing
There is a difference between feeling and being alone. Both are equally hard to endure but knowing the difference was life-changing. There are 70 million people worldwide who stutter yet growing up I felt like the only one. Stuttering was socially isolating because it denied my use of verbal communication to foster connection with others. When
Surfacing emotions that we never knew were holding us back is a disruptive experience. It is much easier to numb ourselves to them, and when we do, it becomes impossible to understand their influence on our lives. Fear and shame were mine. I lived in fear of anyone hearing or seeing my stutter, and I
Growing up with a stutter was lonely and isolating. I lost my formative years to an unbearable social anxiety that denied me the opportunity to learn how to interact with others. I had friends. I played teams sports. I passed as socially fluent. I graduated college. And, I got my dream job. Yet, no one
It was sink or swim, and storytelling was how I learned to swim. Dating sat atop my fear hierarchy like it does for many, but more so for me because of my stutter. Success at dating goes no further than first impressions, and in the age of swiping left or right—though before then as well—that means
Habit building is a process and a skill that takes refining, trial and failure, and iteration. Every action that we pursue can be broken down into its smallest parts and made easier to do or become automatic. It is one part awareness of the parts or steps in the process, and another figuring out what
Whenever life is too much to endure, I fall forward into what’s familiar to weather the chaos. I do the things that I enjoy doing until some order returns no matter how long it lasts. What’s familiar allows me to think less about whatever it is that I’m enduring and more about simply making it through. All I
Every Waking Moment 