Seizing What Could Be
“Paper or plastic, sir?” asked the cashier, a middle-aged woman with a friendly face. I stumble a bit, struggling for a few seconds on plastic. It was just enough for me to get a smirk, a thought the woman had about why it took me so long to answer such a simple question. I could’ve
We who stutter need more speech-language pathologists with the courage and blunt honesty like what SpeechIRL demonstrated in their new article, “Just Stop with the Damn Disfluency Counts.” The pseudo-anonymous, united approach of this call-to-arms by SpeechIRL is commendable, and perhaps a foundation for a wider proactive movement—not just a discussion—to confront this aged-out stutter-counting practice. And that is how
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
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
I sat dejected across from a man that had just interviewed me for three hours. The interview was for a job that I had thought was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Afterwards, I no longer cared whether I got it or not. In the three hours, I had spent more time convincing the interviewer of
I couldn’t resist the urge any longer. It had gained momentum during a whirlwind of change that seemed to happen all at once. There was little else that I felt more viscerally than finding the words to describe this urgency to write. Did anyone else experience this feeling? I thought, “I’ve never been a good
At first glance, it is unclear whether I am wading into or away from the sunset. This photo, captured by my mother, was the turning point in my life. The day brought the legal end to my marriage, divorce, and was just four days after wasting an opportunity of a lifetime, to get my dream
Every Waking Moment 