Seizing What Could Be
In January, the wonderful speech-language pathologist Ana Paula Mumy and I launched the first two iterations of the Every Waking Moment Book Club. We had one three-session club tailored to school-based SLPs, and another for clinical SLPs, with both eligible for continuing education credit. Each of the three two-hour sessions were based on the three parts in
Perhaps I have not read enough of the available academic research done on stuttering to date, or that which I have read has not been as accessible as Knowledge Without Action Means Nothing: Stakeholder Insights on the Behaviors that Constitute Positive Change for Adults Who Stutter conducted by Dr. Naomi Rodgers and Dr. Hope Gerlach-Houck. As I
Perspective Disclaimer I am not a speech-language pathologist, nor do I play one on the internet. There are many fantastic SLPs already doing wonderful work. This three-part series has already analyzed my journey through school-based speech therapy and unveiled a soul-cleansing repentance to the SLPs of my past. In this article, you will find that
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
Perspective Disclaimer I am not a speech-language pathologist, nor do I play one on the internet. There are many fantastic SLPs already doing wonderful work. The first article in this three-part series analyzed my journey through school-based speech therapy. In the following letter, article two, I use a unique format to express deeply held emotions
Perspective Disclaimer I am not a speech-language pathologist, nor do I play one on the internet. There are many fantastic SLPs already doing wonderful work who are waiting to work with we who stutter. This three-part series uses and analyzes my journey through school-based speech therapy as a case study, and includes my history from
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
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
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
At thirteen-years old, I attended a month long intensive fluency clinic to fix my severe stutter. If I didn’t do well, I would stutter forever. I didn’t do well. Fast forward eighteen years to a moment when I was answering questions as part of a talk I gave at the National Stuttering Association’s (NSA) annual conference. “Why do most people who
Every Waking Moment 