Someone used this phrase in a conversation last week. I can’t remember who I was talking with or how that came up, but when he mentioned that phrase, I told him I was going to tuck it away for a blog entry. I wrote it down on my blotter at work, secure that I would know when to call it up.

The phrase actually called me up today, saying “Pam, you have to write about killing the monster, now, you just have to!” Funny how things find us! I wish everything was so easy!

I had conversation night before last with gal-pal who stutters and we talked about feeling inadequate and failure, monsters that definitely need killing. And I felt self-conscious when placing a lunch order again at the dreaded drive-through. So yeah, perfect timing for me to see the phrase “Killing the Monster ” on my desk.

Lisa and I had a hugely honest talk about how, after working long and hard on acceptance, we can still feel inadequate sometimes. And we can still feel like we have failed. We know we are not failures and certainly not inadequate, but the vulnerability of stuttering certainly makes us feel that way sometimes. It’s so good to be able to talk openly about it with someone who completely understands that, another woman who stutters.

Stuttering exposes us. (Like the “naked stuttering” another friend has talked about). When we are caught in a stuttering moment and can’t get the word out, or get “the look”, or the” look away”, we still might say, “OMG, it’s not coming out, is it?” And in that split second, we can feel like such a failure. That is a monster that needs to be killed.

Killing the monster is not easy though. We have to deal with it every time it rears itself. That’s really the only way it works. By looking the monster in the eye and not backing down.  Sometimes, we just don’t want to. Sometimes, we want to back away, ignore it, change words or run. Sometimes that is easier. Lisa and I both know that we shouldn’t allow those moments to dictate the nature of our day or make us feel so crappy that it’s all we think about.

When we wake up in the morning thinking about our stuttering and its the last thing we think about before going to sleep, then its time to kill the monsters. We can’t let anything control us like that. And its not just stuttering. It can be our emotions, fear, depression, physical illness, family, our past, our demons. We have to live our lives, and not let part of us become all of us. Easier said than done. Easier done than said, in our case sometimes.

Lisa and I know this. Most of us do, in fact. Intellectually. But sometimes, we just don’t feel it, and we need someone else who gets it to help us kill the monsters. There is safety in numbers when it comes to monster killing. Let’s get ’em!