Recently, a friend shared a favorite poem as the invocation at our Toastmasters meeting. She read “Saying It” by Phillip Booth. As I listened, the first lines really spoke to me.

Saying it. Trying to say it.

Not to answer to logic, but leaving our very lives open to how we have to hear ourselves say what we mean.

The first part of this poem could have been written about stuttering. That’s not why a fellow Toastmaster chose to share this at our meeting. She was no doubt relating to how we communicate and choose our words, as that is a focus in Toastmasters.

But I heard struggle, vulnerability, and guilt. I wasn’t just listening, I was relating and processing, on a deep, personal level.

Maybe other Toastmasters heard the same, for of course it’s not only stutterers who struggle with saying what they want to say.

As a person who stutters, those simple words – “Saying It” – struck such a chord with me. Sometimes we can’t say it, or don’t say it, or change what we were going to say.

We are afraid of what the struggle will look like as we try to say it, and how we, and our listeners, have to hear ourselves say what we mean. I know I have been afraid to just “say it.” I worry about what others will think, still.

And there are times when I really don’t like having to hear myself say what I mean.

What about you? What do you think?