Episode 209 features Phyllis Edwards who hails from New Zealand. Phyllis shares that she is 66 years young and has finally felt empowered to tell her story. I “met” Phyllis through her amazing contribution on the 2019 ISAD online conference. Phyllis has a supportive husband and children and works in an early childhood center, with 2-5 year old children.

Phyllis only discovered the stammering community about 18 months ago when she searched the internet about stammering and then found herself attending two conferences in different parts of the world, the BSA conference in 2018 in Cardiff, Wales and the World Congress in Iceland this past June 2019. To say that magic has happened in Phyllis’s life is really an understatement.

Listen in to this conversation, so full of emotion, from being a bit choked up to laughing quite freely, about a topic that Phyllis never dreamed she’d be so open about. Phyllis shares how her husband and children helped to make conference attendance a reality.

Part of Phyllis’s story that we as women who stutter can probably all relate to is that we have something in us – a seed – that makes us stronger, and it takes each individual to find that exact right time to be open to and embrace that we are worthy, stammering and all.

Phyllis believes it is time to pay it forward, and talks about how it “takes a village” to own our stammering.

I am glad I am a small part of Phyllis’s village.