Episode 245 features Caitlin Franchini, who hails from Atlanta, Georgia. Caitlin is a second year graduate student studying speech language pathology. She is currently participating in an externship with high school students and loves it. Caitlin is also a self professed foodie – she loves cooking and baking.

Listen in as we discuss all things stuttering. We talk about the changing relationships we have with our stutter, the journey to self confidence and acceptance and Caitlin’s own experiences with speech therapy.

Caitlin is new to the stuttering community and has gone from thinking she was the only who stuttered to realizing there is a huge network of support out there. We talk about disclosure and the importance of validating our identity as a woman who stutters.

Caitlin had the opportunity to work as a counselor at Camp Say last summer. It was a wonderful experience. “I thought I was going to change lives, but my life was changed.” Those epiphany moments are the best.

** Host note: As I listened back to this episode, I was stunned at the number of times I used filler words such as “uhm” and “you know.” I was in Toastmasters for many years and had worked specifically on recognizing and reducing filler words. For a long time, filler words were “run-ups” to words that I thought I was going to stutter on. An old avoidance tactic. Does anybody else find this creeping back in? **