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What Was Left Unsaid
Posted on: November 20, 2017
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My father died two weeks ago. My father who I never reconciled with over serious childhood issues. My father that yelled and screamed at me when I was 5 years old and first started stuttering. My father whose lack of support drove me to try and hide my stuttering for years. My father who was ashamed that one of his kids stuttered. My father who never allowed me and my siblings to show emotions. My father who never showed me affection. My father who I had not talked to in years.
I happened to be away for the weekend when I got word that he had died. My siblings were text messaging each other and included me in on the thread. As I was driving, my phone blew up with tweets, the sound I use to notify me of text alerts. I glanced down at the phone and tried to see what was going on. I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about from just a quick glance.
I pulled over at the first nearest rest area to get gas and then pulled into a parking spot, curious to see what my siblings were furiously texting about. One sister had offered her condolences to others who were impacted by his death. I didn’t know who they were talking about. It didn’t occur to me to think it was my father. I texted a quick question and asked who died, thinking it was an extended family member. One sister directly responded that it was dad who died.
I was kind of shocked as I was not expecting to hear that and I was 100 miles from home. My brother then chimed in with a text that he was sorry I learned through a text message, but that the family thought it better not to have called me while I was away.
I started driving toward home and had the next 90 minutes or so to think. What I thought about was how weird my reaction was. I was not emotional or stricken – I was worried about how I would handle the upcoming funeral services and deal with family that I hadn’t seen in years. I was worried about possibly not going and how that would look.
I debated not going to any services as I had not had a relationship with the man in years. He never reached out to me and I kept my distance. While he was in a nursing home, several of my sisters tried to guilt me into letting go of the past and consider reconciling with him. They were going to visit him weekly and asked me repeatedly to join them. I chose not to. They stopped asking. I went about my life oblivious to what was happening with him.
I learned later that he had suffered several falls due to the pressure of a brain tumor he’d had for years, that I knew about. The pressure was causing dementia and made him prone to falls. The last fall he took was accompanied by heart failure and several attempts at resuscitation and then his heart just finally stopped.
I always felt a deep sadness that I did not have my father’s heart. I was his first born daughter and always yearned for that relationship with my dad that I knew other people had or that I saw on TV. I was envious of friends who were close with their parents and held a special place in their parents’ hearts. I never really told that to anyone and eventually those yearnings went away as I learned to manage with the hand I had been dealt. I vividly remembered the abusive, chaotic home I grew up in. I couldn’t not remember it.
I did go to my father’s wake and was supremely uncomfortable. I felt lost and like I didn’t belong there. Four of my siblings were also there, along with my father’s second family. A family I had always referred to as our replacement family. His wife, that my father had cheated on my mother with and who was younger than me. Whom I always blamed for hurting my mother.
I saw aunts and uncles, his siblings, that I hadn’t seen in over 25 years, It was awkward. It was more awkward seeing my father’s other daughters, openly grieving. I felt tense and anxious and couldn’t help but feel this whole thing was happening to someone else.
My sister read a “tribute” to my father toward the end of the service, one that talked about a loving father that instilled values and work ethic in all his (10) children and a love for God. I didn’t recognize who she was talking about. It was surreal to me, his firstborn daughter who wasn’t perfect and had never felt his love. My sister had reconciled with him and made peace with him as had two other sisters.
My youngest sister didn’t go to the wake. He was not part of her life and had never met her children, his grandchildren, yet the obituary read that he was their loving grandfather. I felt that people were trying to paint this man to be someone he was not.
I didn’t go to the funeral service or burial the next day. I couldn’t. I felt paralyzed by my very conflicting emotions. Part of me had hated this man for so long, for the emotional and physical abuse of long ago and for making me feel such shame over my stuttering. I carried this around for a long time. I also carried around his influence for a long time. I was in therapy for years, trying to process and perhaps reconcile my “daddy issues,” but never could. The pain was still there, after all these years.
When someone dies and it is unexpected, so much goes unsaid. Such is the case with my father. I never told him how I had yearned for his love, support and approval. I never told him that I have turned out pretty OK and feel like I am in a good place in my life, despite a tumultuous past. I didn’t really even say goodbye.
Part of me feels relief that he is gone, for he is not suffering and hopefully neither will I anymore. But I’m not sure that really is the case. I need to come to terms with what wasn’t said and find a way to process this so that I can move forward in peace.
The Voices In Your Head
Posted on: October 31, 2017
I am sure most people who stutter have experienced negative self talk. When we are faced with a challenging speaking situation, a little voice in our head tells us that we shouldn’t be speaking because we might stutter. Or when we do stutter, that voice reminds us that we’re stupid, inadequate or embarrassing ourselves.
I’ve definitely experienced this. Less so these days now that I’m more comfortable in my skin. I can remember hearing that voice tell me all kinds of things. Sometimes quite loudly too!
I have also heard the voice tell me positive things. I have heard my self-talk be encouraging, reminding me that my voice is worthy to be heard and congratulating me after getting through a challenging speaking situation unscathed.
What if you were hearing both negative and positive messages at the same time? Would that be confusing? Would the positive messages override the negative ones?
This weekend at the NSA’s 4th Annual Fall Gathering, we had a number of opportunities to explore our speech, play with different scenarios and see what happens when we listen to the voices in our head.
One particularly powerful exercise involved a fluent speaker who was asked to describe what she was planning to do for Halloween. She stood in the front of the room preparing to speak to the group. Two people who stutter were asked to stand on either side of her and whisper in her ear, one saying negative things and one saying positive things.
She was so flustered by hearing these different voices that she was unable to speak clearly. She gave up. It was a very good illustration of how listening to conflicting voices can impact our ability to think and speak clearly.
What do you think? Do the voices in your head affect how you speak? Do you ever find yourself giving up in a speaking situation?
Do We Suffer From Stuttering?
Posted on: October 16, 2017
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I had an interesting comment on the paper I submitted for this year’s International Stuttering Awareness Day online conference, which is going on now through October 22. Please read my paper, 5 Ways The World Can Better Understand Stuttering.
In one section of my paper, I talk about how the media needs to do a better job in portraying people who stutter on TV and in films. I think we as people who stutter can influence more positive portrayals in the media by continuing to raise awareness and educate people at every opportunity about what stuttering is and isn’t.
Someone who commented on my paper wrote that people who suffer from stuttering can be helped by the celebrities who “used to stutter” because they are good role models for overcoming stuttering. If they can do it, so can we. I gently commented back that I disagreed with her thought that celebrity recovered stutterers can help those of us who suffer from stuttering.
This gave me pause. Do we “suffer” with stuttering? I looked up the definition of “suffer.” Miriam-Webster offers this: “to become worse because of being badly affected by something.” We certainly can agree that most of us who stutter are badly affected by it in some way. Teasing, bullying, exclusion, workplace discrimination all are examples of what people who stutter experience. But do we become worse because of stuttering?
I’m not sure. I’ve heard many stories where people who stutter think that stuttering has made them stronger, more resilient, compassionate and empathetic. Had we not been dealt the hand of stuttering, we might not have developed the strength that many, many people who stutter have. And that’s a good thing.
So weigh in. What do you think? Do we suffer from stuttering? Are we worse off as people because we stutter?
Stuttering Only Some Of The Time
Posted on: October 6, 2017
I know someone who stutters who refers to himself as someone who stutters “some of the time.” He mentions this in email and Facebook posts every time he comments about something stuttering related.
He’s right, you know! All of us who stutter only stutter some of the time. We generally don’t stutter when we’re alone and talking out loud. We usually don’t stutter when talking to children or animals. And most of us don’t stutter on every single word when we stutter.
This individual often brings up the notion of the “fragmented self” that pioneer speech therapist Charles Van Riper coined. Basically this means that those who stutter see themselves as two beings – one who sometimes stutters and one who is sometimes fluent. Interestingly, I wrote about this six years ago in a post titled Self, Divided. I talked about how I often felt that I lead two separate lives – one being a covert stutterer and the other passing as fluent.
I really don’t do that anymore. Since “coming out,” I largely stutter openly and do not attempt to “pass” as normally fluent. I’ve shared before how liberating it is to not worry about being found out or exposed as a stutterer.
I wonder how you feel about this. Can you relate to the notion that we can be people who stutter some of the time? What does this mean in terms of how you see yourself?
ISAD Conference October 2017
Posted on: September 20, 2017
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The annual online conference for International Stuttering Awareness Day (ISAD) is coming soon. The conference starts on October 1 and runs through October 22, the day officially designated as International Stuttering Awareness Day.
The conference is a smorgasbord of papers, videos and other multi media presentations submitted by professionals in the field of stuttering and people who stutter themselves.
You have the opportunity to read a paper or watch a video and then comment and react to the piece via a moderated discussion thread. The author of the piece will then respond back to you, with either general feedback or answers to questions you may have asked.
There is also an “Ask An Expert” section, where you can pose questions to therapists or researchers in the field and get responses very quickly.
This is a great learning experience and we have a great theme this year, “A World That Better Understands Stuttering.” And this author has a submission this year too!
Check in here on October 1 and find all kinds of stuttering goodness.
No, I Didn’t Forget Where I Work
Posted on: August 17, 2017
Yesterday I answered the phone at work and stuttered on the name of the school I work at, as I often do. The caller immediately laughed and asked, “Did you forget where you work? Do you really wish you were at the pool?” For an instant, I felt that sinking feeling I get when I’ve been made fun of and I sensed my shoulders tighten and my face flush.
I sighed and then quickly said, “No, I stutter. Sometimes that happens.” The caller then gasped a little and apologized. She then paused and proceeded to tell me where she was from and what she wanted. She was from one of our district’s schools and needed some information which I was able to help her with.
She thanked me and apologized again. When we were done with the call, she wished me a good day and apologized a third time.
When I got off the phone, I was pissed. Not how I handled it, but that it happened. It still stuns me that grown adults react this way when someone stutters. I know she probably had no clue that I was a stutterer and thought she was making a joke. But still, not knowing who is answering the phone, a professional should not laugh like that and make matters worse by asking a dumb question.
I was happy I advocated for myself (and others!) by stating that I stutter and that stuttering happens sometimes. I feel she may have been embarrassed and I did not intend to embarrass her, but simply wanted to explain what she was hearing and that I hadn’t forgot where I worked.
I know this has happened to many of us who stutter. How do you react?
Teaching About Stuttering
Posted on: August 14, 2017
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I had a wonderful opportunity to teach employees at a Fortune 500 company in NYC about stuttering last week. Three of us from the National Stuttering Association (NSA) spent about 90 minutes teaching basic stuttering 101 to employees who had volunteered to conduct mock interviews with people who stutter.
George, Chaya and myself (all three of us people who stutter) presented about what stuttering is, what it isn’t, whether there is a cause and cure, the variability of stuttering, common misconceptions, stuttering and effective communication and why people who stutter make good employees.
George had organized the “Mock Interview Day” at his workplace and had 15 people who stutter signed up to participate in interviews with company employees. The day included training the employees on interacting with people who stutter, 2 mock interviews for each candidate, feedback for the candidates, a panel discussion on differences and coming out in the workplace and networking.
The primary reason this day was so successful was that the employees were genuinely interested and receptive to learning about stuttering and for giving people who stutter the opportunity to sharpen their interview skills in a supportive environment.
Several employees that I spoke with mentioned how helpful it was to have learned some basic information about stuttering before doing the interviews. They found it very impactful to hear from people who stutter who were able to share facts and personal experience.
I was thrilled to have been part of the day. I love talking about stuttering to whoever will listen and we had a great audience on this day. The interview candidates felt it was a great day and they appreciated the time people took to make the event a success.
Over pizza at the end of the day, one woman who stutters approached me to talk . She was raving about how helpful the interviews were to her. She said she felt inspired to do something similar at her workplace to “give back.” We brainstormed a bit and left it that she was going to talk to someone in her HR department and I was going to follow up with her with an email early in the week. How inspiring is that? I would love to see future events held at companies all over. Such learning took place.
As I traveled home on the train, I reflected on how lucky I am that I “get to” talk to people who don’t stutter and teach them about the experience. Teaching people one person at a time creates a world that better understands stuttering. I am so happy to be a part of this.
Stuttering Is Variable
Posted on: August 8, 2017
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I was talking to a friend of mine recently and she asked me about the different types of stuttering. I was intrigued by what she meant so asked her to elaborate. She said she has heard other people stutter and it’s very different than mine. She wanted to know why there were such differences.
I gave her the short answer – stuttering is variable. Severity of stuttering differs among individuals who stutter as does the impact of stuttering. A person can have a severe blocking type of stuttering and stutter or block on almost every speech attempt but it doesn’t bother them at all. Then you can have someone with a very mild stutter who is mortified every time they hear themselves stutter.
I told her there are also covert stutterers – those who clearly stutter but go to great lengths to hide it so they can appear as fluent. I told my friend that I did this for about 30 years and was absolutely miserable from the extra energy it took to hide and the feeling that I was being fraudulent by not letting my true self be seen. I also told her about the terror I always felt that my secret would be found out. She wondered how I managed for so long, and I told her about the various tricks that people who covertly stutter use to not stutter.
I told her about word substitution, little tricks like coughing, getting a running start, saying “ah” or “um” a lot or just plain choosing silence. I explained it was a lot like mental gymnastics to keep that up,
Stuttering is also variable for an individual. Fluency can vary significantly over the course of a day, hour, minute and depending what kind of speaking situation the person is facing. I can be very fluent for 30 minutes and then, seemingly like a drop of a hat, can’t get a word out. I’ll start blocking or repeating words or syllables and express frustration and even display some secondary behaviors, such as squeezing my eyes closed.
For some people who stutter, fatigue, stress and time pressure can increase their stuttering. And if a stutterer feels compelled to hide their stuttering, it can get generally more pronounced. The harder you try not to stutter, the more you’ll stutter.
My friend was amazed that I knew so much about stuttering and the different ways it can be seen and heard. She wanted to know where I learned all this.
I simply said, “I’ve lived it. Personal experience is the best teacher.”
Workplace Advocacy
Posted on: July 26, 2017
Yet another good workshop I attended at the recent NSA conference in Dallas was on workplace advocacy for those who stutter. The workshop was facilitated by two individuals who are working on a committee with me to increase workplace advocacy efforts and reduce the stigma of stuttering in the workplace. Hope is a speech language pathologist and a candidate for a doctoral degree and John is a person who stutters who has had great success in the workplace.
The workshop focused on audience discussion about what ideas we as a community have for reducing stigma around stuttering in the workplace. People came up with a lot of good ideas that our NSA committee will try to implement over the coming months.
The workshop also provided some statistics on stuttering and labor market outcomes. Both men and women who stutter made at least $7,000 less in annual earnings than men and women who don’t stutter. For women who don’t stutter, some evidence indicates the gap in earnings may be as large as $18,000. Those are big differences and certainly warrant increased workplace advocacy efforts.
The most common suggestion people made in the workshop was around networking. People who stutter believe that our networks will help us find jobs and that is true. Everyone, stutterer or not, should talk to people they know in the field, get references and recommendations and use networks such as LinkedIn to help with the job search process.
But I think there is more that needs to be done around workplace advocacy for stuttering. My vision is that employers understand stuttering and teach employees about stuttering just as they do about other differences in diversity and inclusion training. My hope is that the NSA will become a resource and support network for employers, not just for employees that stutter. More to come on that as our committee continues to expand our vision and sink our teeth into tangible outcomes for advocacy.
What are your thoughts on workplace advocacy for people who stutter? Do you think employers will find it useful to receive guidance and training from the NSA? How do you think we should go about doing that?
Stuttering And Social Justice
Posted on: July 14, 2017
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One of the great workshops that I attended at last week’s NSA conference was one facilitated by Kim Block on “Stuttering Community and Social Justice.” Kim asked the audience thought provoking questions about the group identity of the stuttering community and if we even have a group identity.
She got us thinking about the intersections between various segments of the stuttering community, such as people who stutter, speech and medical professionals, stuttering organizations, media and our allies. Kim asked us to do an exercise imagining the stuttering community as a business and how the different “departments” are linked together. She asked if we work together or in isolation as silos.
That bit about the silo got me thinking. Do the various entities in the stuttering community really work together? We know that the media does not always portray stuttering in a positive light. How could people who stutter, SLP’s, schools and our allies work together to influence the media to convey stuttering positively to the fluent world? In my humble opinion, I think that more people who stutter need to speak out and help educate those who do not stutter. That’s something that we as a community need to keep working on, since many people who stutter don’t like to expose that they stutter.
Kim’s workshop went on to challenge us to think about the elements of social justice: equality, oppression, resources and human rights. Do we have equality in the mainstream world? Do we have equal access to resources like speech therapy and self-help support groups? Are we discriminated against in schools and the workplace? Do stuttering organizations have equal access to fundraising like other organizations do?
The workshop was very well attended for the last slot of the last day. People shared good ideas and the questions spurred good conversation. Kim concluded with her final thoughts which all members of the stuttering community should heed. We are all advocates, we are all group interventionists, we are all connected which gives us opportunity and power.
It’s up to us, the stuttering community, whether and how we use that power. There are opportunities to raise awareness, which would lessen discrimination and misinformation. Members of the stuttering community have to seize those opportunities.
Hide And Speak: Covert Stuttering
Posted on: July 10, 2017
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I just returned last night from the 2017 NSA annual conference held in Dallas, Texas. I spent a week with some of the bravest, most resilient people I know. I’ve got lots of special moments to reflect on and share, but thought I’d start by providing a recap of the workshop good friend and SLP Charley Adams and I facilitated. We titled it – “Hide and Speak: The Allure of Covert Stuttering.”
We both wanted to explore the reasons why some people who stutter choose to hide and keep on hiding, even when it perhaps jeopardizes their authenticity. We started out loosely defining what covert stuttering is, and Charley led us through the life cycle of stuttering. This was a good primer for some of the people who were at the conference for the first time.
We then talked about escape behaviors, or what we actually do to hide our stuttering. Then we discussed secondary behaviors and the tricks we use to appear fluent. Later we talked about the degrees of covertness we may have and ways to gradually “drop the C” and aim to move from covert to overt.
One of the highlights of the workshop was an exercise I used in a previous workshop on covert stuttering. People were asked to pair up with a partner and each pair was given a copy of a one minute monologue to read to each other. On the bottom of the page was a large letter “O” or “I.” This signified that anywhere in the monologue that the reader ran across a word with the letter “O” in it, they couldn’t say it, but rather they had to replace it with a word with similar meaning and that also didn’t have the letter “O” in it. Then the other person in the pair had to do the same thing regarding the letter “I.”
It was an eye-opening exercise for people, especially for those in the room that did not stutter. People shared that they felt anxious, frustrated, drained, exhausted and that some gave up and didn’t finish reading. People who stuttered described the same reactions. The exercise was designed to illustrate how mentally hard it is to constantly have to switch words and think of other ones that made sense in the context of what was being discussed. All agreed that it was a valuable teaching tool.
Many people shared their experiences with hiding and we talked about how seductive hiding successfully can really be. People who covertly stutter often feel a thrill when they get away with not being exposed as a stutterer and it sets up as a pattern that is continued.
It was a great workshop. Charley and I got a lot of very positive feedback afterwards, and it definitely spurred good conversation and a different way of understanding covert stuttering. We also had over 120 people in attendance, which was an outstanding turnout.
Throughout the week and next week, I will share more about some of the special conference moments and provide an overview of other workshops.
Next year’s conference will be in Chicago. Start planning now to go. It’s worth it.
Talking To SLP Students
Posted on: June 7, 2017
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I don’t know why I didn’t post this sooner, but below is a group picture of me after speaking to a graduate stuttering class at the University of Mississippi in March of this year. OK, I’ll admit, I just kind of found the photo and thought it deserved a place on the blog!
It is so important for people who stutter to speak to the next generation of speech language pathologists. Students can’t learn about the experience of stuttering from text books. They have to talk to and listen to real people who stutter who live the experience every day.
On this day, I spoke to the students about my journey from covert to overt stuttering. It was a powerful experience for me, and hopefully them too!
On Resilience
Posted on: June 5, 2017
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People who stutter are some of the most resilient people I know. Stuttering teaches us to brush off those moments when we’re stuttering really “well” and go right into the next speaking situation.
A friend of mine has been struggling with her stuttering lately. She has been feeling self-conscious and sort of “over thinking” the stuttering moments she has encountered. I asked her the other day what happens when she stutters – how do listeners react?
She replied that they don’t react – that they don’t seem to care. So we talked about that, why people don’t seem to care when they hear us stutter. It can be any number of reasons. They’re preoccupied with something, they’re not really paying attention, or they just don’t hear the stuttering. I reminded her that close friends of hers really don’t hear her stuttering. They hear her and her message.
That’s one of the things we need to keep in mind about stuttering. It helps us to be resilient. Every single one of us, stutterer or not, has bad moments and days. Resilience is the ability to shake those moments off and keep moving forward. Resilience helps us develop the “thick skin” we need to advocate for ourselves and be sure our voice is heard.
Resilience helps us through difficult times, relationships and at work. All of us fall flat on our face sometimes. We fail a test, we say the wrong thing to a partner or we miss an important deadline at work. Those of us who are resilient can get up from the floor, brush ourselves off and continue on. I’m convinced that stuttering helps builds that resilience that we all need.
What do you think?
Make Room For The Stuttering 
What people are saying!