Make Room For The Stuttering

I haven’t written in a while as I’ve been grappling with big issues. Anxiety and depression, talking less often to people, feeling isolated, fun stuff like that.

But my mind keeps wandering to relevance. I worry that I am not relevant to, well, anyone. I don’t work, and I don’t have regular social interaction, unless you count the “thank you” at the grocery store. I felt relevant and productive when I worked, both with colleagues and clients.

So I’ve been stewing over why I don’t feel relevant. And have been thinking a lot of about with who do we need to be relevant to, in order to feel relevant. Is it engagement with others that makes me/us feel relevant, is it doing something for someone else, or is it just about being relevant to myself?

It’s so easy to let negative self-talk and self loathing consume our thoughts, as I did for so long because of stuttering. I felt like I didn’t measure up, or ever could, to others who did not stutter. Avoidance became a self preserving habit, one that spilled over into other areas of my life. I intentionally chose not to interact with potential friends or many co-workers out of shame and fear of being seen in a negative light. That used to eat me up.

Then I found the stuttering community and dove in and realized instantly that helping others helped me. In little ways: encouraging others, sharing my stories, celebrating triumphs with others who may not even realize what they just did or said was a triumph.

I felt relevant in that world. I took on volunteer opportunities, led groups, presented workshops and generally felt good. I felt I was making a difference. I felt relevant.

But it seems now that everything has changed. I’ve had major life changes that have been difficult. I stepped down from the NSA Board of Directors because I thought my messy life would adversely affect my ability to help others and be a leader. I also worried that financially I could not contribute and of course afford to pay my way to conferences. At times, I feel extremely irrelevant in the stuttering community, which is funny, because it was deep involvement that helped me so much and made me see, really see, that I could help others.

I guess it’s most important to feel relevant to yourself. Find ways to be relevant. I’ve been trying to do that, from afar, on Zoom, like most of us have become so used to. I try to talk to people as often as I can, but honestly, that’s an effort, just like getting out of bed on some days.

But that’s OK. Being messy and unsure is what makes us human. I remind myself of that often. Helping others to realize that being messy, including not taking a shower every day or hardly making the bed, is relevant because I know others can relate to that. We all are messy. And being able to be comfortable with that helps me realize that relevance is a matter of perspective.