People who have got to know me in recent years are really surprised when I tell them that I have a stutter.
Although my speech is fairly fluent these days I use any and every opportunity to talk openly about my stutter and acknowledge that I have one.
I am proud of the fact actually!…..but it wasn’t always this way.
Like many other people who are “disfluent” I spent many years hiding my stutter and feeling embarrassment, shame, fear and isolation.
My stutter started in childhood and took the form of what is called ‘blocking’. I didn’t really stutter in the traditional sense of the word but rather I couldn’t get anything ‘out’. At times my junior school life was a misery and I acquired some rather hurtful nicknames (one of which titles this blog post). I would wake up in the morning praying I’d been struck dumb in the night, better that than half a voice.
[Andy, me and Jill]
Luckily for me I was offered speech therapy. Every Monday afternoon my Dad and I would go off in our orange VW camper van to see my speech therapist Mr Good (yes that was really his name!) I have only vague memories of the actual therapy but what I do remember is waiting for Mr Good to leave the room, presumably to speak to my Dad, and me doing cartwheels around the room until he came back in.
The therapy did eventually work, I became more fluent, I was happier at school and the end of my junior school life culminated in my starring role as ‘Snow White’ in the school play in which I not only had to speak but also sing! I never gave my stutter a thought.
My speech was generally okay in secondary school, it had its moments mostly when I found myself having to read aloud in class. However, what I did suffer from was the legacy of bullying – low self esteem, a lack of confidence and avoidance of certain things and situations.
Fast forward to my adult life – there’s been a few significant flare-ups over the years. I had to return to speech therapy in the 90’s, with other adults this time and in a group setting . No Mr Good, no cartwheels but an amazing insight into others peoples struggles with their fluency. In work, I was lucky to have some amazingly supportive managers who understood and focussed on things I could do and not the small things I had difficulty with.
…..and so to today.
One of the absolutely key things I have learnt about my stutter and that has helped me enormously is to accept myself entirely as I am, stutter included! I started to ask for help at work, talked openly about my stutter, asked people to give me a break when I was having a bad day and stopped giving myself such a hard time about it.
I found that once I had done this a lot of the pressure was off, I didn’t have to hide my stutter anymore and from that my fluency improved significantly.
I still have the odd bad day when I wonder what the hell my voice is doing but I try not to worry. I shrug my shoulders and say to myself “Shut up Stutterbug, tomorrow is another day”
Whether life’s disabilities/ Left you outcast, bullied or teased/ Rejoice and love yourself today/ ‘Cause baby, you were born this way Lady Gaga – Born this way
[Me and Jill]