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From: Steven Kaufman
Date: 16 Oct 2008
Time: 16:11:58 -0500
Remote Name: 64.12.117.139
Hi Pam, and good evening to you, I wanted to thank you for your response to my comments pertaining to your posting. You are right in your feelings that your goal is to make the world more tolerant of understanding what stuttering is. I remember at the NSA conference meeting up with Nobby Lewandowski, who is a well-known motivational speaker and a frequent presenter at the NSA conferences on the topic of self-esteem. I purchased his book and he made a very interesting point, as he talks about how "Speaking is not the same thing as communicating." When we speak, we may stutter and block on certain phrases and sentences, but it is not to be confused with the way we communicate. I would like to make the world more fluent, but I also acknowledge that trying to attain 100 percent fluency is akin to asking the impossible. If I can have a day when I am 80 percent fluent, that's OK. And if I have a day when I am 50 percent fluent, that's OK too. I used to go home and berate myself because I wanted to be a perfectionist and have a good speech day every time out. But now I am at peace knowing that whatever type of day I have, I know it's going to be great-because I am communicating. I also do wish the world would be more tolerant of people who stutter. But we are going to be heard, and the world is going to hear us communicate what we need to say. Steven Kaufman