[ Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Anita
Date: 25 Oct 2011
Time: 01:14:19 -0500
Remote Name: 83.223.9.17
Hi Arica. Thanks for your compliments. Yes, my story is as tough as it is amazing. What you've read here is only the tip of the iceberg... I just came back from a speech in Iceland and met up with 15 young people who have been to European Youth Meetings. I also met some of there parents and they all say the same: this week was life changing! I like to use the analogy stuttering being like an iceberg. Some parts are visible (hearable) and some are not. And every time it rains/snows, the iceberg gets bigger, while it melts when the sun shines. It wasn't until I started to drift around looking for sunshine, my iceberg was able to melt down, layer by layer. I found friends. I found people who saw the me behind the stutterer. I started to look up instead of looking down. I started to look inthe mirror and see how other people saw me, instead of only focusing on how I saw me. I stopped blaming everything on my stutter. I started to focus on what I CAN do instead of what I CANNOT do. I started to see the benefits (http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/isad11/papers/gift11/blom11.html and the fun of it (http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster/humor.html to balance the daily struggle and the loads of tears that still are so close. I started to share my story to help others, including myself, as sharing bad times, demishes the pain, while sharing good times, increases the happy feeling. And I started to find pride in me, the person I was and the person I had become. The things I have accomplished, despite and thanks to my stutter. In short: to see the bigger picture. Stuttering is not who we are, it's something we do, so we should stop defining us being "a stutterer" and start rewarding ourselves for being the strong people we are. Because we are doing something other people dread, and are doing this 24-7: feeling the fear (of speaking) and doing it anyway! You can give children the tools, the stuttering community can give them the support from children and adults just like them. A combination of this is a gem! Thanks for your most important question. This shows how good a SLP you are! Happy ISAD. Anita