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From: Nina Reeves
Date: 03 Oct 2012
Time: 17:18:36 -0500
Remote Name: 173.173.94.35
Thanks so much for participating, and for your poignant thoughts. Two of the authors of this paper are also people who stutter, and the other two work with young people and adults who stutter, so your words ring true in the stories we have heard and have lived... Helping people "reconcile" the pain of being bullied is not something that anyone can answer in a paragraph or even a page of writing. That journey is inward and individual, and is best traveled with a support system of understanding family and friends. We can, however, educated the "masses" by getting the word our abut stuttering in every way we can (including conferences like this one). The good news is that there are many "fluenters" who DO understand stuttering, and there is hope for more understanding through the education you spoke about. Bullying happens too often, and about too many 'differences" in the human condition. Our hope can be that in many parts of the world, there is a change to become more and more tolerant of differences, and much less tolerant of bullying others (no matter what the topic). Anger about bullying is real and justified. We have come some way, and have much more to do! As a stuttering community, we can rally together to increase awareness, decrease bullying, and support those who have been (or are being) bullied.