[ Contents ]
From: Terry Dartnall
Date: 10/15/03
Time: 3:59:56 AM
Remote Name: 132.234.9.65
Hi Anne
You say, “After all these years of covering your stammer, what gave you the courage and strength to write about it now in public?”
Writing about it online is a lot easier than owning up to it with family and friends, and I certainly haven’t done that! My family and friends, and my colleagues, would be surprised to find that I’m a stutterer. But they’ll probably find out now. All you gotta do is put my name into Google, and I imagine it will find this conference…
Actually it doesn’t. I just tried. That’s surprising. Maybe it’s just a matter of time.
It didn’t take a lot of courage to WRITE about my stutter. What happened was that I was on sabbatical leave in the US last year and I thought I’d take advantage of the better knowledge and understanding of stuttering (especially covert stammering) that you have over there. And one thing led to another.
That relates to your question about speech therapy. I didn’t have any therapy at all until about three or four years ago, when I went to an SLP. She was nice, but she didn’t know anything about covert stammering (I didn’t even know the word “covert” back then!). I think that both of us went through the motions, knowing that it wasn’t going to help me one jot. The usually stuff, like slow speech and smooth onset. And it didn’t help at all.
You ask me to reply to you at your email address. I haven’t done so on this occasion but I’d be happy to correspond with you if you have any other questions.
By the way, where does your family come from? “Zschommler” is new to me.
Terry