[ Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Paul Goldstein
Date: 06 Oct 2004
Time: 19:07:00 -0500
Remote Name: 62.97.250.9
I thank the writer for her kind and thoughtful comments. I think if I had indeed received this letter on my 16th birthday it would have raised my spirits and courage immensely - in the sense that the letter would have demonstrated to me that there would be many positive life experiences ahead of me, and that these experiences would bring enjoyment and fulfillment even without having achieved fluent speaking. If I could have realized at that young age that fluency and happiness need not be mutually intertwined, this would have provided immense insight as well as a sense of strong hope for a bright future. Whether this would have increased my motivation for therapy is more uncertain. I was always interested in finding an effective therapy, but was beginning to think by that time that there wasn't any. The advance information about my future, however, would have certainly bolstered my confidence. Perhaps if I had a sense of assurance about what life would hold, the degree of my disfluency during those years might have decreased. I remember a workshop at an NSA convention some years ago in which Woody Starkweather had participants intercommunicate between their child selves and grown-up selves. And there is a line in Fred Murray's excellent autobiography "A Stutterer's Story" in which he states that he wishes he could have informed his earlier self that better days were coming. At the very least, I believe that if we understand our pasts, it can help us better plan our futures.