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From: Paul Goldstein
Date: 02 Oct 2004
Time: 13:59:04 -0500
Remote Name: 62.97.250.9
Hi, Gina. My wife Liv and I were very pleased to have met you at the recent Nordic Regional Stuttering Conference in Iceland. As I remarked to you then it was a special pleasure for me to finally meet you in person, as we had first been in E-mail contact 5 years ago. I had no idea that you had endured such torturous childhood and teenage years before reading this article. I want to thank you for discussing so candidly your life story, and hope that your courageous article will prove to be of immense help to others who have similarly suffered. I hope that your important article will contribute to the empathetic understanding and knowledgeable assistance that parents, teachers, and professionals so desperately need to combat the problem of bullying and effectively counsel both the victimizers and the victimized. Some of your story had parallels in my own life, but I was fortunate in that the extreme bullying I encountered due to my stuttering occurred during only one summer of my life, when I was 12 at an overnight camp. I was also fortunate that while some of the bullying I received was physical, it was not as extreme as yours, and some of the culprits in my case were harshly punished. Let us all work together for a not-too-distant future when the horrid experiences that you had to endure for years (or I for a month) will become increasingly rare, as we develop better ways to nurture understanding and acceptance of people who are "different". Having recently met you in person, and then having read this article shortly afterwards, I can only say that as a person you have the gifts of remarkable courage and resilience. To endure this kind of living hell and come out of it with such incredible warmth of personality and friendliness, and genuine caring for others, is a testament to the incredible strength of your character and spirit. I commend you not only for this courageous article, but for your courageous and inspirational life.