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From: Joe Mirly
Date: 08 Oct 2005
Time: 18:09:51 -0500
Remote Name: 67.168.86.109
Hi Rachel, At first I was a little amazed that it took me so long to find the NSA, but then again I wasn't looking for it. I was avoiding any sort of discovery about stuttering or how I may have really felt about it. I'd have little revelations, enough to keep me moving forward, but I wouldn't take much time to ponder those 'growth spurts'. This was the reluctant acceptance that I wrote about. I figured I was stuck with stuttering but I still didn't like it - and didn't want to embrace it. I didn't want to learn more, as that would mean a deeper acceptance than I was willing to commit to at that time in my life. As I came to realize that it was OK to stutter, and that I my stuttering didn't need to dictate my choices in life, the desire to look inside myself and really accept my stuttering started to take hold and grow. I couldn't move forward to the next level until I had reached this point. The journey is a series of plateaus, and you have to reach each in turn. I came across the NSA when I was searching the Internet for stuttering resources/information - but not for myself, for my son. He was starting to show signs of stuttering and I didn't know what to do. Even as a stutterer for as long as I can remember, I didn't know the first thing about what to do as a parent of a child who stutters. It was in this search that I found the NSA - and really was the reason why I went to my first meeting. I wanted to ask the group about resources and their own experiences with children who stutter. As it happened I found far more than I could have imagined I'd find. Thanks for the feedback on the paper. Joe