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From: jennyharvey81@hotmail.com
Date: 07 Oct 2006
Time: 16:24:36 -0500
Remote Name: 69.119.233.48
Hello, My name is Jennifer Harvey. Currently, I am attending the Masters Program for Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology at New York University. At NYU, I am taking a Fluency Course in which my teacher advised the class to come check out the stuttering homepage website. In doing so we were encouraged to explore the website and post a comment to a particular article that we read. So here I am! Searching through the stuttering homepage website I came across your article, Success! In spite of ( or maybe because of) Stuttering. Before I read the article I was fascinated by the title, I was extremely interested in learning about someone's success story. As a future clinician this is the ideal situation, we all want to make success stories happen and of course hearing about them does wonders for ones motivation. In reality I know that not everyone will be satisfied with the amount of progress made in therapy and that is to be expected. I picked this story because I wanted to read a story about someone who stutters and I wanted to understand how they achieved fluency if at all. Normally, we rely on text books and published research to guide us in our practices of treatment. However, I often find myself wondering how effective treatment will be when treating different types and severities of fluency disorders. I enjoyed reading your story because it was two personal accounts of two different people living in two different parts of the world. It is truly an insightful and inspiring experience to hear about someone's experiences with stuttering to see how they have achieved so much whether it is in spite of or because of their stuttering. I found it interesting that both of your stories had positive outcomes, it was as if you both found that you no longer had to surrender to stuttering and actually thought of recovery from stuttering in different situations as "small victories". If we think of our achievements as small victories we will always have reasons to be positive and motivated in the fight against stuttering. No one should feel labeled by their stuttering. If recovering means that we accept stuttering whether we are fluent or not then stuttering becomes a thing that you do and not something that defines you. I enjoyed reading the article, it was very inspirational and very exciting to hear someone's positive account on something that can be so detrimental to those who allow the label of stuttering to rule their lives. My question to both of you are what do you feel was the exact turing points in your lives, and how would you describe your fluency today and did you receive any therapy for your stuttering and if so did it help in any way. I am amazed at how you both have learned to use something that could ruin many and turn it into a tool for empowerment. Good luck with the future and the rest of your endeavors. Jennifer Harvey