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From: Craig Stephenson
Date: 10/21/01
Time: 2:07:14 PM
Remote Name: 64.12.106.41
Dear Candace,
“I have known many Stutterers and it truly upsets me when they have told me that because of their stuttering they have little or no social life or are in a dead-end job when they are capable of so much more. I know that the big problem is how others perceive your stuttering. I fully and completely understand this, BUT I also know that how you perceive your stuttering significantly impacts their perception.” I told you some time ago I had no social life. The most important thing I have learned from you is to stop feeling sorry for myself. I think if any one would have reason to, you would, and you don’t. You do make very good lemon aid. I think it was a good thing I was blessed with stuttering. I was also blessed with being a chronic whiner. I have used stuttering all my life to keep from facing the challenges of life. It was always much easier to blame a defeat on my stuttering rather than on ME. I realize now my stuttering did not cause my lack of a social life, I did. I used my stuttering as a crutch to keep from facing life. I wanted to face it on my terms and life is not that way. It’s what I say, not how I say it, which is important. Just as it is not so much what happens in life but how you face it. It was your courage, which gave me the strength to go to the NSA Convention in Boston. There I met over five hundred other Stutterers who all had social lives and were very content with life. Many had families with them. The one big difference I could see between them and me was they had accepted their stuttering and I had not. In the office where I work where everyone passes each day and everyone can see I hung the ISAD Poster, the biggest one I could find. To my amazement not one person pointed their finger at me and laughed. Instead I received many questions. A secretary even mentioned she had a grandson who stuttered and wanted help location a SLP. The first half of my life I let stuttering keep me from doing the things I wanted to do. The second half of my life I am going to USE stuttering to do all the things I want to do. My lemonade will never be quite as good as yours, but I am learning. Thank you