I Am Who I Am Because of My Stutter
Embracing the way I talk marks a new era of my life
“Oh, I had no idea,” people often say to me when I let slip that I am a person who stutters. “If you hadn’t told me, I never would have known.”
This admission, spoken in good faith, is meant to reassure me: “It sure doesn’t seem like there’s anything wrong with you.” My response is always pert and polite, just a smile and a nod. Instead, what I’d prefer to tell them is that whatever fluency I’ve achieved presently is the result of a lifelong struggle with my own self, a total war of communication in which a new battlefront is waged whenever I open my mouth to speak.
That, however, does not quite make for pleasant conversation.
As I write this, I am approaching 35 years of age. I stutter today and I have stuttered for as long as I remember speaking. I will stutter for as long as I live. I don’t know why I stutter, nor do any of the numerous speech therapists and pathologists I have seen throughout my life. What little I do know about stuttering is that every stutter is different, every stutter impairs its speaker differently, and every stutterer’s path to fluency — for those lucky enough to find it — is unique.
Stuttering is a communication disorder in which “the flow of speech is broken by…
