Stammering Awareness Day Post
I missed Stammering Awareness Day this year because I was at a Sales Conference for work so here's my belated post.
"Therapy. It's not right for everyone"
I made a very similar decision to Paul Gaskin when I turned 18 and moved away to university. I was in a different city, far away from my parents, with nobody I knew. Away from every comfortable thing possible to hide behind. So I thought fuck it. I will not do this anymore.
Speech therapy is often not a choice for children like me.
I have stammered since the day I started talking, late, at age three. And even then my first word was 'no'. A testament perhaps to the personality that was hidden for years and years beneath the appearance of someone who was 'shy' or 'withdrawn'.
I did not speak between the ages of 3 and 14 in school. And if I did, they were one word answers. I am surrounded by memories of school reports my mum's kept with the teacher's feedback, 'she's quiet in the classroom, she should put her hand up more' or 'she'd be a clever girl if she wasn't so quiet'.
In those formative years, I had few, if any friends. And at the age I am now I realise just how damaging that is to someone. In uni, I didn't go to fresher's week, I rarely came out my room and I found myself emotionally and socially exhausted just because I walked through the kitchen to wash my pots and one of my flatmates was there trying to chat.
What has speech therapy ever done for me, if it hasn't helped me socialise and become the kind of person who just speaks without thought?
Speech therapy, in my case, was not to try and make my life better. It was to try and hammer the stammer out of me by any means necessary. I even kept the folder, which I found recently.
I missed out on classes and break times in Primary School, because I had Speech Therapy, organised by my school. And I remember feeling confused, when at the age of 8, one such speech therapist decided that my stammer was so bad, she sent me back to class, with an A4 sheet of paper. 'A-Z, Sign Language'.
I've never seen my mum so livid.
The ones who came after weren't as bad. But they never felt less patronising. They would put cards in front of me and say 'this is how you say this word correctly'. I know how to say the word, and correctly as well. Just not in the manner they wanted. Not in the way that proved to my parents, that all this therapy, all this money, was working.
Every day, I'd still come home with a stammer.
At age 13, I was gifted a device, called a VoiceAmp. A company now who doesn't operate. It was a small MP3-like device that fed my voice back into one ear, half a second later, at a higher pitch. And it worked mostly.
The teacher's knew about it. Let me use it. And I thought that maybe, maybe, it would be alright. I loathed having to carry it around with me everywhere, but it was something.
Until one day, class hadn't even begun yet, when a teacher berated me in the hallway for 'listening to music'.
And whatever confidence was built. Was shattered.
Around the same age, I found my passion, languages. I did German before, yes, but this was Japanese. This was different. Difficult. 3 alphabets, thousands of characters, fast-paced speaking?
I don't know why I really kept on at it.
It is the only GCSE I ever got an A* in.
It is the only time, I ever really truly felt supported by a teacher, and she didn't even teach at my school. She paid for my GCSE, out of her own pocket, because she saw how much I loved it.
Of course. My parents saw this and thought 'oh all that speech therapy worked, she loves languages'. When that's not entirely true.
I struggled, mentally I now know, throughout the entirety of my school life, extending into Sixth Form. Wondering, 'where am I going to fit in the real world? Who in their right mind is going to hire someone who, yes, speaks, reads, writes Japanese, but can't even say their own name without tripping over the syllables?'.
Having completed my first year at uni, something loomed in second year. My Year Abroad to Japan.
I was fucking terrified.
But I'm alive, I made it! But that, I believe was the turning point. That I was forced into situations that were uncomfortable, forced into speaking a different language to people who realistically had never seen anyone who wasn't Japanese before. And fuck yes it was awkward sometimes but when I came back to the UK, I felt totally different.
I felt that I could do this, without having my parent's hanging over me, waiting to detect the tiniest block, the smallest of repetitions, just so they could be all smug and say 'well that speech therapy was useless, you're not even using it'.
I felt like I could be a person, make my own decisions and do what I want. And with that freedom, it became less and less about my stammer and more about me.
That is why this TedTalk by Paul Gaskin, resonates with me.
I've had speech therapy, breathing exercises, coping mechanisms. I've had devices, sign language, even a band tied around my chest to control my breathing (which bloody hurt btw cos I had tits coming in).
Nothing works better, than just, letting go.
I am not cured. I never will be. I still stammer. And it's worse on some days, some weeks, more than others.
But that is not my problem.
It is the way I speak.
Stammering cannot be hammered out of a child, an adult. My parents could have flung all the speech therapy at me and it would not have changed a thing. But why does it need to be hammered out? Sure it might hurt my parents to watch me struggle, but how do they thing I feel?
Years in silence, tripping over words, verbally and physically abused, out of breath, facial ticks. It hurts me more than it hurts them.
I don't know if my stammer is neurological but does it matter? It's here now, and it's not going anywhere, contrary to popular belief. I'm still allowed to be frustrated, saddened and put down sometimes by it, because it's something that's been with me from day one.
That doesn't mean I've taken a step back.
My pictures above, refer to a moment, a pivotal one, where I was first aware I was different. It was a new school, and we were all introducing ourselves. And when I stammered, everyone laughed at me. And too anxious to cry outwardly, I stuffed my head into my jumper and cried as quietly as I could, until the class was over.
They're important pictures to keep, I think. To remind me of the little girl I was. I like to think I've made her proud.
But I'm proud of her.
Not only because of all she went through.
But because, when asked by the speech therapist how we could realistically ease the bullying (something she probably shouldn't have been asking me anyway 🙄), she responded with this.
Sorry for the long post. I need to get this off my chest every few years (and it's my blog I do what I like, jokes on you for reading this far lol).
Next year I hope to attend my first Stamma Fest. If this topic is something you've never thought about or something that interests you, I highly suggest you check out the Stamma website.
Thank you for coming to my (not) TedTalk.
