You are not your stutter

                           

Sometimes you just gotta get on with it...

When I sat down to write this blog post, I'm going to be honest here, I had no idea what to write about. There hasn't been much happening as of late in regards to my stutter, if anything I currently have a really positive relationship with my stutter. Then I got to thinking about how one week my stutter is something I think about a lot and it has the capacity to control how my day goes and then another week, there is so much else going on in my life that my stutter is really not very important and it simply just exists within me, only rising to the surface when I talk. And I suppose that's the point of this blog post: how I, and my life, are sometimes so much more than the way I talk.

In my last blog post, I made reference to my Small Wins and how I believe in celebrating them. I will always feel this way, because why wouldn't you celebrate yourself?! But on the other hand, sometimes I know I just gotta get on with life. Stutter or no stutter, I'm going to get a coffee because I need to be at work at 9 or stutter or no stutter, I'm going to make that phone call because if I don't the organization I work for will lose out on a meeting space. There are days where the mundane tasks of life really do take precedence over whether or not someone will make a snide comment or laugh because I stutter on the word cappuccino. 

Disclaimer; And I completely understand that I have become, in a lot of cases, very desensitised to stuttering in front of strangers and if you're reading this and you are not there yet, please don't compare yourself to me. You are on your own stuttering journey. It has taken me a number of years, and quite a lot of trial and error, to feel this way.

Cheers to being you!

You are so much more than your stutter...

If you've read more than one of my blog posts, you probably know that I'm all about embracing your stutter and accepting it as part of you. And I know that this blog mainly focuses on my relationship with my stutter, my stuttering experiences and my opinions on stuttering within society. But I also know that my stutter is only a part, be it sometimes big and sometimes small, of me. My stutter does not make up the entirety of my being and I think it is important for me to recognize that. 

I think as a person who stutters it can take a long time to learn you are more than your stutter. I know in my own experience, quite a lot of my childhood was spent attending speech therapy sessions and listening to my mother tell my teachers that I stuttered. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I was going to cope when I was called on to answer a question or if I had to order my own food when I went out for a family meal. I am a person who stutters, and it is something I accept as being part of me. It ain't going anywhere! But I am also a college graduate, I am also an administrative assistant, I am also a daughter, I am also a friend, I am also an avid Netflix watcher and the list goes on and on. 

So basically, my point is that even though you stutter and you should recognize and accept that it is a part of you, please don't become your stutter. You have a stutter...you are not your stutter.