Stuttering
Without Shame
by Mary Ricketson
Reading Reaching Out is always a perk-up for me. I pick up the
mail. It's an ordinary after work time, and there is my newsletter.
Even if I'm already in a good mood, something gets better. It's
the connection and the positive attitude. I never liked those
Pollyanna types that seemed to want me to actually be glad I stutter.
That's not what I mean. The positive attitude in FRIENDS is the
perspective, the up-front, no embarrassment, seriously respectful
and outright humorous vibration.
Chicago's convention put me in a great mood in spite of stirring
reflections of my 50 years of stuttering. My tears sometimes surprised
me, but laughter outweighed it all. I was intrigued and actually
in awe of the happy go-lucky time the teens seemed to be having
in this place where the common bond was stuttering. I wanted to
know more about it but couldn't get up close and personal enough
to get more than a glimpse. Finally, in a rare moment, months
afterward, my l5-year-old son Lee granted me an interview.
"The only problem with the convention is that it was not
long enough," Lee began. If I had not eventually played the
'heavy' and said we really have to go now, he and I might still
be standing in the lobby of that hotel. It really was hard to
part from all those dear people.
"At Friends, the people are nicer than the vast majority
of other people." He explained the convention was a "positive
experience with the world."
"I felt like just a person, not someone who stutters. It
was as if the convention had nothing to do with stuttering." Lee
said his final deduction was that "going to where lots of
people stutter made stuttering a non-issue."
This thing that made me want to dig a hole and crawl in it when
I was an adolescent, is the very thing that draws these kids together.
Stuttering without shame! Now, that's what I want to keep seeing.
This article from Reaching Out December, 2001
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