In June 2023 I took part in the 50 Million Voices practice interview event; an initiative that does so much to unlock the talent of people who stutter by tackling the barriers created by workplace interviews. I’ve been involved with 50MV since meeting Iain Wilkie and Sam Simpson when I was a mentor on the … read more…
What is the impact of childhood intervention on those who continue to stutter into adulthood? Many adults have shared their experiences in memoirs, on podcasts, in blogs, etc. and most of those experiences are stories of recovery – not from stuttering, but from the impact of earlier therapy. Parents can benefit from reading these accounts, … read more…
Something serendipitous has welled up in my PhD research. An unexpected connection has sparked and fused. This connection is all about time, or rather its disruption, through usurping societal expectations of chronological time. It spans between my research area and the creative approach. This connection is opening up possibilities for thinking creatively around disfluency. The … read more…
‘Holding space’ means being fully present and curious with someone as they express their experiences, without judging or attempting to change them. In this blog post, I will explore why ‘holding space’ is so crucial in stammering therapy. How many times have you been speaking with someone about an experience or how you feel about … read more…
It’s an interesting time for therapists working with stammering. Not always a comfortable seat at the table when we’re considering the social model of disability with questions about what’s useful and what’s unhelpful, even harmful, in our work, and when our laziest thinking and assumptions are challenged. The online discussion group ‘Advanced Conversations in Stammering’ … read more…
Gender expression and fluency aren’t usually two things people pair together, however stammering is forced to exist on a binary in a similar way to gender. Children are always taught fluency is the inherent good while stammering is the undesirable bad, that it’s supposedly impossible to feel any other way about it. As any person … read more…
You may recall that I have been working on a series of paintings of people actively in the process of stammering. The message that many people who stammer get during their upbringing is that you should make every effort you can to be fluent and that stammering is a failure. This narrative is sometimes promoted … read more…
I had been meaning to contribute to Redefining Stammering for some time now. Sam reached out after reading a paper I had published, with co-authors Ellen Rombouts and Pascal Borry, in the Journal of Fluency Disorders. The paper, a carved-up version of my master’s thesis, presented the following argument: the scientific hope of discovering developmental … read more…
Adolescence is a time of challenge and exploration, on the one hand pushing boundaries and on the other trying to explore possible identities for best fit. As a speech and language therapist, I too struggle sometimes on offering a service that is fit for purpose for teenagers who stutter. I believe in the power of … read more…
In Draft No 4, the great writer John McPhee describes how his English teacher insisted every piece of student writing began with a sketch of contents and structure. This is mine. In a few hundred words time, you can judge if I have kept to it. My English teacher was equally prescriptive but more prosaic: … read more…