What would a conversation between two people who stutter look like? As I write I am putting the finishing touches to a collaborative piece of work that Conor Foran and I have been working on for our upcoming exhibition at City Lit in London. The exhibition is called ’Wouldn’t you rather talk like us?’ – … read more…
I love to be jolted out of the way I see the world. To be given a new lens through which to look at things in the hope of discovering new patterns in the way the world works. I believe that the Power Threat Meaning Framework, the PTMF, offers a useful new way to look … read more…
I have been a speech and language therapist for 30 years now working with people who stammer of all ages. I like the idea that everything I learned about stuttering and its therapy resembles a map. When I listened to Sam Simpson’s keynote talk at the ECSF Symposium in Antwerp in 2020, it felt that … 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…
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…