When I say to people sometimes that I see my stammering as a positive in my life, they can find it a strange notion. Normally people can only envisage stammering as a negative concept.
My stammering is my natural pattern of speech, and having a stammer does not limit my speech nor hinder my conversations. Communication is so much more than just a speaking voice; it is your body language, facial expressions, your aura. Over the many years in my adult life I have found that being quite open about stammering brings many more conversations and opportunities to make my speech a positive attribute in both my professional and social life.
Quite recently I was thrown back into the position of having to update my CV and prepare for interviews as I had relocated from Northern Ireland and needed to secure a new job.
I have had many discussions with people about how to introduce stammering into my interview conversations. Also dilemmas such as do we tick the disability box? When is the correct time and place to disclose the fact you have a stammer? Can we ask a potential employer for special measures without setting ourselves at a disadvantage?
Our main issue is that in fact we are all different, each person’s stammer is unique in the same way we are all individuals. What affects one person may not affect another, and what seems impossible to one person may be a breeze to another.
For me, I decided that my stammer was something I could be proud of. The experiences that I have had over the last five years I would not have had if I was indeed a fluent person. And so I sat to write my stammer into my CV without actually using the words ‘I stammer’.
This became so much easier when I look at my stammer in a positive way. Showing that through my working relationships my stammer brings strong characteristics is really uplifting. I am able to say that by being very aware of my own speech makes me much more aware and sensitive to other people’s diversities. This makes us much more approachable if others can see that through our own difficulties we are open to accepting theirs.
Through my contacts within the British Stammering Association, going to their conferences, Open Days and getting involved in community groups I can show that I have a good network and that I am actively sourcing and meeting my own needs for back up and support.
For me, stammering has not disabled my life, but has added to it. It has given me more skills that I may not have finely tuned if I had indeed been a fluent person. It has also got me more involved with people from all sorts of places and made me push my own targets forward in terms of doing things for myself and independent travel.
And so, during my interviews I always managed to get my stammer mentioned during a question regarding strengths, talents or interests. Never in a negative way, never in an apologetic way. Mostly it was well received, employers were genuinely interested and it didn’t seem to put any off.
Socially, as I have got older I have cared less about my speech and the amount of fluency I have. My friends and family have become more comfortable with it as I have opened up more. I cannot believe I wasted so many of my younger years afraid to discuss things and be open with people when I was struggling.
My own breakthrough, so to speak, was whilst taking part in some research and being asked to visualise and describe my stammer as a ‘thing’. Something tangible you can see and touch.
For me, this was what turned my stammer into a positive. At that time, I saw my stammer as a weed, like a growing, choking ivy. It could be chopped down, but it was always there, ready to grown again, untamed and relentless. I did not like the thoughts of living with that all my days and so there and then I decided the weed needed to change, something needed to be in its place. And only I could change that. Only I could make that happen.
So I became much more open, stopped trying to ‘fit in’, met more and more people who stammered through the BSA and was soon able to realise that so many people have this dreadful negative feeling towards their stammering. I wanted to change this, I wanted to try to get people to believe in themselves, and that even with a stammer you can be whatever you want.
For myself, that weed is now a flower, a sunflower, tall and proud, bright and majestic. I had support to get it there, I couldn’t have done it alone. But we must reach out, go out on a limb, take a chance. We will stumble along the way, but the rewards are so much greater than finding we are choked by our own silence.
So for me, stammering has opened doors, albeit you have to be ready to pull that door open wide and walk through it. When you do, you are faced with a whole new world, one where we can all stand like those tall, beautiful flowers and feel the sun on our face.
Mandy Taylor