A New Man

Hello. It's nice to be back. I hope you guys have had a good week. It's been a pretty amazing week for me. Thank you so much to everyone for your kind words and prayers, I really appreciate it. And the prayers worked!

The speech therapy course went really well, and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to do it. It was an exhausting week-- I would have spoken more in those five days than in the past five years, I reckon. But all the hard work was worth it. The point I'm at now is far from perfect, but also a far cry from where I was on Monday morning.

I learnt the techniques of 'smooth speech' early on, and then spent the rest of the week just practicing and getting my speed and naturalness up. I really came a long way-- from being an introverted, tense person unable to get a couple of words out without blocking on Monday, to Friday when we went to a big shopping centre and I had to spend a couple of hours going from shop to shop, striking up conversations with strangers. And I reckon only a couple of those would have picked that I had a stutter. So, it was really a hugely liberating, empowering experience.

Back in the real world now, without a horde of clinicians around me it certainly isn't as easy. I make slip ups and get pretty disheartened, and it's really hard to maintain the techniques and coordinate everything-- it requires a great deal of planning and concentration for each sentence. But I'm just doing my best, and trying to push through disappointments and keep going forward.

My goal is to never go back to where I was, and in order to make that happen, I need to work hard every single day, basically for ever. Completely difficult and unending, but far, far better than stuttering through every sentence, rarely getting out a fraction of what I really want to say. Absolutely worth it. Anyway, I didn't want to write some massive essay about this, but I couldn't help it. It's hard to sum up such a life changing week in a paragraph. It's hard to explain how big it feels. I really feel like a new person, not just in my speech, but in my whole outlook. It feels bloody good!