Project Update

Greetings! I want to check in with an update. This page has sat dormant for years, but I am returning to it and want to share more about how it came to be.

As someone who stutters, I’ve always felt different. Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who stuttered, and from the moment I was told my speech required therapy in 5th grade, it was ingrained in me that it would be my responsibility to fix it.

It wasn’t until I graduated college and entered the world as an adult that I began to grasp the reality of living with a stutter. It seemed to make people uncomfortable: I could see it on their faces. People would finish my sentences, and when non-stutterers stuttered, as most people do from time to time, they’d apologize for it. After a tiny slip-up, people will say things like “I swear I can talk,” “Wow, I just can’t speak today,” or “Bluh!” as if they just swallowed a bug. In a society that expects fluency, my vocal difference was an anomaly - deviant, inexplicable, irreconcilable. 

As I grew older, my feelings around stuttering began to crystallize around embarrassment, guilt, shame, and the notion that my stutter would always hold me back. I wondered if life was similar for other people who stuttered. I found forums and Facebook groups. Then I learned that the National Stuttering Association had a local, in-person chapter. I went to a meet-up. It was the first time I had ever been around multiple people who stuttered, who shared that they, too, had all the same feelings I had. I felt part of a community. By the time I had been to a few meetings, an idea had formed. The meetings were short and infrequent, and I wanted to create a space for unabbreviated, long-form conversation. I asked a few of the folks I had met through the NSA network if they would be interested in sitting down with me to talk at length about their life story, and to my surprise, several people were interested. With no interviewing experience, I bought a cheap audio recorder and an entry-level camera to take portraits, and pressed record. I asked my interviewees about their early experiences stuttering, what speech therapy was like for them, how much they think about their stutter, and about their life more generally. I threw this website together, gave it a name, and started posting. 

Then COVID happened. I didn’t want to do zoom interviews, so I stopped. And at 31 years old without a career track, I had to focus on getting my life together. I still hadn’t found a career that fulfilled me or felt like I could be good at, and wondered if I ever would. I didn’t blame stuttering directly for my career struggles, but they only fueled the fire of self-doubt that stuttering sparked. I had tried jobs that fit my interests - outdoor education, ski manufacturing, bicycle maintenance - and while I enjoyed them, I couldn’t see myself there long-term, and doubted my ability to become great at them because it just felt like there was something missing. I don’t think I would have been able to articulate this at the time, but looking back, I realize what was missing was a connection to my stutter. What I had learned from my fledgling Stutter Collective project was that giving others the chance to tell their story was deeply fulfilling. I couldn’t yet articulate why stuttering had such a hold on me, but I was living vicariously through those who could. If I could develop my storytelling skills professionally, I knew I would be bringing my whole self to the table, and that maybe this was something I could be good at. I enrolled in an Associate of Applied Science in Video/Radio Production program at Salt Lake Community College, hoping this path would give me valuable skills in digital storytelling, applicable across industries. 

One requirement of this program was an internship. When I found a marketing internship at a nonprofit called the National Ability Center, an organization that facilitated outdoor recreation for people with disabilities, I applied instantly. After 3 months, that internship turned into a job. I got to spend time every day with participants with a wide range of disabilities while skiing, biking, climbing, doing archery, horseback riding, water sports, and many other activities, capturing them as they pushed themselves physically and mentally, talking to them about their life, their struggles, their goals, and crafting their stories to share across social media. I became so invested in telling the stories of people with disabilities because I understood on a fundamental level, from having a stutter, what the stigma of difference can feel like and how empowering it is to tell your story in your own words, knowing that you are dismantling stereotypes with the truth of your lived experience. I met the most self-assured individuals who talked about their impairment not just without shame or apology but with pride, and from whom I learned that that was possible for me with my stutter.

Last summer, after 3+ years, I left this dream job. It was really hard to leave, but my partner and I wanted to move back east where we’re from. Here in Maine, I am a freelance photographer and videographer, continuing to focus on mission-driven storytelling. 

After a long hiatus, and now with four years of filmmaking experience under my belt, I am returning to Stutter Collective. I will be filming interviews and editing them into short documentaries. My interviews will also be longer in scope. I want to hear specifically about how people have navigated life with a stutter, but at its core, Stutter Collective is an oral history project, an effort to capture a holistic view of the person who stutters through storytelling, to realize the whole individual who stutters as a complete, complex person who is in part shaped by stuttering, but not exclusively. 

In hoping to become a better storyteller and ally, I recently read a book called Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally by Emily Ladau. One line in particular stood out to me: “If the disability community wants a world that’s accessible to us, then we must make ideas and experiences of disability accessible to the world.” I understood the significance of this insight, but at first, I didn’t think it applied to stuttering. It was programmed in me at a young age through speech therapy that my stutter in its natural form would be problematic, that it was something I needed to manage because it was at odds with societal expectations. This notion, coupled with years of societal messaging that views stuttering as a gaffe or a character flaw, and the prevailing medical model view that disabilities are major medical issues that should be corrected, prevented me from considering that my stutter, while it wasn’t a “serious” medical issue, is a natural, functional difference disabled by a society that generally does not welcome it. 

This point was brought home in Stammering Pride and Prejudice: Difference Not Defect, edited by Patrick Campbell, Christopher Constantino, and Sam Simpson. It emphasized why it’s not only accurate but necessary to think of stuttering as a disability: “Whether people who stammer consider themselves disabled or not does not stop them from being disabled by society. As long as society views stammered speech as inferior, they will be disabled by societal norms.” When I read that, the impulse I’ve carried around my whole life that my stutter is a problem for me to solve began to crack a little.

My goal with this project to share interviews with people who stutter in a way that both connects our community and enlightens the general population, to bridge that gap in understanding. Maybe I can help make stuttering a little more understood and embraced in this world. It’s not a problem for us to solve; it’s a story for us to share.