The Unsaid Words

// Getting it Out

My stutter and I have a complex relationship. I don’t ever remember not being - in the jargon - dysfluent, but I have never spoken in public or private in any depth about it. It has come up while speaking with family and friends to explain why something happened, but I have never had a conversation about it with anyone except a speech and language therapist.

But, if you think about it, not speaking about my stutter is a contradiction in terms, because it is the first obvious thing about me when I open my mouth to speak and the struggle to get some words out becomes apparent.

I have never spoken about it for many reasons. I didn’t and don’t want to use it as an excuse for pushing myself forward. It’s part of me and who I am and I don’t want to draw attention to it. I have wanted to make anyone feel uncomfortable about it either.

I am not ashamed of my stutter, though I certainly have felt crushing embarrassment in private maybe after I have come out of a conversation where I’ve blocked hard or become stuck on a word or letter. I can’t predict when I’m going to stutter or for how long. I know the letters and words that are likely to trip me up and often think ahead about substituting different sounds, but it doesn’t happen on the same words and letters all the time.

I have been to speech and language therapy a few times during my life - the first focus on my speech happened in primary school, we had speech and drama, or elocution as it would have been called, lessons. That wasn’t SLT, as such, which came later. I don’t remember any of the therapists I went to having a notable effect, but maybe I was too young to understand and implement what they were telling me.

What has got me thinking about my stutter is the book Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter, in which John Hendrickson, a writer with The Atlantic, discusses his relationship with his stutter and why he has taken until well into adulthood before taking on many of the issues that stutterers have to face, including bullying, substance abuse, depression and isolation. Apart from the first in primary school, I haven’t experienced any of those, but many stutterers have and do.

The book came about after Hendrickson wrote a feature for The Atlantic in November 2019 that looked at how Joe Biden, possibly the most famous stutterer in the world, managed his dysfluent speech over many decades and the similarities with Hendrickson’s own story. The piece went viral and led to numerous stutterers contacting the writer about their experiences.

In the book, Hendrickson speaks to the people closest to him, including his parents and brother, who mocked him fiercely when they were growing up, his teachers in school and university, friends and fellow stutterers who contacted him after The Atlantic, to find out how the way they deal with their stuttering compares to his experience.

Hendrickson writes movingly and thoughtfully about what he has encountered during his life with a stutter and how it has made him the person he is.

The book has made me think that 2026 is the year in which I draw attention in an equally measured and thoughtful way to something that is part of me.