Thank you to Tammy for inviting me to spend a few minutes up here sharing my story. Hello everyone, if I haven’t met you yet, I would love to.

First, I want to say a little bit about this conference and why it matters. Why any of us came here. We are here not only as individuals with a common challenge but as a community united by shared experiences, aspirations, and an unwavering commitment to making a difference.

This conference matters because it provides a unique platform for us to come together, to learn from each other, and to support one another. It is a place where we can share our stories, celebrate our achievements, and confront the obstacles that we face with renewed determination. Each one of us has a journey marked by resilience and courage, and by being here, we acknowledge that our voices are worthy of being heard.

Stuttering is often misunderstood, and the road to acceptance and understanding can be a lonely one. This convention matters because it breaks that isolation, creating a space where we can connect with others who truly understand the complexities of living with a stutter. Here, we find empathy, encouragement, and the strength to keep pushing forward. I encourage each of you to spend a few minutes over the next couple of days evaluating why it is you are here and what you wanted from the conference.

Now, the start of my stuttering journey might be atypical from many of you. I started to stutter when I was 13 years old and I haven’t stopped since. We don’t know why I started to stutter and probably won’t ever know, but that’s okay. When I was 14, I went to speech therapy for the first time. Now, I am from rural South Carolina and so I had to travel about an hour to get to the place. When I arrived at the speech therapist, the first thing that struck me about the waiting room was that it was for children. There were stickers and kid’s play toys littered all over the room.

I was called back for the evaluation and there is a small plastic purple chair in the middle of the room. It was the only seat in the room so I sat down uncomfortably with my knees were pressed against my chin. The woman hands me a children’s book about sailboats and tells me to start reading. I open the book and look at the crayon words spanning across the pages.

I tried to start and I just couldn’t do it. The first two words had to have taken me over a minute. But what really stood out to me wasn’t the pause, that happens all the time. It was the look on the woman’s face. That look said that my stutter wasn’t going to get better, ever. I will never forget how it felt to realize this change to my speech was lifelong, that it wasn’t going to be solved like a fractured wrist or the flu.

I started to cry and I wouldn’t let them take me out of the room back to my parents until I had stopped.

On the car ride home, I just couldn’t handle what had happened. I couldn’t handle the fact that I was never going to realize this vision I had constructed of my future self. I couldn’t handle being in the valley looking up at this massive, sheer mountain face in front of me. Knowing how hard it was going to be to actually face it.

So, I just put it in a box. That emotion and that burden was too great for a 14 year old to handle. So, I put it all in a box. And anytime something would happen- someone would laugh at me, tell me to spit it out, or make me feel ashamed about my speech. Thud. Throw it in the box.

And that worked well- for a while. I did well in school, great scholarship, great friends, great jobs, but there was always was that dusty, overflowing box tucked away somewhere in my mind. I lived my life terrified that I would open the lid, or be vulnerable and that dusty box would burst and someone would see who I truly was: a boy in that little purple chair, crying onto the pages of a children’s book.

As you can guess, that is no way to live. So, two years ago, once I moved up to DC for work with my wife, I actually started to look at the box. I finally felt stable and secure enough to start going into that dusty attic. The process of unpacking this box began with a simple realization: I could no longer ignore this part of my life. It was a part of me and for me to be wholly comfortable with myself, I had to be comfortable with my stutter. Avoidance was no longer an option. The first step was acknowledging the existence of the box and accepting that it was okay to feel the way I did. This acknowledgment was both liberating and terrifying, as it meant confronting years of suppressed emotions.

Some of the most powerful moments came when I allowed myself to grieve. I grieved for the opportunities I felt I had missed, for the times I remained silent out of fear, and for the younger version of myself who felt so isolated. This grief was an essential part of the healing process, a necessary release of emotions that had been bottled up for too long. It was through this grief that I began to find a sense of peace.

And although I made some progress, looking at just how full the box was, I knew it wasn’t something I could do alone, and that there were people out there who had been through similar experiences. A pivotal part of this journey was reaching out to Ben North and the National Stuttering Association. This step was transformative. The NSA gave me a community where I could connect with others who truly understood my experiences. It was a place where I found empathy, encouragement, and a sense of belonging. Their support was instrumental in helping me confront and process my emotions.

Through this connection, I discovered acceptance. Acceptance did not mean I was content with my stutter, but rather that I acknowledged it as part of who I am. It meant forgiving myself for the past and embracing the present with a new perspective. I began to see my stutter not as a hinderance but as a unique aspect of my identity, one that had shaped my resilience and empathy.

And ultimately, unpacking the box allowed me to connect with others on a deeper level. I found myself listening and having significantly more compassion and empathy. I found myself more open and accepting of those around me.

Unpacking the box was not easy, and it is a process that continues. But each day, I feel lighter, more authentic, and more at peace with myself. And thinking back nearly 10 years ago to the day, to that boy in that little plastic purple chair, I am proud of how far I have come. So, if you will humor me, I would like to read you a children’s book recommended to me by a colleague at work.

It is called "I Talk Like A River" by Jordan Scott

I Talk Like a River

There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember -- even if only for a time -- that those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek -- as we do -- nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress.

It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who [pro]claimed that "all men are created equal."

These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. *It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe.

For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event.

The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society.* Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live."

That is the way he lived. That is what he leaves us.

My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

"Some men see things as they are and say why.

I dream things that never were and say why not."