Dear mum and dad

Dear mum and dad,

I've always tried to be a good daughter. I've always tried to be someone you could be proud of. Why? Because you have sacreficed a lot for me over the years.

Thank you for always taking time for me and never judging me. You accepted me and my stutter and did whatever you could to help me deal with it.

For 6 years you took me to speech therapy every single week for multiple times.
In the beginning I had to go 3 times a week for 1,5 hours. I've never heard you complain. 
You always took me there, waited for me and helped me. 

I can imagine this wasn't easy. Both of you worked every day and still had to run the household. Mum, you even changed your job when you heard that I needed to go to therapy that often. And dad, you left your job earlier to drive me on fridays just to make sure I wouldn't miss a session. 

I'm not going to lie. You were strict on me. I remember being so scared when I had to come home with a bad test. I always felt so bad because I knew I had let you down. 
Luckily those bad grades didn't happen a lot and if it happened, I always found a way to make it up. 
Thanks to you I never had any big troubles at school. You made sure I balanced homework with therapy sessions without too many problems. Even after my sessions you helped me with my homework. 

I think it's important to realise that having a child that has a stutter is not easy on the parents either. They need to arrange therapy, take their child to therapy, do the household and maybe balence other children as well.
You guys have always balanced it out perfectly. 

Thank you for giving me everything I needed. 
Thank you for teaching me to work hard and not give up.
Thank you for loving me the way I am and putting me first.
Thank you for making yourselves the best parents I could ever wish for. 
I am a very lucky person. 
I hope I have done nothing but make you proud. 


Love,
Natasja 

Little recap of the past 2 weeks

Due to a lot of work at my job and at home I haven't really got the chance to post in these 2 weeks, which I apologize about. I'm not the kind of person that can post something real quick and not think about it anymore. When I post something it's related to me and my situation. I always try to think of something where others can get some support or help from.

For this post I'm going to do a recap of the past 2 weeks. How has my stuttering been? Has it been worse, better or has it stayed the same as before?

I can say one thing, in these past 2 weeks I have answered more phonecalls than normally in 1 month. It's been very busy at my job due to the fact that a lot of things are changing for our clients, in a good way ofcourse, and the fact that I'm just 8 new contracts away from hitting my yearly goal. So the pressure is on. 

With all of this comes a lot of stress and pressure. Something that, eventho I had a lot of work during college, is a little bit new to me. It's a different kind of stress or pressure. As I have said before, stress influences my stuttering a lot.

I have so say that I'm pretty happy with how I have been handling incoming phone calls lately. I'm still having small stutters or small blockages but I'm controling them more and I'm not thinking about them so much anymore. Ofcourse this can change from day to day and I know that I will have days where it will be more difficult. 

Overall, incoming calls are going good. Can they be better? Ofcourse, but Rome wasn't build in a day and neither is handling your stuttering. 

When it comes to phonecalls that I have to make myself, it's a little bit harder. 
First of all, when you make a phone call it's common to say your name and the company, now that is already something that is very hard for me. Then there is the part where your message has to come across loud and clearly to the person on the other line. Now imagine already stressing out about saying your name ... how in the world will you get your message across? The stress is already build up so high in the beginning that it's hard to lower it during the rest of the call. 

For me, those calls are definitely a work in progress. So far, they are still a disaster. I can't get myself to actually make a phone call where I don't have any problems with just introducing myself. It's frustrating because I want to be able to do my job like everyone else would.
All I can do is keep practicing. 

Talking in general is going pretty good. Not without stutters or blockages but with more relaxed stutters or blockages. There isn't so much pressure on my troath anymore which makes it easier to talk a little bit more fluently. 
This also fluctuates day to day. 
I sometimes try to make voluntarily stutters during my speaking. This isn't easy for me because it sometimes feels a bit unnatural. 
A voluntarily stutter is when I can feel a stutter coming up and to avoid a blockage or a real stutter I will actually make a stutter myself. For example, instead of having a blockage on my name, I would say 'Na-Na-Natasja'. I'm still making a stutter but it's more relaxed, shorter and it won't end up in a blockage.

To get rid of the unnatural feeling, me and Leen have speaking assignments where I have to tell a short story or just talk about something random. While I'm doing this I would have to make voluntarily stutters. That helps to make it feel more natural and more common to me. 
Outside of the therapy it's very hard for me to do this but I do try to slip a voluntarily stutter into my speaking sometimes. 

Last but not least is my reading. Yes, I also have trouble with reading. When I just began my therapy again, I couldn't even read one sentence out loud without stuttering or having blockages on pretty much every word.
I have been practising a lot on my reading and it's been going better.
It's also something that me and Leen work on a lot. 
By also making stutters on a voluntarily basis I can take the pressure off certain letters or words just like with my speaking.
Now I can actually read a short story fluently without to many blockages or stutters. Trust me when I say, that took a lot of effort and a lot of work. 
Just like with my speaking, there are good and bad days. Some days I can read a whole story without even having to make a voluntarily stutter and other days it's very hard to even start the sentence. 

Overall, I'm pleased with how I'm doing so far. Seeing as I'm under a lot of stress it could have been a lot worse. I try to take a lot of energy out of the good days so that the bad ones can be forgotten quickly. 

The key words are patience, work and having faith in yourself.



Love, 
Natasja 

Quote of the month

For someone who stutters it is sometimes very difficult to say what they want. Because the more we speak, the more of a chance there is that we would stutter. Ofcourse you have stutterers that don't give a crap about how hard it is. They just say whatever they want, stutters or no stutters. Blockages or no blockages. God how I admire them. But for this post I am going to talk about my own experience with it. 

Sometimes you want to say something so bad, but you hold back because it's not worth risking stuttering for. I'm guilty of doing that. Just not speaking because it's easier. 
This can happen with important things like work or with little things like going to stores, ordering something or just talking in general.

With every word that floats around in your head, there is so much doubt and fear. Your mind is constantly at work.  
Speaking as a stutterer I can truely say that it's emotionally very draining sometimes.
We should just be able to say 'Fuck it' and just say what we want, whenever we want and how fast or slow that we want. 

I overthink so many things. My mind is always working and always thinking about things for work, things at home ... 
Same with my stuttering. For example, when I have to order something at a restaurant I will already have practised in my head. I will make sure it's something that I can actually say fluently. 
Same with going to the bakery or any other store. 

I wish I didn't think about it that much. I do have days where I just go in and order and I don't think about my stuttering. Those days are becoming to be more and more frequently. Which I am happy about. But It's very normal that it's not like that every time. 

People will often say 'just say what you want to say, it doesn't matter how long it takes'. That very easily said. People should really be able to look into the mind of a stutterer sometimes. I don't think a lot of them would last even 5 minutes. 
For us, it will always matter. Even if we stutter less, it will still matter because we will always wish we could get rid of it. 

I'm coming to terms with it more and more. I've been working hard trying to accept my stutter. Something that I have been never able to do so far. 
I'm trying to care less when I stutter. I'm also trying to just say what I want to say. It's not easy and it's a lot of work. I'm also trying to use the things that I'm learning at therapy so that I will dare to make stutters. 

It's not easy but I know that for me, accepting this and being able to dare to stutter is very important. I still have a long way to go but I'm already happy with the progress I made so far. 

Every stutterer is different but when it comes down to it, I think we all have the same kind of doubts and fears. And it doesn't matter how you work on your stutter or what kind of therapy you do, as long as you are working on it! We should be able to say whatever we want to say. 




Happy november everyone.


Love,

xxx Natasja