April 24 Meeting Update - Orange County South NSA Group

This update is not as detailed as I would like. I was planning on writing it on Saturday, 4/26 while the meeting was still fresh in my mind. However, I had to make an unexpected visit to the emergency room at Saddleback Hospital with severe abdominal pains, which resulted in an overnight stay, a CAT scan, x-rays, a sleepless night, & no eating for 2 days. Mostly better now. (Should've never put those sardines and mayonnaise on my ice cream).

There were 7 persons present including a new member - welcome, Roberto! A student from Cal State Fullerton was also present. The student did not take part in the meeting, sat apart from the others as an observer & note taker, & asked questions of the members toward the end of the meeting. One of these questions has been asked before but is still a really good one: "Have you had any bad experiences with speech therapists?"

We started with introductions along with the question: "What would you do if you won $100,000,000 in the lottery?" An interesting range of responses included: Become a venture capitalist, travel, give some to my friends, give some to charity, buy a nice house, build the ultimate dirt bike, invest in the  financial markets, go back to school, pay off debts, & take a long vacation. One member said he'd go back to studying Chinese. Another said he'd find the world's best speech therapist.

A topic for discussion was then put before the group: "How would your life be different if you woke up one morning & didn't stutter anymore?" One member said his life would not be that different except he would give better presentations. Many answers were about the general themes of being more outgoing, speaking up more, being more extroverted, talking to more people, etc. This writer said he'd be a contestant on Jeopardy.

With the time that was left, we did a few table topics. Subjects included "Fridays", "Do you believe in aliens?" "Do people have free will?" & the most novel one: "Jeopardy or Wheel?" (General consensus favored Jeopardy.) You never know what will come up in table topics.

While people who stutter have many things in common, after each meeting & after having been in the NSP/NSA (the NSA used to be the National Stuttering Project) for a long time, it always amazes & heartens me that each of us is an individual with their own ideas & imagination. The wacky & original responses to the introductory, discussion & table topic questions always reinforce this idea for me.

The next meeting is on Thursday, May 8, 5:45 PM, at Kaiser in Irvine led by Mihaela & Matt (assuming Matt is back from chasing a little white ball all over Scotland).

April 10 Meeting Update

Ten people attended, nine PWS and one speech pathology student from Cal State Fullerton. A member brought his mom, who also stutters. This sparked a discussion about the genetic component of stuttering. We discussed how difficult it is to really know if others in your family stutter because there's often denial about it and reluctance to talk even when it's not hidden.

We also talked about the unpredictability of stuttering. It's the most difficult aspect of it to live with on a day to day basis. Even within the same day, you can have hours of fluency, and then a block can come out of nowhere like a slap in the face. There's no magic solution for this, just taking every day or hour or minute at a time and doing the best you can. Stuttering is extremely complex. One member gave a very insightful definition of it: a condition where neuroscience and psychology intersect in a very interesting way.

Even so, people from our group are handling it beautifully. One member, after an intense interview process, received two job offers, one of them in computer programming within the field of medicine. Another made a successful start in his new job. He was nervous but, in retrospect, he realized that he made the situation more difficult in his head than it turned out to be. How many of us can identify with that!

Many of us are making changes in our lives. We are saying yes to things that scare us. That's all that matters: not to get rid of fear, but to do what we want to do anyway.