So You Didn’t Know It Was National Stuttering Awareness Week
To be honest, I didn’t either.
Can we take a minute to accept that these micro awareness days or weeks are hard to keep up with? I wish they were more public on calendars because all of a sudden I’m missing National Taco Day because I thought only Earth Day was that week.
Just so you know, National Stuttering Day is in October so mark your calendars now.
It’s so hard for me to be celebratory about National Awareness on Stuttering. When I think about where I was in January of 2020, I was so pumped. I was optimistic and ready to scream my identity to the world. I was going to make a short documentary on my “coming out” story. I had people I wanted to interview, scouted locations and drew up a rough draft on what was the story I wanted to tell.
And then it was April.
Then July.
And then it was September and I had absolutely nothing.
I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t half full, I was half empty. I said I practiced self-disclosure, yet here I was skipping out on everyday interactions. I edited out my stutter on camera. I didn’t push through the block. I would give up. I was so confident, so sure of my upward path on the outside, that I couldn’t see how much I was a fraud on the inside, more than I had been before.
Now I have accepted I’m farther behind than I want to be and that is okay. But, I know I can’t keep lying to myself because I know it’ll only stunt my growth, and let me tell you I can’t get that much shorter.
I wish I could post my awareness posts this week. I hope someday I can. But this week I can be aware that I still have a long way to go.
