FOR THE INTERNATIONAL STUTTERING AWARENESS DAY (ISAD)
— Visura Padeniya
International Stuttering Awareness Day (ISAD) is dedicated to a struggle that has, for the most part, been misconstrued, humoured, and ignored throughout history. People who stutter (PWS) are often reinforced with the notion that the way they speak cannot hold another person’s attention — and, in some cases, may even appall the listener. This prejudice conditions PWS to retreat into silence, creating a cycle of self-blame.
In fact, PWS are three times more likely to develop depressive disorders or attempt to take their own lives. Social anxiety, by far, marks the largest disparity — up to eight times higher — because stuttering carries shame and stands out in a world where you must speak to be known and heard. That is the struggle of stuttering: being unable to stay in tune with the rhythm of who you are through your speech.
We learn a lot about a person through the way they speak, and that person’s speech allows them to carry themselves authentically. But what happens when you cannot stay true to who you are because your diaphragm freezes — almost every time you are about to speak, or even when you merely anticipate speech? This is the reality PWS live with: a reality where your speech may never fully reflect who you are.
If you are a bubbly person who wants to make a joke, you may never reach the punchline — the timing fails you. And even those who manage to surpass this barrier and reinvent themselves around their stutter remain cornered by the haunting thought of a version of themselves that would not have stammered. It is a disabled person’s reality — to deny the imagined life where you might have felt more “normal,” and where the things now out of reach could have been possible. The constant reminder of disability can be deeply isolating, and it is up to society not to impose further prejudice.
To me, stuttering is a reliving of every past negative experience or association I have with my speech. Some may theorize that stuttering is inherent from birth, but the pressure behind speaking is a learned behaviour. PWS find it difficult to heal from this self-inflicted blame because society still lacks patience — the patience to give time and space during a stuttering moment. Yes, it may be inconvenient, but it is not a compromise beyond what the average person can make, given that this added pressure accompanies every word a PWS speaks.
We seem far more willing to empathize with struggles that carry visible signs of injury. A person will slow down when walking beside someone who is limping, yet that same person will speak over — or finish the sentence of — someone who stutters.
The issue of self-acceptance comes with the state of parentheses that stuttering places you in. You are neither fluent nor mute. You cannot say that you cannot speak, and yet you struggle to keep up with the conventional standard of fluency.
We have long attributed “effective speech” to a narrow definition of efficiency — one that equates fluency with competence. But that association immediately invalidates anyone who struggles with fluency. It begs the question: should fluency ever have been the standard for effective speech in the first place?
What we take away from a conversation should always come down to substance — that is the most rational measure. Yet, as humans, we are drawn to the charisma and rhythm of fluent speech, emotionally associating eloquence with depth. It is a collective error we have come to accept as natural — to value how something is said over what is said.
To accept stuttering, then, is to question this very zeitgeist — the way we assign value to speech. It is to confront our learned bias toward fluency and to unlearn the belief that fluency equals intelligence, confidence, or worth.
This year’s ISAD theme, “A Diverse Community — Meeting Challenges with Strengths,” reminds us that while stuttering connects us through shared struggle, its impact on each person is profoundly different. In learning to accept ourselves for being different, we must also learn to accept the differences among ourselves as PWS.
We all stutter differently — and that serves as a reminder that we are not meant to be bracketed, defined, or spoken for under one social label. As PWS, we can exercise agency over who we are — not as victims, but as individuals who exist in contrast to the expectations society places upon us.