By the time I graduated from college, I had reached a point where instead of controlling my stuttering, my stuttering was controlling me. I spent most of my time trying to avoid speaking, and when I stuttered, I had no way of managing or controlling it. In fact, I was avoiding talking at all costs. For example, I would not speak in class, and when called upon to talk, my mind raced to substitute alternate words when I felt a stutter coming on. If I was not able to find a suitable substitute and found myself stuttering, I had no productive way to move forward through the moment of stuttering. The result was that I never said what I wanted to say. My thoughts and statements were disjointed, unclear, and often the exact opposite of what I meant to say. As I would learn is common for many stutterers, I would rather have given the wrong answer without stuttering than give the correct answer but stutter. This was true even at the age of 23, as I went on job interviews. I found myself avoiding speaking situations whenever possible; more and more it seemed that all the major decisions in my life revolved around the possibility that I might stutter.

I decided then that spending my life trying, in essence, not to talk was no longer acceptable to me. After working with an excellent speech therapist and joining several support groups for people who stutter, I found that I could control not only my stuttering, but how I felt about stuttering. Speech therapy, support groups, and a lot of hard work allowed me to manage and control my stuttering. Today I say what I want to say, when I want to say it. I became a speech therapist to help others do the same.