May Meeting Recap

With 19 people in attendance, including several returning-after-a-hiatus members (Hi Brian, Jeff, Ryan, and Blake!), we were ready to get started. We started with introductions, and as usual, we always learn new things about our members. We spent a few minutes talking to the person on our right/left, and then we each introduced each other to the group. We always joke stuttering makes us good listeners, and indeed we were! We traded stories with our group and had some laughs in between.

Some announcements for light housekeeping:

-Thanks to everyone that came to our May Chat n’ Chew at Cidercade!  Look out for our June Chat n’ Chew.

– Congratulations to our local scientist, Kate Cosway, for being our Spotlight of the Month! We’ve loved getting to know you!

-The Annual NSA Conference is just a few weeks away and we talked about all the information you need to know, from last minute registration info, to the Keynote Speakers, and from hotel rooms to the Day at a Glance, the NSA has been working tirelessly to put on the best conference this July in Chicago. If you have any questions about the conference, let us know! We’re here for you.

-Finally, we talked about the Silent Auction. The Annual Conference, aside from the greatest party in the world, is the NSA’s main fundraiser of the year– and it’s up to us to make it worth it. The Dallas Chapter has always been a big source of donations, and we don’t want this year to be the exception, so we asked you, our family, to help with donations. From cash (that will go directly to the NSA) to items for the Auction (jewelry, hand made items, sports memorabilia, gift cards, etc.) there are plenty of ways to help. Bring your donations to our next Chat n’ Chew, our next meeting, or reply to this email if you have any questions— we need your help and all donations are greatly appreciated.

Stuttering is present in every culture and every country, and has been present since the first humans started to talk (or that’s what Russ said, we believe him), but with it’s mysterious nature, it has been subject of a lot of misconceptions.

Cutting the hair of the baby too young, tickling the baby too much, scaring the baby, abnormal size of the tongue, the mother seeing a snake while pregnant, the work of an evil spirit… these are just a few of the common, erroneous documented “causes” of stuttering from around the world. Sadly, as Lee Reeves brilliantly pointed out, if you start with a bad cause, you develop a bad treatment, and its thanks to that that we have been “gifted” a barrage of unsuccessful cures that include talking with rocks in the mouth, hypnosis, “healings”, and even unnecessary surgeries.

Thankfully, with the advancement of technology, gene research and newly developed brain scans, we are slowly but surely increasing the knowledge of the brain, and with that, hopefully one day, we can find a definitive solution to this riddle.

But what to do until then? What if achieving fluency is just not possible for some of us? We agreed that is up to us to put in the effort to know ourselves, our own individual stuttering, and have the dedication to work day by day on whatever a “cure” is for you.

With care,
Dallas NSA