We were 10 people at this meeting! We are very happy to see such a turnout. We had two new attendees, 5 returning chapter members and three students from the SLP graduate program. We had pizza donated from Giovanni’s.
Rohan came back recently from vacation in India, his home country, and commented that he stuttered more there than in the US and wondered why. Talking about stuttering is not as common there as it is here. There is more emphasis on covering it up rather than disclosing , all of which could impact your fluency.
We talked about apologizing when we stutter, why do it or why not. Even though we are always told that we should not do it, sometimes it is hard to break that habit, especially when you feel that you are taking time away from people. However, not apologizing can be freeing and empowering, you feel that you have more control. What do you do?
Mitch proposed the topic: Why do you come to meetings? We all had different answers: share experiences; being in a safe environment; give each other support; take time to focus on stuttering; a place where you can’t use stuttering as an excuse for all your problems.
We played a game where we were given the name of a person but we didn’t know who we were and had to go around the room asking yes/no questions until we figured out who we were. It was a lot of fun.
We finished by covering some administration items: The upcoming national conference (http://www.westutter.org/nsainatl16/ ) and plans for organizing social activities for the chapter.
See you at the next meeting!