| Hello everybody! Last night the Dallas Chapter of the National Stuttering Association held it’s monthly meeting, and here’s a quick recap of what happened. With 12 people in attendance including 2 new people (Welcome Cristhian and Bryan!) we were ready to have a wonderful time, and as usual, we jumped into it with introductions. We started with a subject that probably has been in our minds since we were kids… what would we be doing if we didn’t stutter? What would be your career now, or in the future if stuttering was not an issue? And what did we discover? We would have a bunch of actors! We would also have an auctioneer, a stand-up comedian, a voice actor for cartoons and maybe the owner of a rescue dog farm. The interesting thing was that as we were going around the room, we discovered that maybe there is still time to pursue those careers and that stuttering might not be the thing that was stopping us. After that we jumped into our topic of the month: “Anything but stuttering”. October was a big month for stuttering. We had our first ever “Don’t Tell Me To Slow Down!” race in Dallas, and then we had the opportunity to be part of a worldwide celebration called “International Stuttering Awareness Day” on October 22nd…. but sometimes we need a break from thinking about stuttering, and after all, if there is anybody that doesn’t need to be aware of stuttering is us. So for this month, we decided that we were not going to talk about stuttering at all—Instead, we got together to play The Hygge Game! |
The game was sent to us by Rikke Fogh, a fellow stuttering that lives in Denmark!
| Hygge (pronounced hoo-guh) is the Danish word for “enjoying the good things in life. It evokes an atmosphere of coziness accompanied by a feeling of contentment and well being.” Sounds like an NSA meeting, right? The game is very simple: We have a deck of cards, somebody picks one and each card has 3 questions that you get to ask to one person in particular or the whole group. That’s it, there are no winners or losers, it’s instead a game about bringing people together and encouraging friends and families to bond over discussions of the big and small things in life. The questions went from the funny to the deep, with a few examples being: What would you like to be able to experience again for the first time? If calories didn’t exist and all food was healthy what would you eat more of? Do you believe in love at first sight? What foreign language do you wish you were fluent in? What’s better: love or money? What do you know how to make or build with your hands? Who is the most undeservedly famous person in the world? What song would you say is the theme song of your generation?…. and many, many more! |
| Talk about getting to know each other as more than people who stutter! We ended up having a very pleasant evening were everybody has the opportunity to share a lot about themselves. There were serious pauses, interesting discussions and pleeeeeeeenty of laughter. All in all, a wonderful meeting! Look at those smiles: |
| Hygge! |
| Dallas NSA |