Stuttering Spotlight- DM Forker (Stutteringcop)
Hello Everyone!!
I would like to introduce to you all DM Forker. He is a blog writer himself, father to a stutterer, and a proud member of the stuttering community. As a stutterer for 5 decades, DM says he has never known a time where fluency was with him. An interesting fact that DM has shared with me is that he is an identical twin, however his twin does not stutter! DM writes a blog, which I highly recommend checking out. In his blog he talks about acceptance, mental health and stuttering, invisible disabilities, and his own successes and challenges.
DM currently works as a police Investigator. Hence the name stuttering cop.
This is his story:
Acceptance. It is a word that I hear echoed throughout the stuttering community. Accept that your speech is not like everyone else. Accept that fluency evades you like a cool breeze in the middle of the desert.
I grew up in the era of hide the weakness. Never allow your stutter to raise its ugly head like a dragon that bewilders and confuses the listener. Thinking back to my school years even to this day floods me with so many raw emotions. The meetings with me waiting in the school library which seemed like an eternity as my parents, both principals and two speech therapist spoke about what to do with me and my stuttering speech. I would be then asked to join the meeting with all these adults looking at me as if I was a science project.
In school speech therapy was conducted in the lavishness of the janitor closet. Sitting on a hard cold steel folding chair, inhaling the fumes of the multiple bottles of assorted cleaners. To this day the smell of cleaning solution can transport me right back on that cold steel chair. Many times we were interrupted by a bewildered and confused janitor. He seemed to be as confused as I was as to why we were conducting speech therapy in a small concrete closet that felt like a prison. Needless to say learning in that environment was difficult at best.
School was a slow torture for me. Day in and day out the teasing, mocking and being laughed at took an emotional toll on me. Summer time was my jam. Playing outdoors with my beagle, named Lady, for countless hours on end. But I knew the fall was coming. My heart would begin to beat faster and my mind would race as the locusts would start their lonely song in the fall evenings. An anxiety would over take me like a wave as their music played in the night air. I knew summer was coming to an end and my torture was on the horizon.
Acceptance was mentioned to me by my speech therapist. I was told, “The techniques are not working so you will have to accept your speech the way it is”. Back in that time frame that was acceptance. I had to accept that I was not going to have fluent speech. That made it difficult for me to accept my speech as it was. The teasing and mocking from the other kids coupled with the fact that I felt like my therapist gave up was difficult. I felt like I was stranded alone on an island in my journey for fluency and acceptance. I was too young to express how I felt to those around me. I wanted to hide within myself, I was safe there. I struggled for decades with those feelings and emotions.
I eventually found the absolute love of my life. She looked passed my stuttering disability and saw the true me. That’s true love right there. We have two children, one of whom also stutters. It literally broke my heart when I knew she was going to stutter. But she has been a warrior and graduated college and has a beautiful family of her own. A good support system is a fabulous asset in Acceptance.
I have searched decades high and low for fluency. It has eluded me like a blade of green grass in the middle of the Arctic. But I believe I have found acceptance within myself. I am who I am. I speak how I speak. Others may tease, mock and laugh, but they will never know the strength I have found within because of their actions. They are unable to walk in the shoes of a person who stutters. They would crumble in one hour of the emotional weight a person who stutters carries. Accept yourself and you be you!
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