Choreographer Graeme Pickering writes about his personal stammering journey and the variety of therapies which have helped break down the barriers between the world and his stammer.
For as long as I can remember, I have always had a stammer. My stammer has gone through many stages during my life, sometimes in an overt way and other times in a covert way. When I was a child, I had regular speech therapy which helped my younger self understand what my stammer was and ways I could work through the challenges I faced navigating day-to-day life as a stammerer.
My mum took me to music classes and I used to do amateur dramatics at school which acted as an informal therapy to me also. The creative outlet and freedom to be alive with character allowed me to see my stammer as part of me and not something that would stop me achieving my dreams.
I went on to train professionally in Musical Theatre and to this day, still work within the industry as a creative. I graduated and performed in various shows around the UK and overseas. My professional work has allowed me to see the world and I have been lucky enough to sail from Southampton to Sydney and back on a Cruise Ship I performed on. I am always working within my field to try and grow representation of stammering within the industry. As a collective, the entertainment industry have become more educated to including diversity within their casting and the work that is happening is excellent however this is often done through choosing visibility over invisible diversity. I am passionate about continuing the conversation with everyone I meet within my work by explaining about stammering and encouraging producers/directors to consider representing stammerers more as without the platform, we struggle to educate the wider audience to be fully inclusive.
In recent years, through personal circumstances and going through a global pandemic, I feel I have lost my way with my stammer and my relationship with it has taken a turn for the worse. I used to feel my stammer was a part of who I was and over this period of time I began to not like this part of me. I have worked to find more time for myself and my stammer. I am a person who is very inquisitive, hungry to learn and love facing challenges head on. There are so many styles of speech therapy available now and I have been eager to experience them all.
I was introduced to Empowering Voices this summer who are a new charity offering courses in costal breathing for stammerers. I was interested to meet with the organisers and take part in their new course. I joined their first course in Peterborough this October and found the whole experience very positive. The course works to celebrate
yourself and your voice whilst focusing on your breathing. The supportive environment allowed me to feel safe to be open and honest about my stammer.
As a stammerer, I notice that often I can allow my speech to become very fast and I lose the ability to breath fully to fill my lungs and diaphragm. I often find my brain is working faster than my mouth is able to keep up with and the world we live in spins faster than my stammer can manage. The Empowering Voices course allowed me to stop, reset and get back to a pace which I feel calms me down.
The beautiful part of Empowering Voices is the community of Stammers who are a part of the family. The support from the group is wonderful. Everyone there is wanting to help each other and keep the positive approach and environment and I found this truly wonderful.
Since the course, I have found the support network very helpful to refocus myself to breathe deeper again and keep the pace of my speech at a steady rate. I find that when you leave a course and go back to the fast pace of the world, it is very difficult to put what you have talked about and worked on into practise. Sometimes, the day doesn’t allow you to go at your pace. However having access to the support network and also further courses to join to act as a refresher, this allows you to continue the work you have been doing on the course for much longer.
I’ve found with the help of Empowering Voices and the other speech therapies I have been lucky to access over the last year, they have empowered me to be proud of my stammer and how I speak. My stammer is my diversity and makes me who I am. Without my stammer, I may not have found a love for theatre which I am grateful to call my career. Sometimes, what may have been described by others as an obstacle, can lead you to breaking down barriers and achieving more than you could ever have dreamed. Having access to a variety of speech therapies, all ultimately with the same purposes, to help stammerers, is absolutely fantastic. By working together and talking about our stammers, we continue to break down the stigma and celebrate our voices.
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