Introduction
Out With It – How Stuttering Helped Me Find My Voice reflects on Katherine’s journey while learning to live her shutter. Katherine accounts for the difficult emotions she experienced from feeling trapper, shape, and disappointment while coping with her condition. Even at 7 years, when her shutter showed, Katherine did not want to be labeled but “run away” from her condition. The author gives an account of how she dealt with her shuttering in front of her peers while describing people’s reactions, such as “did you forget your name?” The book helps to understand Katherine’s struggle and joy on her journey with shuttering and her efforts to cope with the disabilities.
Out With It by Katherine Preston
Reading the book “Out With It” enabled me to reevaluate my preconceived notion of living with a disability. The book describes how Katherine lost her voice dramatically and heartbreakingly. The author says, “it happened without the fanfare I would have hoped for” to show the unprecedented nature of the scenario (Preston, 2014). I loved the nostalgic memories described in the first chapter about how Katherine was cheerful and loved to tell stories. The descriptions created a picture of how challenging it would be to have words trapped in one’s mind. Katherine Preston enjoyed the company of her mum’s friends, and she gave little attention to what they thought about her chattiness. She wondered if they disliked her voice at times but opted to brush off the insecurities as a non-issue.
Most people think that living with a disability is simple and that victims are easily adapted to their situation. However, going by the vividly powerful chronicle of Katherine Preston in “Out With It,” I got a glimpse of how shattering living with a disability can be. For example, the book depicts that speaking is barely considered in the world since it is a subconscious event happening as naturally as walking (Preston, 2014). As a talkative girl, Katherine expressed herself, often telling stories about her dance classes (Preston, 2014). Reading the book left me wondering how Katherine, a girl who loves to talk, would contend with losing her voice.
While reading the book, I gained an emotional appeal was the dramatic turn of events when Katherine lost her voice. Guitar (2013) highlights that stuttering is like having a phone that does not always work. Today, Katherine has told herself the story several times that it does not matter anymore. Delving deeper into the book, I began to realize that Katherine’s tipping might not have been the reason for losing her voice. According to Khasawneh (2021), the prevalence of stuttering behaviors such as prolonged sounds starts in childhood. The author tactfully highlights that her stutter had been around for a while and was likely that it was the reason she lost her voice.
I was particularly thrilled by Katherine’s strength in battling her stutter and living a normal life like nothing was wrong. For example, Katherine stated that hiding was not suitable for her, and despite her slutter, she never liked solitude (Preston, 2014). After seventeen years of battling the shame, Katherine made a life-changing decision. She endeavored in what started as a vague search for a cure after she was exhausted with her condition that turned into an inspiration. The journey debunked the misconceptions shrouding stutter as Katherine met researchers, speech therapists, and several people with her situation to try and find a cure. According to Chesters et al. (2018), stutter may start during childhood, making it challenging to promote lasting fluency improvements when they grow older.
Reading the book instilled in me the virtue of having resilience when facing life challenges. Katherine had several speech therapies to remedy her condition throughout her early childhood. Her acceptance, hope, and unwavering strength stand out during the therapies. The author says she often became angry because she did not find the therapies as easy as she thought. Guitar (2018) outlined that stuttering results from greater length and complexity of language. Katherine starts to feel weird about the therapies and thinks she is missing various things.
The author wrote that surprised me about Phil Kaye, a poet who wrote that “stutter is a cage made of mirrors” (Preston, 2014). The author reflects on phrases such as “are you okay?” inherent to stuttering, a glaring reality that one must face (Preston, 2014). I find this surprising because Katherine acknowledged that the speech therapy helped her improve her speech. For example, the author admits that she discovered that classrooms provide popular backgrounds for stutters to step into the light and cement themselves (Prestone, 2014). Nevertheless, the author still refers to stuttering as a cage made of mirrors (Preston, 2014). This comes even after Katherine says that statistics will divide them into two groups, those who heal and those who do not (Preston, 2014). I find the phrase surprising because it takes away the glimpse of hope for people living with the condition.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Katherine struggled with stuttering for years, battling exhaustion and humiliation before finally embracing her situation and finding her voice. “Out With It” is a heartwarming memoir that encourages people to accept their situations and focus on finding their voice within them. Katherine Preston writes at the beginning how she loved talking and sharing experiences before introducing a turn of events that would impact her thoughts, feeling, and purpose. The book fascinates me with the author’s struggle with stuttering during her early childhood to embrace it and find the voice within her.
References
Chesters, J., Möttönen, R., & Watkins, K. E. (2018). Transcranial direct current stimulation over left inferior frontal cortex improves speech fluency in adults who stutter. Brain, 141(4),
Guitar, B. (2013). Stuttering: An integrated approach to its nature and treatment. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Khasawneh, M. A. S. (2021). The level of stuttering severity among students with learning disabilities in English language. Science and Education, 2(9), 215-226.
Preston, K. (2014). Out with it: How stuttering helped me find my voice. Simon and Schuster.1161-1171.