February 23rd, 2021

Post date: February 25, 2021

Our great group met via Zoom last night and 8 of us logged in. It was great to see Andy, Jeff, Lauren, Hannah, George, Natalie, Chris M, and myself. And as always, we missed those who couldn't make it. Zoom has been good to us as we'd never get these kinds of numbers attending if we all had to drive to Bangor. I realized a few people hadn't even met each other yet this year, so we spent some time on a short intro round-robin, but also using that time to engage in a variety of topics. Most of which were stuttering related... but not all. Chris mentioned a YouTube short video, "Stutterer" and recommended it highly. We talked about the pros and cons of stuttering while wearing a mask. Most of us find it harder to speak in a mask, because the we rely on our listener being able to perceive our non-verbal queues. We discussed the StutterTalk podcast about the pressure to be either fluent or to accept stuttering. But it led to a more interesting discussion (Thanks to Natalie) about how maybe we should be validating our "feelings" and present more focus on how these feelings "manifest themselves" across our daily life and our relationships. For example, not letting anger and frustration over a heavy stuttering day fall negatively on the shoulders of a child or partner. Off the stuttering topics...we learned a lot about the COVID vaccines and vaccines in general as we peppered Andy with questions after finding out that he works in the biotech field and has been involved in the vaccine research and production platforms!  What a great group of people! We really enjoy each other.