Kate: Owning Our Imperfections

clock it as like a thing thing like that. There's a whole sector of the population that stutters, and there's like organizations that are catered to being a community because

of how they're perceived. At the larger scale, you meet Kate through her voice, including her stutter, and I think what's absolutely beautiful about voices and about all of our identities and everything we bring to the table is that it's not just our vocal thing go print, but sometimes even like the little pieces of our soul being shared out loud. So I'm really honored to share the story and to share Kate with you. All. Welcome to when

You're Invisible. My name is Maria Fernande, but I know not everyone can rule there are so it's also fine to call me Maria in today's world. We love to tell stories about people who have reached the top, like people who have achieved positions of cloud wealth power. On this show, I won't be doing that. When You're Invisible is my love letter to the working class and others

who are seemingly invisible in our society. Helped to build a community here that will inspire you to have generous conversations with others that are different from you, conversations that might help you see life in an entirely different way. Kid is an incredible soul. You meet her and she

is just this beautiful, like almost otherworldly warmth. And when I sat down to talk to her, I immediately like felt like I didn't have many walls, and I immediately wanted to be present because she was okay sitting listening and taking up a gentle space. Kate was like a beautiful way of reminding me that there's a lot of ways to approach the world, and there's a lot of ways to approach each other, and there's also a lot

of ways we can approach ourselves. I think it's helpful to break down that there are a lot of ways to hide the fact that you stutter. There are you know what what a lot of speech therapist teach you is falls under the umbrella fluency techniques. So there are are certain things that you can you can sort of do with your voice to sort of trick your vocal cords and your m neurology into being fluent quote unquote,

which is hard and takes a lot of work. So it's things like talking like this, or it's things like making a small sound before the statement. It's called an easy onset. K articulates this ability to hide in this shifting that I really relate to because depending on the situation and what was happening around me, I would change colors a little bit. Something that's kind of interesting about people who satter is that a lot of us can tell the words that we're going to start around before

we get there. So like a few words before, you'll sort of feel it and you'll you'll you'll know that that is going to be a word that's going to take a lot longer to say. You can change it. You can change that word and just completely avoid the stutter. So there's that, and then the third way that's super

effective to not stutter is to not talk. So you know, all all three of those things are methods that I was really gung hole for as a young young person to sort of tie yourself into not to try to execute those three methods to not stutter and sound the same way as everybody else. I'm not gung hope for

those things now. For me, the problem is that when I do those things, I feel like each time there is a little sliver of space between myself and my actual point, between myself and my like authentic energetic intent for common communication, and so each time it gets a little bit more and more and more and more, and so it just drives a wedge between what I mean and what I'm trying to serve up and what I'm actually saying, and that feels really bad for me. Authenticity

is something that I'm always curious about. It's partially linked to the development of this podcast. I want to figure out how to live beautifully and truthfully and generously to recognize other people in our place in the world that we are all beautiful, special, complicated, fucked up, and we're all dealing with a million things at the same time. I think I got this from somebody else, but used to call myself a walking the saurus because that's what

it is. Like you you have to be so smart and like no so many words and and then if you say a word that like sort of gets to your meaning but not fully, then you have to like you know, build that out on the back end and like try to like still go back to your point. It's a it's a like you said, it's a lot of gymnastics. I'm curious as to, like your experience growing up, what is the process as a family, because when you're a kid who stutters to how do the adults in

your life react. I am more and more just so in awe of my family, and I had and have just such deep privilege in terms of how how how they see me and what they think about me. My mom especially, she is she's like a badass lady. And I never remember her being like, you know, well, you might not be able to do that because you stutter.

Or more specifically, when I had moments of feeling just like destroyed or or ragged after a hard day or a hard experience, like her reaction was always just like I got you, and you're gonna You're gonna get through this because you are extraordinary. More when we come back from a break, Welcome back to our conversation. On this episode of When You're Invisible. There is this device called this speech Easy, and it's an inner ear device that fits into your ears sort of like a hearing aid.

It's like an echo. It's like less than a second of delay per words. This device called speech Easy, which was created in two thousand and one. It's a fluency device for stutters. It basically creates a chral effect and so you're hearing your voice bounce back at you through your ear at a higher pitch in order to create like the confidence that you get from speaking in a group, and also by trying to like take you out of that that space I guess of being in your head.

There are different sounds of the voices that you can choose, but mine was like a chipmunk voice that was in my ear. The world doesn't really know anything at all, really about how the brain works and why we stutter, and what the brain is and what we are and what is happening inside of our heads. We know about space sort of, but we don't know very much about our own brains, which I think is a good like micro causum for just what we're doing right now is people.

My mom paid the money and I got it, and it did work for a period, but then generally the effects where off as the brain sort of adjust. The brain is not going to transform itself based on the input of this brand new thing that you're trying. It's going to find a way to default back to its natural state, which is like very broken brain science. But

it's fine. I think it was probably about two or three weeks and then it stopped working, And that felt like a really important moment for me because I sort of had to I had to had to look into this black hole of truth that this was my identity, this is who I am, this is how it is going to be. And for the first time I started to consider, like, Okay, Kate, how are you going to work this into who you are as a person? Like how are you going to look at this with love

and with care and tenderness and acceptance. It's funny that you bring up the idea of feeling broken and how we're all broken, because I think it's something like that we deemed taboo that by being broken it's bad, when in fact, where we ever perfect holes, but rather just like pieces that are meant to be beautifully put together, and that like, they're meant to look different. Why are we trying to be a full sheet of glass when we're meant to be stained glass? Gone bye? Yeah, I

don't know. It's like the most beautiful things to me are never perfect. We are duped to believe the system is there to help us, even if the system is as small as like a medical device that we've created to like somehow help cure this disability or disorder, versus being like all our brains are wired differently. As long as it's not hurting her, why should it be fixed?

Only one percent of the population stutters, So to be someone who has to be like, oh, there's everything I deal with that you deal with, and then on top of that, here's this other thing thinking about that. Does it affect the way you date or do talk about it or anything like that? Dating dating, dating dating. I think that there's some some super buzzy intersectional identity stuff with being a person who stutters and being a woman

or being a girl. Yeah. I have recently learned as I have approached thirty and been examineing what the fact happened in the last twenty nine years. I've sort of come come to understand the intersection of stuttering in like romance and intimacy in a in a way that feels really deep and really like It's just very embedded in my psyche, and I think that in general, the way that it has impacted is I have looked to the partners that I've had for so much more than just love.

I've looked to them essentially to sort of be up a buffer between myself and the outside world. As I have sought that I have molded myself up around what they thought was really good and what they thought was really beautiful and sexy, as opposed to what felt authentic and beautiful and sexy to to myself as a woman. I definitely feel some of that pressure. What was like a big turning point for you? The biggest one was when I learned about SAY and got involved in SAY.

Saying That the Stuttering Association for the Young, which is where I work. SAY was founded in two thousand one and has a two week summer sleepaway camp, speech therapy with a license speech therapist, and after school and weekend arts classes. I was not finding great success when I first moved to the city with finding work. I was going out on all these interviews at these sort of like random ish places, and I was just not getting

these jobs. I was. I was working at a bakery and so that was like my my day, my day job. Then I had to decide me over. But I was contacted on LinkedIn by the biggest heads fund in the country, I think, or it might be the world. I'm not sure. I don't work this, so I don't know what all the details. Sorry. I went for this interview, and because it was a group interview, you had to prepare and

open ended discussion, question question. I was to the group too, then like potentially leaded a discussion and I learned about say. I Like, I was really really stressed out and absolutely freaking out that I was going to have to go do this group interview and stutter or not stutter and word switched and just is gonna just be so much? And so I reached out to say and I was like, can you help me? I need something? I need help.

And the speech therapist at the time, his name is Ryan Milliger, and he's now a very dear, dear friend of mine, so it's fun to think about that. He wrote right back to me, like within a few hours and was like, yes, absolutely, come on in and we can we can talk about it and like see what you want to do. So I was then going into this interview with like the knowledge that there was an outlet somewhere, that there was like a glimmer of of kindness and of self love and of just love in general.

And so I didn't get the job, which is great, and I'm so glad that I didn't, But I did go into Say and I met I met Ryan, and I started with a speech internship with him because I was thinking for a while about being a speech therapist. And then I went and I worked at our camp, Camp Say, and then on the last day of Camp Say, they offered me a full time job at Sunset by

the Lake. So it was perfect. Community with like minded or like experienced people is really important because you get to see yourself mirrored back at you, whether it's through other peers or adults. If you're a kid, the world can look a million different ways and it can include me, and being able to take a look at that and develop the confidence and the vocabulary around your experience and what you're seeing in the world. I think he's super,

super important. I love the strength that we can get from connecting to people who we consider our own. And then I'm really curious about, like, how do we expand that to include people who might not be the same as us. Stay tuned for more from one year Invisible after this break and we're back. What do you think young Kate would think now of Kate approaching thirty? Yea, it brings me so much joy to say that I think young Kate would would would be like, what Kate,

you did this? This is awesome. So that's really fun to think about. But where I thought I would be was, you know, I thought that I wouldn't stutter. I thought that I was going to grow out of it. I thought that until like fairly late in my in my life as a child. And I think that that is a lot of what young people who said. I think the reality is that a lot of people who stud are past I believe it's like age eight or maybe nine or ten will stutter for so the rest of

our lives. And with that knowledge, speech therapists still preach these fluency techniques to us and hold up this heavenly body of fluency that we can just get to if we work hard enough, and that feels feels really really destructive to me. We have the research. You are the

expert in this field. You know that there's there's a good chance that I'm going to stutter for the rest of my life and and this is going to be part of my experience, and you are reinforcing to me that that is bad and that that that is wrong. And if I work hard enough and am good enough, I can reach the level. And that is setting us

up to fail. And it is I think the biggest micro aggression that sort of exists in the lives of people who who crews better is this idea that if you just you know, worked hard enough, you could be fun. It just feels like it's a it's a false God. I really truly believe that we all benefit from the

widening of these standards of what is normal. Like that is truly good for us all because as we do that, like even for the person who is I don't know, let's say, the most normal like white, skinny, pretty fit, like smart, talks in a certain way, Like even for that person, they have parts about themselves that feel different and that they see is different. And so by by by widening the parameters of what is normal, everybody wins.

I think we shift ourselves and our version of normal based on what is predominant around us, not just regionally, but also ethnically, racially, culturally, and also normal is based off of who you interact with and who you're around. And I think for me, having experienced so many different kinds of normal, I think that's where I would take on a little bit of what is the monolith around me and either learned something from it, take a step

towards it, or not. Dealing with different kinds of normal made me more specific in myself, and it also made me highly aware of how people perceived me. And thinking about the normal that k brings up in a somewhat joking manner is kind of sad to think about how predominant that still is, that it's still a Eurocentric, skinny, blonde, blue eyed kind of thing that still is prevalent in a nation that's so diverse, And I would love to get to the point where the standard is actually something

that has a wider range of possibility. As Kate was saying, my favorite places to be are with diverse people from all different kinds of backgrounds. As we say in Mexico that is all the colors and all the tastes and flavors. What do you wish people knew if you could have everybody knows something or be something, what would it be? The thing that I would love, love love love would be if people just sort of in general knew how to listen. And like, that's not just for stuttering, I'm

in general. This thing that we're doing as a culture about starting to talk before the person is finished, which is like everywhere, every day, every second, that is the standard. It's just so tiresome. Why why are we doing this thing where like I am still actively speaking, I haven't gotten to the end of what I'm saying yet, and you are starting to talk before I'm finished responding to the thing that you think that I'm saying, but I might not be saying that thing because I'm not finished.

That's a squarely baffling way to commmunicate. And I think that it's based in time is money, It's based in everybody being being fast faced. It's based in like this this need to get things finished quickly. But like it's not effective, and it makes the spaces between us wider, and it makes us miss understand each other, and I think we we we all lose in that way by by not allowing a person to be the full extent

of themselves in that in that moment. I would really love for that to change, and I think that that would would really change the way that we relate to each other. I feel really fortunate to have had this conversation with Kate, who also gave me a window into understanding someone else. I love. It was just like a gentle, sweet revelation of like, oh huh, there might be more going on with my dad than I thought in terms of his experience. It felt like a genuine interaction and

a genuine conversation. And I think to have learned so much about someone else and to witness their vulnerability and their willingness to share, is a gift that I will always be in awe of. I leave this conversation with a sense of hope and a sense of calm, content nous. Having talked to Kate, we are going to next chat with another woman who I find extraordinary and fascinating and ever evolving, the incredible Lonnie. She's worked as a photographer, as a sex worker, and had many other jobs and

she's now a soon to be mom. I'm really excited to share her strength, her curiosity, and her journey with you all on our next episode. Thank you so much for listening to When You're Invisible and for joining me on this journey. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe. You can find this episode and future ones on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. I'm your host and creator Maria fernand with executive producers Anna Stump, Nikki Tore and ban producers Arlene Santana and Bablo Cabrera, with associate producer Claudia Martha Corena and post production producer Daisy James. Original theme music by Tony Bruno. When You're Invisible is an I Heart Podcast Network production in partnership with Michael Toura Podcast Network