In México we have the saying “No hay plazo que no se cumpla, ni deuda que no se pague.” It roughly translates to “There is no deadline that doesn’t arrive, or debt that is not paid.”

That day finally came.

The 2020 National Stuttering Association conference was supposed to be in Newport Beach, California, when this very minor thing you might have heard about called COVID started. After weeks of uncertainty our conference got cancelled and instead we ended up having a virtual conference over Zoom *insert sad face*

Don’t get me wrong. It was good for what it was and I remember having fun talking to people until late at night, playing pictionary together, trying to capture that conference vibe over different time zones… but it was just not the same— Zoom can’t beat face to face interactions.

So when in 2021 the NSA announced that the 2022 conference was going to do a redo of Newport Beach, I got excited—Redemption!

Let me show you what I saw, and I’ll be sprinkling some of my favorite quotes I heard during the weekend.

For me, it started like it usually does:

I said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t get why people don’t look outside the windows all the time when they fly. I can’t get enough of this perspective.

Yada, yada, yada, I got to the hotel, and the Stamily was already there in full force!

The view from my window was incredible…

… as long as you didn’t look down…

… but what are you going to do, right?

In any case, I don’t go to these conferences for the hotel, I go for the people, and trust me, there were A LOT (737 according to the official numbers!) of people:

At the opening ceremony, Sebastian Scala (who I finally met in person after interacting online for years) quoted his mom saying that “Heaven is where everybody you love lives in the same block as you.” He nailed it, that is exactly how this conference feels to me. Once a year, hundreds of my favorite people in the world share a block (of a hotel, get it?) and we party. Heaven!

“Never thought I would say this, but I'm grateful I stutter.”

One of my favorite things about heaven is that going out to eat becomes a whole production with a rotating cast. Maybe there are people that plan their days and with whom they are going to do what, but generally I just go with the flow. “Are we going out? Ok!”

You know I say yes to everything.

This was on the way to one of those dinners:

Atlanta, Portugal, Los Angeles, Buffalo, Quebec, New Jersey, Brooklyn, and Chicago in one photo.

Right after taking that photo, the inevitable happened: We ran into Doug Scott.

At any NSA event, in any country in the world, you are ALWAYS within a 10 minute window of running into Doug.

Our dinner turned into a birthday celebration, courtesy of my dude, the “Mayor of Atlanta” (don't quote me on that): Derek Mitchell.

The hotel at night looked spectacular:

“When you decide to step into the light, you are worthy of the attention you command.”

The next morning one of the keynote speakers was actor, TikToker, Youtuber, voice-actor, and overall stuttering superstar Marc Winski.

I really don’t have photos from his keynote besides this one…

… but it was because I was really enjoying the show he put for us, and taking notes too. Some things that resonated with me from his speech:

Trying everything under the sun to try to get rid of your stuttering. He mentioned trying hypnosis. I did that, too. Actually I bet I have tried more than most, just based on my experimental nature, and because of where I am from. Psychologists, Psychiatrists, hypnosis, witch doctors, pills, meditation, supplements, anti-anxiety medication, magic mushrooms and other ehem not-so-legal-substances…. I have tried it all. Still stutter.
“You should sing every word!” As soon as I tell people that I don’t stutter when I sing, I hear that one. Why don’t I sing every word? Because I don’t live in High School Musical, that’s why. Singing every word is not a feasible solution to stuttering, stop it. (But it IS a great party trick, though!)

Famous people who stutter poster. If you have been to a speech therapist at all, you have probably seen the poster he is talking about or some version of it…

… and I also have mixed feelings about it. At first, it gave me a very comforting “Oh, I’m not the only one!” feeling, but on second thought I was like “but wait a minute, none of them REALLY stutter like me.” What I love about this conferences is that you realize that “I overcame my stuttering” is not the only way out. You can be successful, happy, fulfilled, AND STILL STUTTER. Just walk around the hotel 10 minutes and you’ll meet somebody cool, or interesting, or brave… or Doug :)

“I'm not going to a sad place with sad people and talking about our sad stuttering.” That’s how he felt when he first heard about the NSA. I believe some people think that way about the idea of a support group, but the reality couldn’t be farther from the truth. While we share some sad stories from time to time, the thing that changes you is the powerful sense of belonging. You are one of the group the moment you walk into this conference.

One evening there was a spoken word event called “StutterSlam”.

I didn’t know about it, I wasn’t planning on attending, but here’s the thing, earlier that day there was a workshop called “Stuttering on the page,” led by the man of the great beard, Adam Giannelli. The workshop was about how, for some of us, writing becomes a way of expressing the things we can’t say. Of course it connected with me.

At some point, we were encouraged to take a few minutes and write something about stuttering. It could be a poem, a paragraph, a story, anything that we were inclined to write about our experience as a person who stutters.

I wrote a poem. I don’t write poems, I don’t consider myself a poet, but when in Rome, you write a poem.

After a few minutes we broke into small groups and we were supposed to share what we wrote. My group had 3 other people, and since nobody volunteered, I said “I’ll go first.”

I opened my mouth, and at that moment it kinda dawned on me “wait, this is kinda personal” and. I . Just. Couldn’t. String. Two. Words. Together. After. That.

I. Got. Sweaty.

Every. Word. Was. A. Struggle.

It. Sucked.

Isn’t that weird?

I was perfectly fine before that but apparently reading a poem is terrifying to my reptilian brain. I found it very annoying.

Anyway, when I finished reading mine the other people read theirs, and after a few minutes we went back to the big group. At that point Adam and his magnificent beard asked if anybody would want to read what they wrote for everybody, and you know what? Part of me was like “you totally want to do it,” but now there was a negative voice telling me “No, fuck doing that again!”

… And I ended up not raising my hand.

Sucks, right?

I am pretty outgoing, I go to Toastmasters, I lead workshops, meetings, interviews with clients. I’m confident. But every now and then I still let my stuttering tell me “maybe skip this one,” and I listen to it. My poem was literally about that.

Stupid stuttering.

But you know what?

Later that day I heard my friend Alicia say that she was going to a poetry slam and I went “I’m sorry, what?”

Sometimes life gives you a second chance, and I was not going to listen to that voice again! I signed up for the thing.

“Nobody knew I was smart. I don't have stage fright, I have shame.”

It was amazing!

I can’t quote or retell everybody’s story, but I’ll share with you one of the most impactful ones.

Chris Christopher, a first timer (BRAVO!), got up and told a story that he had only told to his wife, until then.

He grew up Mormon, and as Mormons do, he had to be a missionary. “I was one of the guys with the tie and the bike,” as he put it.

He said he loved the experience, and at some point, after knocking on who knows how many doors and talking to who knows how many people, he felt his confidence start to grow and grow, until one morning he woke up… and his stuttering was gone.

He couldn’t believe it. His partner noticed. More missionaries in his group noticed, and soon he started to be known and introduced as “The missionary who God blessed with a cure to his stutter.”

And it was then when he started to feel the pressure. The anxiety of being “the one” made him feel like he had to speak all the time, and to more people, and to be more insightful than anybody. He started to retreat, and one day after a couple weeks, he started stuttering again.

His fellow missionaries couldn’t understand it, and the questions started.

“Why did you lose the Lord's blessing? What did you do wrong?”

He was crushed.

“That experienced taught me what hell was,” he said, “but today, being at this conference with you, this is my heaven.” he concluded.

Talk about powerful (and another mention of heaven).

“We all know hockey coaches who say we can't do things, don't believe them.”

Then my turn came up.

“I was at the writing workshop earlier,” I started, “at the end of the workshop Adam asked if anybody wanted to read their thing and I totally wanted to, but I chickened out. So I’m here for redemption.”

And I read my poem. And it still sucked, and it was still a struggle, and it still took me what felt like 10 minutes, but I did it and I was proud of myself.

Suck it, stuttering!

Here’s my poem, if you wanna read it:

And a photo of everybody after the StutterSlam:

After the poetry slam I walked to the lobby, and there, our resident NASA scientist Catherine Moroney and I started talking photography.

Then, she asked to take a photo of me, and here’s the deal: I'm used to people saying I’m not in photos because I’m behind the camera, I get it. The problem is that when people ask me to borrow my camera to take a photo of me, 99.7% of the time I receive a blurry photo that I don’t like, but I'm still forced to say "hmmm thanks " just to be polite. Well, not this time! I guess being an actual rocket scientist helps!

John Gomez said he liked my Hunter S. Thompson shirt and I am putting that on my resumé from now on.

Catherine also snapped one more photo, and it’s the perfect opportunity for me to recognize two people:

These are Angela Medina and John Gomez, two people who do not stutter (weirdos), but I consider integral part of our Stamily. They are both Speech and Language Pathologists, they are both professors, and they all represent the best ally anybody can be. They come to learn from us and then take that knowledge to go train the next generation of SLPs, who will be more prepared than they would be otherwise. Angela is also Research Chair & Secretary of the NSA, while John also directed the fantastic documentary “When I Stutter.”

Thank you for your support and more importantly your friendship!

Some photos from the next morning, walking around the hotel:

" Now I don't want to lose my stutter, I love it, and I didn't think anybody could say that, I love it because it connects me to you!"

Our second keynote speaker was Morgan Lott. Morgan is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and founder of Mane Co., a content producing agency that has worked with brands like Apple, Nike, American Airlines, Amazon, Starbucks, and many others.

At the 2013 NSA Conference in Scottsdale, Morgan premiered his documentary “Thisisstuttering: Accepting my stutter,” in which he documented his journey with speech therapy. What started as a school project ended up throwing Morgan into the public eye, and his keynote was about the lessons learned in the last 9 years.

Some of the main points of his keynote were:

We are all on our own journeys. Wherever you are right now, is product of your previous experiences, and you can learn from everybody around you, but you shouldn’t compare yourself to others. You are not less than, if you don’t do X, Y and Z. Go at your own pace, but just don’t stop moving forward.
Talk to yourself. His documentary started as a series of video diaries where he was just rambling to himself, but as the days passed, he started noticing that he was being truthful and admitting to himself things that he has never said out loud before. That started a whole process of self-discovery that changed his life and his own self-image as a person who stutters. “Talk to yourself, make videos, journal, start a blog, it doesn’t matter if you don’t show anybody what you are doing, the important thing is what happens between you and your thoughts.” As somebody that has taken journaling seriously the past couple years, I can co-sign this one. Magic things start to happen when you let your mind express itself.
Lean into it. Accept who you are and go chase what makes you tick. He said it perfectly with the phrase “Be yourself and take over the world.”

Here’s a haiku*:

NSA Conference
Bob Wellington is ready
Karaoke tonight

(*Is that a haiku? I’ve never written one and I’m not sure I counted the syllables right— Where are my SLPs?!!)

Quick story about why it can be helpful to be holding a camera at all times:

I was one of the last people from our group to get to the bar and it was already kinda late. I go inside, say hello to everybody, get myself a drink, talk myself into doing karaoke, and I walk to talk to the DJ dude. DJ dude tells me that there were no more spots, they close in an hour.

Bummer.

Minutes later, I am standing there, and DJ dude walks to me and asks what’s up with the camera. I tell him I’m with the big group, we are part of a conference and I like taking photos of everything.

DJ dude introduces himself, gives me a card and tells me “Can you take a photo of me? What song do you wanna sing?”

Success!

I got to close the bar with my horrible rendition of “Ice Ice baby.” You are welcome.

Some photos by the beach:

Unfortunately everything must come to an end, and in what felt like a blink, we were already at the closing banquet:

Then the dancing started:

There is a longer story behind the next couple photos, but let’s just say that that’s the face you make when YOU CAN’T BELIEVE WHAT YOU JUST SAW:

“How many stutterers does it take to make a to-go order?”

And then the REAL party started, when around 1AM the proverbial question “Is anybody hungry?” was asked.

The Mayor of Atlanta took charge and with the conviction of a prophet he said “let there be wings,” and in the blink of an eye (ok, almost an hour), wings appeared.

“The Last Supper” (I swear I didn’t ask them to pose!)

And you know things are going off the rails when, 1. People start taking clothes off.

(Totally kidding! We peer-pressured the crap out of the respectable Mr. Molino to show us his tattoos.)

… and, 2. You run into Doug again.

The last photo in my camera and the perfect way to close this conference, came courtesy of a first timer that after seeing us sitting on the couches in front of the hotel said “you look picture perfect right there.” I handed her my camera, and you know what I think about handing my camera to strangers… but she absolutely nailed it.

Another amazing, inspiring, cathartic conference in the books.

Thank God we waited 2 years so our conference didn’t become a super-spreader event….. oh wait… whoops!

See you next year!

“To hide is to deprive the world of something beautiful. You have a gift and it can only be given by you. It can only by hidden by you. So don't hide, don't deprive the world of something beautiful.”

2022 NSA Conference

David Alpuche Photography

2022 NSA Conference

Flowers in the Wilderness

Claire and Andrew

David Alpuche Photography