I tell her I’m surprised that no one else had ever brought up her stutter to her before. She’s surprised that I’m surprised.
As much as I hated being told that my stutter was “all in my head,” I liked being reminded that it was localized in my brain.
They ground me, authorizing me to keep talking like I do.
I’d become so successfully covert that the idea that I stuttered sounded more like an unfounded opinion than an incontestable truth.
After each meeting I felt lighter, looser, having spent two hours listening only to disfluent speech—to voices that sounded like mine.