Elizabeth Wislar

Special Education Teacher/Artist

My name is Elizabeth Wislar and I live in Athens, Georgia with my husband and daughter. I am a special education teacher, but I also love to draw and write. I am told I started stuttering when I was 4 years old. My parents never worried about it too much, since my dad also stutters and he was a successful college professor. I was teased a lot in school and I had teachers who treated me poorly. I think this was because my classmates and teachers didn’t understand stuttering. I went to speech therapy in school, but while I was able to use some techniques in the therapy room, I was not able to use them out in real life. I always felt like I must be doing something wrong. As I got older– maybe middle school, I started learning how to avoid certain words and switch them with words I could say easily. I also avoided talking on the phone, and talking to strangers. My family thought I was overcoming my stutter and was happy. Only I knew that I was just faking it. I developed a deep shame about my stutter and I pretended to be a fluent person for a very long time. When I was in my thirties, I found it was getting harder and harder to pretend. I started looking around on the internet about stuttering. I was still very ashamed, but I was also scared that my secret would be revealed. It was through these internet searches that I met some people from the stuttering community and learned about covert stuttering. These people helped me learn to accept my stutter and gave me the impetus to use my journey to teach others. I will forever be thankful to them!