About the Author: My name is Willemijn, I am 24 and I am from the Netherlands. I am a person who stutters, and I was lucky to find the stuttering community pretty early in my life. When I was 19, I met other people who stutter for the first time. Meeting other people who stutter has helped me to grow as a person, and become more open, confident, and comfortable with who I am. It also inspired me to make art and share about my life as a person who stutters, to support others and spread awareness.

One of the things I love about being around other people who stutter, is… hearing them stutter.
Every stutter has its unique rhythm and sound, and I think hearing them all together sounds so cool. As an artist, this inspires me and makes me wonder: what would stuttering look like if translated into a visual? In the comics I make about stuttering, I often symbolize the uniqueness of stuttering by drawing differently shaped speech bubbles. Some stutters have a lot of blocks and sound more harsh, which could translate into a geometric shape, with thick lines. Other stutters are more soft and quiet, with prolongations. Those could be drawn as a more organic shape, with flowy thin lines.

But that’s just my interpretation. What would it look like if everyone visualized their own stutter?

In August of this year, I had the opportunity to try out this idea. I was together with almost 50 people who stutter at an Erasmus+ Exchange, and was given the chance to host a workshop. At first, I was nervous about whether my workshop was going to make sense, and if people would enjoy it. For me, when an idea is too abstract, it doesn’t inspire me to be creative, and I was afraid that this would happen for the participants as well.

To my excitement, after introducing the idea and giving some examples of how sound can be translated into a visual, everyone jumped straight into creating. And it was even better than I could have imagined. Besides just creating the visual for what their stutter sounds like, the participants were expressing their thoughts, feelings and experiences into their artwork as well. It was beautiful to see that people discovered new things about themselves by seeing their inner world on paper. Emotional conversations happened, and I was so proud and impressed to see people open up and express themselves through art. 

At the end of the workshop, we put all of our creations together, to make one collaborative artwork. And here it is! A visual representation of stuttering, made by 37 people who stutter. I’m really grateful for the experience of creating it together with all of you. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Below the images, you can read personal stories from four of the participants about their part of the artwork.

Andrea, Italy:

‘I chose to represent my stutter as a tree with branching limbs because it captures the complexity of my covert stuttering, where I often change my words and sentences mid-flow to avoid blocks or repetitions. The branches feature interruptions and dashed lines to symbolize the moments when blocks or repetitions happen. This visual metaphor reflects the intricate nature of my speech differences, where each branch represents a potential linguistic detour. Through this artwork, I’ve come to realize that my stutter is an integral part of my identity and the way I think. In the future, I hope to continue embracing and understanding this aspect of myself, using it as a source of strength rather than a hindrance to my communication.’

Lucía, Spain:

‘On one hand, the darker lines of my stutter bubble are round and twisting because I try to avoid certain words in order not to stutter, so usually I have to reformulate all the sentence just for one specific word. However, this strategy does not always work and I usually repeat certain syllables, I lengthen some sounds or I just block for a bit. These are represented by interruptions in the darker line in form of blanks, dots or shorter lines. On the other hand, the lighter line represents my flow of thoughts which, on the contrary, is not interrupted and guides my speaking. Finally, these two lines follow the same path because, despite these difficulties, I eventually get to express what I need to say, which is the main goal of communication.’

Oskari, Finland:

‘In my drawing, the inner line represents the thoughts that run through my head, and that I’d like to say out loud. The outer line represents, how the words come out of my mouth: sometimes it’s more wobbly (stutter) and sometimes it’s straight (fluent). Usually when it wobbles, the line gets thinner because at those times I tend to limit myself and not speak as loud and as much as I’d like to. The expression on the creature’s face is the one I feel when I cannot express myself as I’d like to because of the wobbliness. It is shaped like a ghost because at those times my stutter feels like a ghost that is haunting me: even at times when I speak fluently.’

Konsta, Finland:

‘My speech is otherwise fairly fluent, but I have these really heavy blocks, which the triangles are for. The smaller triangles are the different reasons for the blocks, f.e. I’m not breathing properly, I’m speaking too quickly or I’m not focused enough. I realized, that even though stuttering is not “normal”, I shouldn’t care, cause being normal is boring.’

Thanks to Alinde, Katariina, Yelco, Sveva, Lotus, Annette, Anurag, Jeffrey, Lucía, Wesley, Oskari, Marialaura, Antti, Genevra, Valerijo, Venkatesh, Lisa, Gabriele, Mea, Marit, Dario, Andrea, Konsta and everyone else who participated!