About the Author: Nicole Kulmaczewski is a speech therapist working at a private practice in the Westchester, New York area. She co-founded Myspeech, a non-profit that aims to connect people who stutter to speech therapists in the United States as well as access to resources. Nicole is passionate about advocacy and spreading stuttering awareness through social media posts, continuing education, and day to day life.

I hope these next few years will shape us to be softer and more graceful. I hope we are still practicing with kindness and with an open mind. I hope we still remember the beauty of a human experience and that our field revolves around it. I hope we are still involved in the stuttering community.

We are 26 years old now, just got through a grueling 7 years of the process of getting our C’s. We’ve spent the last year as a Clinical Fellow un-learning the machine that academia has made us become. 

I’d like to remind you of a few things we’ve learned recently just in case you’ve forgotten after so many years.

Being involved in the stuttering community has brought me close with many people who stutter/stutterers who have blessed me with their life stories. What they do not know is that their stories have helped me organize myself as a speech therapist with knowledge that I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. These stories have helped me realize the importance of creating individually tailored treatment plans for my clients because I have heard too many of the “speech therapy nightmare” scenarios. These stories are the reason why I practice with a “one size does not fit all” approach. 

What I didn’t learn in school was the damage I could do to someone’s psyche when setting unrealistic goals for them, or when taking responsibility to “help them” which inevitably creates a power dynamic and sends the message of “you’re broken and I’m here to fix you”. These are lessons I have learned from hurt people who are on a life mission to heal and love themselves. I do not want to create more hurt people. 

Future me, have we hurt people? Do you think we’ve sent that message to our clients, that we are better than them and that they are broken and need fixing? I want to give you a moment to reflect on your morals and what guides you when you practice. What are YOUR goals as a therapist? 

Currently, my biggest fears are:

• that with more experience, I will put myself on a pedestal.
• that I will forget that my job is not to help, but to guide.
• that I will absorb the subconscious ableist beliefs that were instilled in me in academia. 
• that I will regurgitate the “assess, plan, treat, fix” mentality of the medical model as I grow as a therapist. 
• that I will be “the therapist” people reference when talking about their nightmare-ish experiences in speech therapy because I wasn’t aware of the damage I was doing while having “good intentions”. 

Have any of those fears come true?

What are your biggest fears as you read this? 

Future me, what have we done to grow ourselves as a human? Have we grown wiser with age, or more jaded? How many years of speech therapy experience do we have under our belt now? 5, 10, 15? How much time have we spent reflecting on ourselves, on making ourselves the best version of a coach, a counselor, and a safe space for our clients?

I know we have to keep up with continuing education to keep our C’s , but how have we implemented things we’ve learned into our human interactions in the speech room? Can we see X’s perspective in other people when he said that he does have days when it’s hard and all he wants Is to take that magic pill and make it all go away? Can we see X’s perspective when she is sometimes reminded in speech therapy as an adult of how insignificant she felt as a kid when she was told to work harder to become fluent? Can we see X’s story come to life in other people when he told you that when he finally became excited about speech therapy because he was allowed to set his own goals? 

I hope you fondly look back and remember me writing this note to you, to humble you and remind you of our why. I hope that you never forget that each person is on their own journey. I hope that you have returned to this note over and over to remind yourself that humans value connection and that treating our clients as humans should be the #1 priority of any speech therapist, especially you, future me.