About the Author: Gina Waggott is a writer, editor, disability advocate, and filmmaker from the UK. She is the author of Scatman John: The Remarkable Story of the World’s Unlikeliest Popstar, which Bloomsbury published in February 2026.  Gina is a covert stutterer who has been an active member of the stuttering community for 25 years. She is a former Vice Chair of Stamily, a diverse worldwide network for people who stutter and their allies, a former trustee of the European League of Stuttering Associations, and is currently the operations lead at 50 Million Voices, championing speech equality in the workplace.

For years, I lived a paradox: I badly wanted the world to understand my stuttering, while at the same time never letting anyone hear it. I was 100% covert to the point where many friends and even my family had no idea – though they knew about other ‘odd’ behaviours, like never asking for things in shops, answering the phone, or just being generally shy, quiet Gina. 

I was both afraid of and deeply ashamed of my voice. Yet this had unintended consequences – the people around me never learned anything about stuttering, and I was helping preserve the silence and stigma that I wanted society to break. 

This all changed recently. When I was a teenager, I had clawed my way towards acceptance with the help of an overt, famous stutterer called John Larkin AKA Scatman John. That’s a whole other story, but when he passed away in 1999, I went back to hiding again because it was too hard for me, too irresistible to not have to deal with all the negative responses and thoughts and feelings that would overwhelm me. 

More recently, after writing a book about John, I knew I would be forced into the media if I wanted any chance of promoting it properly. My publisher booked me on podcasts, radio interviews (some live), and in-person events. I had a choice. I could continue to hide, or I could use the platform and the opportunity to normalise stuttering. So I chose something that absolutely terrified me – I decided not only to stutter overtly, but to throw a ton of voluntary stuttering in, too. Talk about a complete reversal. I just thought “f*ck it” – and felt I owed it to John, who had been so overt and out-with-it about his stutter. Hearing him was the catalyst for my road to acceptance, and I realised that baton had now been passed to me.

Being in the public eye is a strange thing. Celebrities who stutter are often held up as examples and role models, and they can do enormous good. But they cannot carry the burden of creating understanding for millions of people who stutter, and yet, sometimes, we seem to expect them to. If representation is a famous person giving an interview (usually while not stuttering or not admitting to currently stuttering), then it remains exceptional rather than the ordinary, but we – you, me – can change this.

The stuttering community is wonderful, but it is also insular. We talk mostly among ourselves (and who can blame us?). We’re preaching to the converted – people who already understand stuttering are often talking to others who also understand stuttering. But where do most of the problems in our stuttering lives come from? From the outside world – from stigma, ignorance, misunderstanding, discrimination. We need to talk to the outside world… to bring it into the conversation.

I don’t mean you have to get on a stage, do live radio, or do anything spectacular. Small-scale, repeated representation matters and you can do this in ordinary life. Explain blocking to a work colleague. Tell your classmates what it feels like when someone finishes your words or sentence. Bring it up in an inclusion discussion. Hell, talk about Scatman John or other celebrities who stutter, if you don’t want to make it personal.

This normalisation – the everyday – is more powerful than the big “inspiration” stories. We don’t need spectacular ‘overcoming’ or ‘get rid of it’ tropes – we just need ordinary people – the teachers, accountants, nurses, parents, engineers, whoever, simply going ahead and stuttering whilst living their lives. We need every shade of stuttering to be heard. Imagine if stuttering was so out there, so prevalent, that it becomes what it essentially already is – just another way of talking that needn’t be wrapped up in fear or shame.

Not everyone wants to disclose or advocate, and they shouldn’t feel they have to. I’ve had days where I get an ignorant response and I just don’t have the bandwidth or battery to start educating someone that day. I’ve learned to give myself grace when I feel like I should be “representing” all the time, or when I feel I’ve failed if I hide a word or avoid explaining stuttering to someone. 

Not everyone can do this easily, either. But just by talking as we talk, we can do something for those who are still hiding, ashamed, or isolated. A thousand small acts of visibility are how something stops being hidden, and starts becoming more accepted. 

At a recent NSA convention I mentioned the phrase “be the change you want to see in the world”. For stuttering, I say: be the voice you want to hear. 

And how do you do that? You just go ahead… and stutter!