Finding my voice

One thing that helped me find my voice early on was speech therapy. Speech therapy started at Dr. Townsend’s Pre-School Multi-Handicapped Play Program, where I had a speech therapist that came in every week.  I learned every letter based on where I put my tongue to sound it out in my mouth but it is still difficult for people to understand me.  When I was in elementary, the special needs class would work on talking to each other.  It was hard at first because I wanted to speak like the other kids and not have them mock me.  

Now I'm used to people having trouble understanding me.  Someone meeting me for the first time initially struggles to understand me and I struggle to communicate with him or her.  I try to put things in another way or even spell things out for them (sometimes that means typing it out because it's too hard to hear the letters properly) but sometimes they still do not understand. Many times, I just want to give up but most things aren't really a big deal.

Even people who have known me for a long time sometimes have trouble understanding what I mean.  My best friend and I were coming back to our hotel after a long day of sightseeing in P.E.I. and I wasn't very hungry but I knew I needed to eat something light. She asked what I wanted. I said, "A bag of cheezies". She looked at me and laughed. I didn't know what was so funny. "A bag of sheep?" she asked. "No,” I said, “A bag of cheezies! Like a bag of chips".   Luckily, we figured out that misunderstanding before she ordered anything!   She wasn't too confident that she could have found me a bag of sheep even if I wanted one.

It's also very hard when I talk with people over the phone because they cannot see my mouth.  I have gotten used to repeating things over and over for people to understand me.  If I ever start getting too frustrated my response is "forget it!" and I let it go.  However, people don't like letting go and they usually keep trying to guess.

Nevertheless, I’m very lucky to have a voice of my own to help me be who I want and to stick up for myself. Sticking up for myself and my rights started when I was in school.