Well, sure it's easy to quote mine and find things you disagree with. But even still, I think you missed the point of that statement. It's part of a rhetorical question that poses the question, "does my [stuttering] voice matter?" Furthermore, the point of the article was not to say, "buck up kids, we should all be doing what I'm doing" It was to raise awareness of the fact that a person can be successful in a career that requires oral communication even if that person stutters. From the article: > Conflating a person's stuttering with an inability to succeed in professional employment is wrong and reinforces negative and false stereotypes," said Kenny Koroll, chairman of the NSA As you point out, the presence of stuttering is out of our hands. But our reaction to stuttering is flexible and changeable. This is the second point of the article. The author is saying that when she evaluated her choices *not* to do something many times it wasn't stuttering but the *fear* of stuttering that held her back. I think this is an important point. One can have a very severe stuttering problem and still be an effective communicator. To be successful in some professional careers one needs only be an effective communicator, not necessarily a fluent one.