Take a closer look at this chain. When you examine it, you'll see the links are things like fear, avoidance, and self-judgment. You choose the chain every day. Others do not. You've forged this chain over the years. Nothing about stammering prevents people from having full lives. They lead teams, raise families, argue cases, teach classes, tell jokes, fall in love, and speak publicly. Their speech may be disfluent at times, but their lives are not defined by restraint. The difference isn’t the absence or severity of their disfluency. It’s the refusal to let it dictate where they go or who they are allowed to be.