Hello everyone! My name is Amreen and I am a person who stutters. I began to notice my stutter around the age of 13 when I was called out to read a chapter out loud to the entire class. I didn't quite understand what was happening to me and my family advised me that it was all in my head. Since then, I've had some good, bad and absolutely terrible days when the stutter comes and goes. It has a mood of its own and there is no predicting as to what's going to happen on any day.
I moved to Canada in 2013 to build a quality life here and develop professionally. Little did I know that my stutter would impact my life to this extent. I remember making a list of professions that would not require me to talk back in 2016 and staying parched instead of trying to order myself a drink through the Tim Hortons drive thru. Fast forwarding to the present, I currently work at a job within the HR world that requires me to speak with over 50+ people a day over calls or face to face, leading meetings and talking to senior professionals who might have intimidated me in the past. I partially owe the progress that I have made to the CSA family and for that I am extremely grateful. I met Carla Di Domenicantonio, CSA Board Director and SLP Liaison in the year 2018 during a CSA support group meeting and was amazed to see the support and resources we had available for people like myself. Knowing what I was going through was not just in my head and that there were many others who are going through this having a successful career made me realize that I could achieve my dreams too. I think the worst thing we do is believe the negative things our mind tells us about ourselves and fail to realize that the stutter alone doesn't define us. Two things that helped me move forward was understanding the nature of my stutter and having a strong support system at home & work. My hope with taking on this new position within the Board of Directors is to help several people like myself and most importantly to let them know that they are not alone in this battle.
I'd like to end this with a lovely quote from one of my favourite movies, P.S: I love you: “So now, all alone or not, you gotta walk ahead. Thing to remember is if we're all alone, then we're all together in that too.”