Camilo Maturana

Starting a life story and telling it is not easy, there are falls, hits, some harder than others, starting with this and having to remember everything that was lived is quite difficult. But my stutter helped me realize early how hard life is, this one will try to leave you on your knees every time it can, and it’s our duty to face it, stand up and beat it. The road is long for some, short for others, but we all end up in the same way. My life road hasn’t ended; I write this while I’m un university. I’m 18 years old and I’m a person who stutters.

I stutter since I have a conscience, my parents didn’t see it as something out of the ordinary, it was during the school stage and after alienating myself from my father, due to personal motives, approximately at 6 years old, it was when I became aware that I spoke in a weird way and different from others. The teasing from my classmates, drowned me slowly in a dark, bottomless pit, filled with fears and horrors. My childhood was hard, maybe that’s why I felt separated from any group, I became a very introverted person, it was hard for me to relate to others, I blamed society who normalized the “ordinary” and excluded the “extraordinary”.

I went through a lot of speech specialists, psychologists, hypnosis, alternative treatments, among others, they helped me a little or nothing at all with my stutter. At 15 years old I started to become psychologically stronger, maybe because I had to fight so many battles every day, and practically lose them all. I never had a girlfriend, nor good friends. I attributed everything to my stutter, self-love was alien to me. Little by little I started to face challenging situations and ended up discouraged because I stuttered, nevertheless I faced them, I was on the verge to fall into a depression, I hated myself, I didn’t love myself at all.

The year 2017 arrived, the beginning was hard and it kept getting worse, my mother saw me pretty bad, that’s why while searching on Internet, she gets to a website, this website was McGuire, with enthusiasm she looks at the testimonials, videos, and reads information about the programme. Excitedly she encourages me to participate, I accept, as a last resource to improve my speech. On the first day of the course I was sceptical, those who came surprised me. The experiences I lived during those four days are ineffable to me, they were experiences that achieved to change a habit of a lifetime, in just days.

I went out of my first course as a new person, I’d say it was like being born again, the days after the course was better, I got a girlfriend and finished school, I dared to give a speech in front of more than 100 people. Now I’m in university and the challenges are bigger, but now I have the right tools to face them, thanks to the McGuire Programme.

The road that follows is long and it will continue to be hard, but now I can make it pleasant and comforting.

McGuire gave me great help and a great push in the first course to keep moving forward, the rest is up to me, keep moving forward, without stopping and ready for any battle.

“The most effective way to do it is to DO IT” –Amelia Earhart