Prabhat Tiwari

Growing up, I didn’t like to talk unnecessarily and didn’t converse much with people. Perhaps it was because of my stutter/stammer or maybe it was because I was not confident speaking openly. I would only talk to very close friends and family.  

I first became aware of my stammering when I was eight years old. Then onward my confidence, my social life, my family, my work, every day was a challenge; every day was a survival quest not to get caught on a block. 

I had gone through several speech therapy programs before joining McGuire Program. I can’t say those therapies didn’t help me. Those therapies sometime worked for a short period of time, but they never gave me the confidence to be the person I wanted to be, and the stammer would inevitably return. 

In May 2014 I enrolled in the McGuire Programme. I remember being totally overwhelmed on the first day of my first course. I didn’t know what to expect. I had been told that this will help me; then again I had been told that speech therapy would help me, and it hadn’t, so I really wasn’t sure. 

I am very new to the McGuire program but I am finally able to do things the way I actually want to do them and feel like I can actually be the person I want to be, due to the confidence that the McGuire programme has instilled in me. The support network is amazing. Not to mention meeting fantastic people whom I am honoured to count as friends. 

I still have bad days but just step back and walk freedom’s road again, it isn’t a race, it’s a battle with yourself. 

 The McGuire Programme is not a miracle cure.

It will only help people who want to help themselves and are willing to earn freedom from stuttering. It is what I was looking for, I grasped the opportunity with both hands and I’m not looking back! The one thing I’ve learned is that stammering in public is never as bad as I fear it will be.