Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
There is a man, and he has never said his own name. Not never said it fluently. Never said it, in the true form, out loud, to another person, without a fight. For forty-six years, the sound at the start of his name has been one he cannot reliably make, and so he has built an entire life, a clever, exhausting, invisible life, designed around never having to say it. He is not who you are picturing. He is not visibly disabled. He is a competent professional, married, successful, and to almost everyone who knows him he is simply a slightly quiet man who pauses oddly before he speaks. Nobody knows that every sentence he utters has been, a half-second before, scanned for dangerous sounds and quietly rerouted around them. Nobody knows he is performing, at.
The writing is designed to reduce shame, bring the underlying pattern into view and give you practical ways to respond without pretending that every life follows the same formula.
