STUTTERING FOUNDATION Q & A: ZACKARY BROWN
Originally from Wichita Falls, Texas, Zackary Brown is currently a second year Pediatric Physician Resident at Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital in New York CIty.
Do you remember when you first began to stutter?
The better question is, “do I remember a time that I did NOT stutter?” For as long as I can remember, I have always had a stutter and it was not a subtle stutter that could be overlooked and/or ignored. With my family moving around a lot, my stutter often times made for awkward introductions as I would stutter with my name and where I was originally from.
Does it run in your family? Who else stutters? Family:
I grew up as the oldest of three boys with our mother. I went to 5 middle schools and 4 high schools, and each move presented its own unique challenge because of my stutter. We are a close- knit family and that connection has carried me through each trial.
Hobbies, Interests, Passions: I have an exploratory spirit that gets excited seeing the world through the lens of different languages, cultures and foods. As a first-generation high school graduate, I realize that I am blessed with the unique purpose to uplift, encourage and support a generation of youth, while also fighting to ensure that each child has a fair and equitable state of living. From founding a scholarship at my high school to starting a free health screening organization to serve underprivileged communities, I live my passion daily both inside and outside of the hospital.
Successes:
I equate much of my success to the love and support of my family and village. I have spoken on national platforms in regards to mentorship, health disparities and advocacy practices in medicine. I have broken barriers and uplifted many young leaders and doctors who look like me.
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Pronunciation concerns run in my family, but fluency concerns do not run in my family. I often times hear a family member say, “I used to stutter as a kid” but no one that I know still has a persistent stutter to this day.
Did you seek treatment? Did it help?
I was in speech therapy from the earliest age through my freshmen year of high school. I noticed that speech therapy, in my early years, was surrounded around the concept of “speak slower” as a “fix” to my stutter. It caused a lot of frustration for me throughout my middle school years, because it felt like a simplification to a complex issue that I was experiencing. I often times would say “if my stutter could be fixed by just speaking slower, I wouldn’t be stuttering right now.” Because of this frustration, I opted out of speech therapy in high school. I decided to own my stutter and become confident with my speech through my own ways. In a sense, speech therapy did help me with my pronunciation, but in terms of fluency I had to learn how to navigate the nuances of my stutter on my own.
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