Communication aid that never gets mentioned

Communication aid that never gets mentioned So, I keep going back and forth on bringing this up. I’ve never seen it even mentioned here in this sub and figured I’d throw it out there. DISCLAIMER — I have found better fluency through good sleep, proper diet, meditation, cutting out negative people in my life, and always pushing my comfort level deeper into more public and high-stress speaking situations — which then makes regular conversation easier having tackled much harder speaking situations. I would suggest these means of finding fluency above the below suggestion. /disclaimer Ten years ago I could barely complete a sentence to my loved ones. I had high anxiety of talking to anyone outside of maybe five select people. I ran a web design company where I would drop a client if they needed to talk via phone — I was strictly email only. During that low period in my life I had a repetitive thought: learn sign language. What was stopping me from being part of the vibrant and proud deaf community? Sure, I wasn’t deaf, but I couldn’t speak — so why not? There are plenty of people in the deaf community with varying levels of hearing ability — so why not me? I learned basic American Sign Language (ASL) for a couple years. My loved ones did as well. I won’t attribute any of my current fluency to using ASL, but I was able to communicate to my family basic things without being in tears over trying to squeak out two words at the end of a breath. Lowering my anxiety around speaking through ASL allowed me to pursue the methods in my disclaimer of lowering my stress and anxiety, which ultimately lead to greater fluency. I keep seeing threads in this sub of people who feel they have lost everything due to their stutter. If you have given up speaking and are at the lowest of your low, maybe even suicidal over your fluency — there is a whole other world of communication through sign language available to you should you choose to learn it. I never swore off speaking, but I don’t see why it couldn’t be an option. The deaf people I’ve been friends with through the years have been some of the happiest and content people I’ve known. The deaf community makes interfacing with a hearing world work, we can too, by whatever means — and maybe for some that means learning a new language — one that we can absolutely speak fluently if we take the time to learn it. Thoughts? Experiences?