My stutter started around the age of 5. I didn’t have speech therapy until I was 7 and stopped going at 10. I was nearly 100% fluent when I left speech therapy (I have a mild stutter) and I felt a lot better about my speech. When I started secondary school at 11, it got worse again (assuming the anxiety of starting a new school) but it didn’t interfere with my life too much. Throughout secondary school, my confidence got better and I even took part in public speaking. When I got to 16, that was the worst I’ve had it. My stutter itself wasn’t any worse but the anxiety around it was. I would sit in my lessons at school and panic that I would have to speak. It even made me physically sick at times. I ended up going back to speech therapy and was even able to have the same therapist as before! I stopped going at 18 and left with a lot more confidence. I’m now 20 and I don’t have any trouble talking about my stutter or even stuttering to people. I don’t hide my stutter anymore and that’s the main thing to me. I think the moral of the story is that different life events can cause a stutter to fluctuate. There is a big chance that I might need to go back to speech therapy in the future, it could be in a years time or when I’m 80. I’ve stopped seeing it as something I can ‘cure’ but as something that I’ll just have to carry around with me, but at times it’s heavier.