He was just a child nicknamed "The little stutterer".

He was just a child nicknamed "The little stutterer". This is a (true) story about stuttering but also fighting for the right to live like others. Please read it if you doubt yourself, if you need positivity or motivation. (and please forgive my broken English, I'm French haha) I will remember all my life this day in middle school, when my Latin teacher asked us : "Who was the best orator of all time ?". Some students answered Cicero (one of the greatest Roman orator), then the professor answers: "Actually the one I'm talking about, Cicero said of him that HE was the greatest orator. His name was Demosthenes." Demosthenes, who was nicknamed Battalos (ΒΑΤΑΛΟΣ) It means "little stutterer". He also has other nickname that evokes Greek slang meaning anus, effeminate, weak, etc, so really mean and cruel nickname. The professor paints us a portrait of him. Demosthenes was shy, weak, an orphan. His temperament is frail. The other children mock him, he is considered wild and solitary. He does not know how to pronounce the R, (in Greek he does not differentiate the lambda from the rho). He stutters a lot, lisps, stammers, he does not know how to breathe and is short of breath. He stutters so much that we do not understand the meaning of his speech. He is a logographer (he writes speeches for others) and has a job where he never needs to speak, which solves his speech problem. However, he chooses difficulty. As he understands the power of speech, he chooses to learn rhetoric. His first experiences are very painful. He is mocked, his diction is found so strange, his breath is short. We do not understand anything, his speaking is choppy; he is so heckled that he leaves the stage or is thrown out. But he holds on. He trains to declaim, do one exercise after another. He trains to recite in front of the sea, and to be intelligible despite the noise of the waves. He speaks while running, to train his breathing. It is even said that he trains to speak with small stones in his mouth (plz don't do that at home you will choke). He learns texts by heart and recites them. He spends his nights meticulously preparing each word of his speeches. So much that people say that he doesn't sound natural. Day after day, he makes such big progress, he excels so much, that he will mark history as being one, and even the greatest, of the orators of humanity. His speeches have revolutionized the art of rhetoric, and he use all the figures of speech. His nickname at the end of his life ? "The Orator". For the 15-year-old child that I was, who could not read a text without stumbling over 1 word in three, you cannot imagine the strength that this gave me. Several years later, during my studies, I thought of Demosthenes when I had to defend my PhD thesis, when I was terrified to speak in front of so many people, alone, for three hours. Today, I am 31 years old and still think about this professor and about Demosthenes almost every day since speaking is important in my work. There is a poem by Victor Hugo which says : "Ceux qui vivent, ce sont ceux qui luttent." Those who live are those who struggle. I repeat this sentence to myself everyday. The truth is that beyond shame and pain, two things that stutterers know very well, an obstacle or a default can be a force opening to a higher level of functioning. It is the phenomenon of overcompensation. Who if not us, stutterers, has thought so much about words, their decomposition, their sequencing, their meaning, their identity ? No one. Because no one thinks SO MUCH about language, except us who struggle with it every day. Please remember Demosthenes the stutterer, please remember his success was VS the cards he had in hand. All is possible. Surpassing and resilience are the key.