Finding Your Voice Through Art: Expressing the Emotions Behind Stuttering

For people who stutter (PWS), there are some days when talking just feels heavy and burdensome. When the words are right there, you know exactly what you want to say, but they just can’t come out. You take a breath, try again, and push through.

Speaking is a seemingly small but mighty and courageous act for PWS every single day. But courage doesn’t only live in our voices. Sometimes, it lives in color, movement, music, rhythm, and light. Art. Art gives us the medium to express everything the stuttering experience offers to us—the frustration, pride, humor, hope, and everything in between—in our own time and way.

When words feel hard, creativity makes space

The great thing about art is that it tells a story without needing fluency. It’s the smooth sound of a brushstroke on canvas, the shuttering of a camera taking a picture of a beautiful sunset, the pause before a chord change. It conveys what speech sometimes just cannot.

A painting might show the swirl of thoughts before a block. A dance could portray the release of finally saying your name out loud. A photograph might capture the strength it takes to keep trying. Art lets you show your inner world to others—not to fix stuttering, but to show the person beyond it.

“Especially as a teenager, I would turn to art to express myself or explain things about stuttering. I used illustrations and animations to show the adults in my life what my stutter felt like. Sometimes I even used art to try to understand what I was struggling with. Art often helped me share emotions that I didn’t feel comfortable talking about.” — Willemijn Bolks, PWS and comic artist

Healing through creativity

The process of creating art doesn’t need to be super serious or picture-perfect. It can be messy, funny, loud, or soft. What truly matters is that it’s yours. Many PWS find that art helps release the tension that can sometimes build within themselves and gives their emotions a safe place to live. This can look like sketching during a hard day or writing lyrics that mirror your speech. Either way, creativity can help you process your emotions behind difficult experiences and can even shift how you see yourself.

While everyone who stutters stutters differently, you might notice that your stutter has its own rhythm. Maybe the pauses and repetitions have some kind of beat. When you turn that rhythm into something creative, you stop fighting against it. You start working with it.

“There was one time when I drew a comic strip for the STAMMA blog that unexpectedly helped me process a stinging memory from high school 30 years prior. The comic strip was about that incident, and it was very hard for me to draw. However, once I finished, I found myself thinking how things would have been different if I had known what I know now about stuttering being okay. The sting instantly disappeared and never came back.” — Daniele Rossi, PWS and creator of Franky Banky comics

Art builds connection

When you share your art, you share a piece of yourself with the world. And that can have a big impact. Maybe your drawing helps someone realize what anxiety before a presentation feels like. Maybe your short film makes another teen who stutters feel less alone. Or maybe your music helps a PWS find peace in their voice.

That’s exactly what community is: not people who all sound and look the same, but people who make space for one another’s differences.

“It has been tremendously healing to have other people connect with my art. In the beginning, I made art just for myself to process difficult feelings, such as loneliness. Being able to share those experiences and have people relate to them turned that loneliness into connection. Sharing heavy feelings with others made them a lot lighter!”— Willemijn Bolks

Your voice is already art

You might not realize it, but the way you speak already has rhythm. The way you navigate a block, the way your breath moves before a prolongation, the way you hold eye contact when you finish a thought—all of it is art. 

When you create something from that, you take ownership of your story, you decide how it’s told, and you define what strength looks like for you.

“Drawing is like communicating without words. And I don’t mean that from the point of view of avoiding speaking. I mean it in a way of communicating with your soul and making a connection through one’s own form of creative expression. For instance, one 10-year-old boy was inspired by a scene I drew where Franky Banky is interviewed on the radio. Stutter and all. The boy took the initiative to give a presentation about stuttering in front of his class that same week! Then once again in front of his whole school! I also enjoy learning from speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and how they use my comics in therapy sessions to generate discussion and to explore feelings and emotions.”— Daniele Rossi

Your art matters

If you stutter, your voice and art matter. It is part of how the world learns to listen. Everything you create says, this is who I am, this is how I speak, this is how I shine. Those who are doodling in a notebook, recording a song, or filming a short story, your creativity reminds others that stuttering is something to understand, not something to fix.

If you’re creating digital art that reflects your experience as a person who stutters, we’d love to see it. Reach out to us anytime if you’re interested in sharing your work with the NSA.