What a Teacher Learns (Spring 2000)
By Denise Nico Leto
 
In 1993, I was diagnosed with a neurological disorder called laryngeal dystonia. This is a condition that affects the muscles of the vocal chords, either forcing them to shut or splay open involuntarily. As a result, one's speech is either choked, hesitant, broken or too breathy and whispery to grasp easily. The act of speaking can also become marked by compensatory facial grimaces that are easily misinterpreted and can distract a listener as well as cause monumental frustration and physical discomfort in the speaker. For me, the onset of the condition began a few years before the diagnosis. I was 32 years old. It was a deeply internal struggle; suddenly my voice was rooted in the body and I couldn't get it out, and because I didn't know what was happening, it was a ruthless and anxiety-provoking mystery. I couldn't understand why the words would not form. I felt something inside grabbing them back and I fought tenaciously. I fought for the life of my speech. But my fighting made vocalization that much harder and the cycle began.
 
For years I made my living as an educator and in social services. I also made my way through the world as a poet, writer, and editor. I taught regularly and gave readings frequently. However, after the onset of the condition, I would find myself in front of the classroom or in front of a group of people at a reading and would suddenly become completely unable to produce any sound because the muscles controlling my vocal chords were so constricted, just getting air through became a colossal effort. In those moments, I felt utterly lost. Those moments stretched into hours, then days, then weeks, then months, then years, until time became a thing not to measure ascent, but descent; not to depend on, as in what can I look forward to, but to fear, as in what else will be taken from me?
 
It was a long, gradual retreat from the public sphere and before I realized how far I had distanced from the world, I began to retreat from loved ones even while safely ensconced in the private realm. It felt as if there was a feathery but impenetrable curtain between myself, this new self, and the rest of the world. It was a curtain I could barely touch for its fragility and yet one so strong it was surely made of steel. I became locked in one dimension of myself: a bare, wordless place. It was a kind of giving up, a folding inward, an isolation so stark and profound I became marooned in existence. I thought I might never find my way back. With speech imperiled, silence became my haven, but it was a haven that, even while it offered protection, kept me farther apart from others.
 
My re-entry into the world was a slow and delicate process, one that is still unfurling. It is impossible to mark a distinct point in time when it began, but certainly enrolling in graduate school gave it a dose of potent fuel. My first year was the hardest time of all. I was still meta-self-conscious about speaking, so much so that I became, in a way, selectively mute. I never said a word. I would leave classes early and drive home in tears. But each day I would get back in the car, drive to campus and march into class hopeful that that day would somehow be different and I would "find" my voice. It rarely happened. Even when it did, I would feel immensely yet unrealistically relieved as though somehow it was all over and now speaking would come effortlessly again. Much to my surprise and angst, I would go to classes the next day and find it impossible to speak again. My teachers didn't know me, my colleagues didn't know me, I barely knew me. It was a situation that worsened before it got better. Not being able to speak, or experiencing one's own speech as unacceptable or suspect because of how it is received or how it sounds to your own ear, is loneliness defined.
Step-by-step, and with much practice, I emerged. At first, it would happen only in optimum conditions and a little at a time, much like the proverbial sea creature from a shell, but nonetheless there I was. I had to cultivate my new voice, coax it out lest it run back in and hide at the first sign of danger or animosity. I began to listen to how I spoke with a different ear, a much wiser, more nuanced ear. It suddenly wasn't as overwhelmingly painful. Each moment of speaking no longer held a life or death portent. I just spoke. Sometimes it came out; sometimes it didn't. Sometimes people could understand me; sometimes they couldn't. Sometimes people were awfully cruel and dismissive; sometimes they were incredibly kind and patient, and sometimes they were just indifferent. I began to see that the capable, articulate self I thought I had lost was still there and, in fact, was thriving in ways I could never before have imagined.
I began to understand that my retreat from the world was also a mourning. It was a silent cry for what could no longer be, and a way to grieve the loss of my essential voice as I had always known it. It was also a way to grieve my professional and creative life which I perceived, however prematurely and wrongly, as finished. I understood that, as harshly as I imagined people would judge me for how I sounded was exactly commiserate with how harshly I judged myself, and I began to relax.
After graduate school, I was awarded a Master of Fine Arts Lectureship. That is, I was invited to come back to campus and teach. I remember when I got the letter. I stood completely still, incredulous that someone would pay me to get up in front of a room and talk. My own judgements still crowding perception, I felt unworthy and terribly afraid.
As the minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months rolled by before the term started last September, I reminded myself what I knew to be true. That the voice, while it feels like the citadel of the self, the sole instrument with which we communicate who we are to the world, is really an imperfect indicator, for anyone speaking any language, fluently or not. The voice is the sound uttered from the self and not the other way around. The words we speak which enter the world through the portal of our larynx, throat, mouth, tongue, and lips are ours no matter what waves or permutations they take on along the way. As long as I wanted to connect with others, I would have to use it and I would have to give my imperfect voice the same range of respect I had given it before the condition changed it. Whether in an intimate, one-on-one setting or in a setting addressing a number of people, my voice, though it may struggle, would never betray me. The real betrayal was the long departure whereby I took my voice, wrapped it in gauze, and left it to die. The gift of speech was still mine and I would abandon it no longer.
I also reminded myself what teaching is. The word "teach" is taken from the Old English techen, meaning a sign or symbol as in to show or demonstrate; to help learn how to do something; give lessons to; guide the study of; provide with knowledge or insight; cause to know or understand. What greater teacher had I, in the end, than the lessons learned from struggling with laryngeal dystonia?
I do not want, however, to bestow my speech condition with preternatural life-changing powers, nor do I want to glorify or diminish the daily, sometimes grinding work it takes for those of us who face tremendous vocal challenges to flourish on our own terms as fully engaged participants in life. Yet the condition took from me what I thought was my strongest foundation and finest treasure and forced me to re-evaluate the nature of human interaction, the function of language, and the development of the self until I could bring forth from newly shifting ground a jewel, no longer seemingly flawless, but one whose worth and measure is made beautiful through its own becoming. It was via this process that I learned how to re-locate the origin of the self, and how to see the world and those with
whom I share it with greater compassion. I learned to at least try to speak, no matter how I am perceived, and no matter what environmental barriers exist. I also learned to get up in front of the classroom and teach in a way
that is truer and richer and to give readings that strive less to impress and more to share. From the many students I had in English class this semester, I learned to keep making the effort to connect; even when the words split and fall awkwardly on air, their meaning, conveyed through my eyes and body language, translate as gracefully as the listener will allow. Finally, I learned that teaching can only transform the student if the teacher is likewise willing to be transformed. Now, as much as I can, I welcome the sound of my voice entering the world and the silence from which it comes.
 

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