If you were to make a recipe for advocacy, what would your ingredients be? For me, this recipe is missing what I think is the most important ingredient of them all: grace.

A blog by Jordan Northrup
Who am I? Am I Marine? Was I a drunk? Was I a failed husband? Am I a Christian? Am I a stutterer? The answer is that I am all those things and probably more that I haven’t yet discovered, but I am not bound by my attributes.

What does being an advocate mean to you? According to the Merrian-Webster Dictionary, an advocate is “a person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy.”

“Hi! Welcome to your favorite restaurant. What can I get for you today?” For most people, this basic conversation is nothing to write an article about. They order what they want, pay for their food, and continue on with their day. Yet for people who stutter, what we want to order might be different than what we can order. Let me explain.

Recently, “Bridgerton,” the Netflix hit in association with Shondaland based on Julia Quinn’s novel The Duke and I, broke records as people tuned in to watch a sexy duke and a high-profile family find love in gossipy, Regency-era London. But in modern society, would fluent people be open to listening to people who stutter—let alone consider people who stutter attractive?

This phrase has been around for decades and has been said in every possible venue: film, NFL press conferences, scripted and non-scripted television, commercials, gifs, memes, TikToks, everyday conversations, and tweets from politicians.