From Fear to Enjoyment: My Public Speaking Journey

Public speaking is not something I ever thought I would enjoy or want to throw myself into. I still don’t count it amongst my top 10 favorite things to do with my free time, but something is rewarding about conveying a message to a group of people and not being so petrified. My experience in front of a crowd started when I was young. My mom was good about letting us experience a wide range of activities. I remember doing several plays. There was one I performed at out of a local theater and performance place near where I grew up, and the play was about children gathering scrap metal during World War II for the war effort. At least two American girl plays were where we acted out parts of American girl books. I remember in the play based on Addie’s life, I was one of the mean girls who was bullying her. I was not the lead bully but one of the supporters’ bullies. The other play was Felicity, and my character’s title was The Angry Loyalist. In case no one has read the philosophy books, I will go ahead and tell you that the angry loyalist has one scene where they storm into Felicity’s father’s shop to school him for participating in a boycott against the king of England. I’ve seen a video of this play, and for some reason, I thought being angry on stage was funny. I had a really hard time not laughing when rehearsing, which is what I remember most. I would want to smile as I said, “This is disloyal. You know this is wrong.” Somehow I got through that line and did not laugh and my mom made me this little costume with a bonnet and a dress. It was adorable. Then they went through a period where I felt extremely awkward and unhappy with beautiful people and this is when I started hating performing or speaking in public.

In college, giving presentations was terrifying I remember I had a professor at school in Milledgeville shout out to Dr. Monroe of my exercise physiology days he loved to sit in the back of the room. He would give me the articles and then ask the probing question on a repeat: well, what is the take-home message? An inside joke between all the students in the class would be in between classes to ask each other what the take-home message of whatever we were working on was. After college, I was uncomfortable with public speaking until I volunteered at my church. I started throwing myself into at first just reading the Bible verse then I started at times being the assistant pastor which at first I started by sweating a bunch and stuttering but eventually I got over it. All of this is on my mind because I just submitted my third proposal to speak at an annual autism conference to be clear this is my third year. I never talk more than once a year at the conference, and I never would have expected to have enjoyed participating in advocacy in a public speaking-focused way. I still think that many adults with autism are far better orders than I am I need the conferences as an opportunity to try and present information in a way that will help people and hopefully provide resources.

I didn’t expect to enjoy public speaking, but I enjoy interacting with the audience. I like to hear if what I have presented is helpful and what the audience members’ experiences are. It’s rewarding to provide a context for a difficult conversation so people can feel heard. I always learn from hearing new speakers and hope to continue improving this skill.