Was the YE a life changing experience for me?

When we had the pre-meeting with our Hungarian group, my teammates who already attended last year kept talking about this life changing experience which completely transformed the way they thought about themselves and their stuttering. I was not skeptical about the Youth Exchange being a life changing experience for many participants, but I was skeptical about it being a life changing experience for me. I just couldn't imagine it changing me this drastically. As by that time I've already watched the documentary My Beautiful Stutter (which you should watch NOW), I had a pretty good idea what they meant, as it follows a stuttering children's camp with a very similar format.

Although having reached I'd say a considerable level of self acceptance (which I believe is a lifelong journey), my excitement was still mixed with some amount of fear, doubt and some of my own prejudices.

I still believed, that it would be hard for me to make new friends, as it is something I always had difficulties with. I still believed my own prejudice that for me as a stutterer it's inherently hard and tedious to make new contacts, to connect with people, to get really close to others on an emotional level. I was afraid of not being able to hold up engaging conversations, and feeling excluded. I also kinda had this weird resentment against society, that if others didn't care to connect with me, why should I care to connect with people who seem not to care about me.

The Youth Exchange helped me to prove all these prejudices wrong, and I'm eternally grateful for that. Although the first day and parts of the second day I still felt that familiar social anxiety nervousness, seeing how openly everybody was engaging with everybody regardless of nationality, I too managed to shed these feelings and allow myself to experience one of the best weeks of my life.

I couldn't have imagined this absolutely wild week I'd have, consisting of an insane cycle of:

- Getting up as late as possible because I've been up until 4am socializing, playing games or doing karaoke.

- Getting unhealthy amounts of caffeine into my system, along with some solid food.

- Attending workshops and activities, lunch and dinner, of course with as much socializing as possible whenever we had a couple minutes to talk.

- Staying up again until 4am socializing, although I've promised myself I'd go to sleep sooner.

- Repeat.

During the Youth Exchange, I've been probably the most carefree and the closest to my true self, as I've ever been. This open environment allowed me to shed all the layers of everyday stress as well as negative perceptions about myself, and allowed me to experience what I believe to be my true self, a version of myself I always had trouble to find and connect with. It allowed me to become this overly motivated, golden retriever type (thanks Oskari) personality who would just run around engaging with everybody, despite the constant self-induced sleep deprivation. I'm so happy that I returned home as a more complete, a more self-connected person. Whatever your true or hidden inner self might be, if you're a stutterer, please join the next Stamily Youth Exchange and connect with it. You might be surprised what you'll find.

Having always only had 2-3 close friends at any given time, I was hoping to make some international friends abroad too. What I couldn't have imagined is that I'd make friends with all of the other participants, having fun and deep conversations with people from all participating countries. Although even the 7 days were not enough to have all the talks I wanted and connect as deeply as I wanted with all participants, I still consider all of them my friends. And who knows, there's always a Youth Exchange next year.

To all the participants who might be reading this: It was truly inspiring to see each of you grow during this week! You're all precious by your own right! Looking forward to seeing you again wherever and whenever that might be! 💕