THERE WAS A time early in my adult life when I felt cut off from who I knew myself to be. Fate… circumstance… cultural expectations… supposed financial realities…  the strident conformist opinions of key ‘guides’ in my life… all of these factors (and more) contrived to keep me living a life that felt to me like a soul-crushing lie.

The impact of this inauthentic existence sent me spiraling downwards into anxiety and depression, and it was made even worse by the stutter I then had, and by the sev...