Ina Found Her Voice Across Three Languages. And Learned to Lean Into the Good Pain of Stuttering
About this episode
Ina Lalich shares her experiences with stuttering and multilingualism, discussing identity and the importance of presence over perfection.
Maya sits down with Ina Lalich, a San Francisco–raised, multilingual woman who stutters, for a conversation about language, identity, and learning to take up space. Ina describes growing up between Serbian/Croatian and English (with a later detour through French), and how her fluency shifted across languages over time -- sometimes finding relief in Belgrade, later feeling the opposite. She talks about the “different mind” each language gives her, and how writing her college essay on stuttering helped her claim it as strength: creativity, precision, and deep empathy. Now a user researcher at Quizlet who records herself for work, Ina shares what it’s like to interview strangers daily, rewind the tapes, and still choose presence over perfection. We hear candid stories --from a CEO mistaking a block for a bad internet connection to educating someone who mimicked her speech -- and the simple rule that guides her: if she stays calm, others learn to, too. The episode explores womanhood and stuttering, resisting infantilization, the “good pain vs. injury pain” metaphor she borrows from gymnastics, and a curiosity about ASL as another doorway into voice and belonging. ----- 🎟 Get tickets…
People in this episode
Host: Maya Chupkov
Guest: Ina Lalich
Topics covered
- stuttering
- multilingualism
- identity
- womanhood
- language
- self-acceptance
Keywords
- stuttering
- multilingual
- identity
- language
- self-acceptance
- good pain
- ASL
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Quizlet
Places: San Francisco, Belgrade
More episodes of Proud Stutter
- Stuttering, Comedy, and Embracing Uncomfortable Situations
- Episode Swap: Down To The Struts
- The Story She Needed as a Kid: Jennifer Dickinson on Writing a Young Girl Who Stutters
- Anjali Hid Her Covert Stutter for Years. Then Acceptance Became a Spiritual Practice.
- From Delhi to Data and Back to the Stutter That Shaped Him
- From The Vault: The Psychology Behind Our Responses To Stuttering
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