The Irony of Speech Therapy: Rediscovering Humanity in Communication

In a quiet space, I help others rediscover what communication truly means, not just the words, but the connection beneath them.

By me, Meghan Gallardo

I have no idea who reads this stuff, but the urge to write and share a little about what’s led me off the beaten path as a communication specialist, someone who now has earned the right to say I’ve had a long career in speech-language pathology, has become an incessant beating drum. It’s been getting louder and more urgent over the last few weeks. Like a little gnat that won’t go away. For me, that’s how inspiration of all sorts arrives. Like a little mosquito in the ear that only retreats by my acknowledging it either by name or by squashing.

And so, on a Sunday, it feels right to finally put thoughts to words. Not because I’m particularly religious, I was for many years, but I can say with peace that I’m really not, but because Sunday still feels sacred somehow. A cultural shadow of an agreed-upon day of quiet. One day, when things are allowed to settle and others if listened to are revealed.

And I believe strongly that communication, after all, is sacred.

Whether that be between communities, people, animals, plants, or the self communicating with the self, all of it is communication. All are relationships. Life speaking to itself. What is more sacred than that?

The Visceral Turning Point

I think it started a few years ago, maybe post-COVID. The ASHA magazine would show up in my mailbox, and I couldn’t even look at it. My stomach would turn with it in my hand, and I couldn’t even open it to peek inside. This became a strange little routine that even I realized was an oddly strong reaction to something as inert as a paper magazine. I’d toss it every time right in the recycling bin and wouldn’t even bring it inside, like my body already knew something I didn’t have the words for yet. I would joke with my mother that I was becoming allergic to it.

There was something about the glossy perfection, the graphs, the data, the ads, and the bullet-point progress monitoring of what has always been soul work that I just couldn’t stomach anymore. Of course, there is the fee for this magazine subscription, which is the only tangible reminder of our annual dues that I’m sure didn’t help at all, either.

The over-measuring and pathologizing of something so innate to the human experience, this thing called communication, had reached a point where it was unrecognizable to me. I hadn’t found the words then, but I knew deep down that it had become at odds with what it means to be human.

Whenever I tried to voice this to colleagues, I was met with confusion, awkward silence, and polite nodding. The kind of silence that says, we don’t talk about that here, because lingering under the service was the upending thought of “if we don’t have this structure, then what do we have?”

I was asking big questions, maybe even strange ones, and I didn’t yet have the scaffolding to back them up. But I could feel it. The field had changed drastically since I was in college in the early 2000s. The connection between humans, the why of our work, was being replaced with data compliance and funding charts.

And my brain, my body, my intuition couldn’t tolerate it anymore.

Maybe I’m in the Right Field After All

And yet, maybe I did end up exactly where I was meant to be.

I’ve found a few others who feel it too, mostly older SLPs who have quietly retired or stepped away. The younger ones, the bright, open-hearted, intuitive ones, I see them burning out fast. Their humanity and compassion are what’re pushing them away, even if they don’t recognize it.

Believe me, I’ve mentored quite a few since starting my website and social media presence. Young adults from all over the country, even internationally, message me asking what it’s really like. And I give it to them straight because this field is an investment in time, money, and soul.

We need people who understand communication, not just the academic side, but the sacred side, the ones whose innate drive to help and connect is what led them here in the first place. But that same desire to help often reveals the painful truth: the structure of the field sometimes prevents the very thing it was designed to do.

So no, I don’t resonate with a lot of fellow SLPs right now.
That’s okay.

The people I do connect with deeply are families and my clients.
And for them, and for myself, I write.

The Irony of a Communication Specialist

You might think someone who teaches communication must love talking.
Nope. I want to share that I specifically dislike talking in my field. What is worse than the fear of having a group criticize the way you speak? Fearing a group of speech-language pathologists analyzing everything in very precise detail. Hey, we can’t help it and have been trained to do that. To listen for when someone does something….off.

With almost comical levels of irony for even contemplating going into this field, I’m an introvert through and through. I love deep, purposeful conversations, but I need oceans of alone time to recalibrate. It hasn’t always been that way. As a little girl, I was actually overly talkative, all passion, curiosity, and wild energy. Climbing literal walls with energy. I still have flashes of that when I’m excited or inspired. But I don’t seek the spotlight in a polished public speaking way. I think I’m similarly allergic to it. :)

I seek connection.

I seek meaning.

And I seek to leave breadcrumbs for others, people like me, who are trying to find their way through confusion toward authenticity.

That means facing my own fears.
Being seen. Being judged. Being judged by my professional peers.

So I started posting TikToks. Which, if you know me, is both hilarious and horrifying. Before this, I had zero social media because I opposed its entire purpose on many fronts. I still don’t actually consume much of it purposefully. Except for Reddit forums about philosophy and writing, places where creatives live and commune anonymously, which are my guilty indulgence.

But I tell my clients all the time: Find your fear, face it with the fear, and dismantle it one step at a time.
And I had to walk that same path myself about speaking publicly.

It’s been oddly healing, but it took time. Just like taking pictures for this website, something that was so uncomfortable at first. But I did it, and now my photos live on the internet.

As a woman, I’ve been judged for my looks since I was a child, having red hair probably enhanced this, and I know that weird tug-of-war between wanting to be seen and even desired while also wanting to disappear and hide.

The Spiritual Thread

I’ve always been a spiritual seeker.

I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church, and honestly, I’m grateful for the memorization, the structure, the King James version Bible literacy. But even as a girl, I found peace more easily sitting quietly on a hill in the woods than in a pew.

I remember contemplating Thomas Merton and, on a hill, sitting in stillness at Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky. As a teenager, my peers might have been sneaking to drive to friends’ houses, and I was sneaking to drive to a monastery. I remember begging for two weeks of solitude in the woods, wanting to be like Thoreau or Emerson, pondering life, meaning, and God.

But life got busy. I married before I was twenty, and suddenly I was on the hamster wheel most of us end up on: bills, later children, expectations, motion. And mainly living from one reaction to another.

And yet all of that, every cycle of building, breaking, and rebuilding, led me to question things I once accepted. And when you start questioning in one area of life, it bleeds into others.

That’s when the real shift began professionally.

My Greatest Teachers Have Never Spoken

From the very beginning, I was drawn to those who can’t speak.
In my own family and later in hospitals, I stood beside families in ICUs, explaining what to expect after strokes, traumatic injuries, and human moments that cracked me open. I was so young, telling people older than me about grief, loss, and adaptation. It forced me to grow up fast, and it humbled me in our common experience.

Over the years, in schools, I worked with countless children who didn’t use verbal language. Strong, bright, sensitive souls who showed me that verbal speech was only one doorway.

I used to be the “good SLP,” the one who followed the evidence, took data, and hit goals. Actually, I really liked the predictability of data and measurement, assessment, and the safe limits of structure. But the longer I lived and the longer I worked, the more I felt that something was off.

My students were stressed. I could see it.
Their nervous systems were overloaded.
The therapy, the rigor, the pressure, and the protocols sometimes caused more harm than good.

There was no way for me to reframe watching a nonverbal child scream and sob, lying at the bottom of a classroom door, looking for their mother through the cracks for days and days and even weeks after school drop-offs, until he just gave up and numbly complied. None of us was a bad educator. In contrast, the children received so much love and understanding, but the way our societal systems are designed often requires square pegs to fit into round holes.

I knew from Maslow: no one learns under stress.
I knew from my own PTSD: no one learns when their body feels unsafe and is flooded with cortisol.
And yet, so many therapy approaches still push through those states as an accidental byproduct.

So I stopped.

I started meeting kids where they were. Silently sitting beside the boy by the classroom door. My twenty-minute session was not always measurable, but it became magical.
Connecting first. Co-regulating.
Finding calm before words.

And then, something extraordinary happened.

They began to communicate and connect without words.
Through looks, movements, energy, and joy.

And that’s when I realized: verbal language is not the pinnacle of communication. It’s just one option in a vast, divine spectrum.

That realization changed everything. And often, words would follow, but by that point, I realized words are a poor substitute for the myriad of connections that can be had without them.

Where This Path Leads

So I created this, this practice, this space, this evolving experiment as a home for those who are okay living at the changing and leading edge of what it means to communicate and to be human as the base.

I don’t know where it will lead me.
And honestly? That’s fine.

If it puts me on ASHA’s naughty list, so be it. I’ve lived in fear of that for too long.
If it means someday I have to step outside the formal field and let go of those important little letters I sign M.S. CCC-SLP and just be Meghan, that’s okay too. I have never cared much about titles or even my own name, for that matter. I’ve been “speech lady,” “that lady,” and just “her” a long time.

Intention has always outweighed identity in my experience.

Because when you hold a truth this deep inside, you can’t look away from it just to stay comfortable.

Licensure, titles, credentials, they’re temporary.
But the lived experience? The years of witnessing people find themselves, even without words, that can’t be taken from me.

So for now, I humbly guide the clients who come my way. I remind them, and myself, that we’re both human. I’m not a guru, not an expert hovering above, just someone a few steps ahead on a similar journey.

I have no judgment about who stays or goes.
But I will say this:
It’s working.

More than I ever could’ve dreamed.
The irony of my field is that I’ve never been more in love with communication than I am now, right here, comfortably smack dab in the gray.

-Meghan

Author’s Note:

If any part of this stirred something in you, a quiet yes, a curiosity, or even a discomfort, you’re not alone!
Many of us in helping professions, education, or simply life itself are starting to see the cracks in systems that once felt solid. We’re noticing the same unease I felt tossing that ASHA magazine into the bin, that sense that something so deeply human shouldn’t be reduced to data points.

If that’s you, I’d love to connect.
Not in a performative, networking way, but just as two humans having a real conversation.

I adore virtual coffee chats, truly. Sometimes the most meaningful insights begin over a cup of coffee and a bit of curiosity. You can reach me directly at meghan@harmonyspeechtherapysolutions.com or through the contact page on my site.

Tell me where you’re at in your journey.
Tell me what’s resonating, what’s confusing, or what you’re questioning.
You don’t have to have it figured out; none of us do. I often say when I finally do, I’ll just ‘poof’ and be no more.

Here, you’re seen. You’re not too much or too idealistic. You’re simply waking up, and that’s a beautiful place to begin.