Changing the Narrative: Tess Little Has Big Dreams

At six years old, Martha “Tess” Little developed a stutter, something that inadvertently changed the trajectory of her life by not only making her into a more caring and compassionate human, but by making her work that much harder to prove she can do whatever she sets her mind to.

Tess, who is now 18 years old and will be graduating from South Laurel High School this month, is the daughter of Holly Little, London City Council member, and Butch Little. She also has an older brother, Tucker Little, who attends college in South Carolina.

Tess is a member of Laurel County Youth Leadership, SLHS Future Problem Solvers, National Society of High School Scholars, National Honors Society and SkillsUSA Secretary. She is also involved in theatre and is the Creative Director for South Laurel’s theatre productions and serves as the goalie for the South Laurel soccer team, though she had an injury this past season that kept her out of playing.

At just 18 years old, Tess already has a book of poetry published and is in the editing stage of a novel she has been working on for four years now. She is also extremely artistic and enjoys creating sculptures and paintings. Last year, Tess attended the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts – Creative Writing and has placed in several art shows.

Tess has also volunteered and held many jobs within the city, including working for London Tourism, the White Lily and has sold handmade jewelry and artwork for many years.

After developing a stutter at the age of six, Tess admitted it took her a few years before she realized she had a stutter.

“For me, ignorance was bliss,” she said. “I didn’t know I had a stutter; I knew I had a speech impediment, but I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t hear it in my own voice.

For most of her life, Tess has used her writing and art to cope with her feelings about her stutter and to get out the things she can’t always find the words to say out loud.

“Ever since I was young, if something was bothering me, I would start drawing, even if it was just scribbles,” she said. “I have this painting that I’m very proud of and it’s just a mess of color, but I call it ‘my angry painting.’ I was really upset and just started throwing paint at this canvas, but I used it to work through my emotions and I feel like it was the first time I truly realized art is my life, it means everything to me. Art helps me heal and that painting symbolizes that for me.

“Writing has also been huge. When I have a lot of anxiety, I will go nonverbal and I can’t speak, so whether it’s just writing to tell my mom what’s going on or telling my friends I can’t do that right now, just being able to communicate the things I need to communicate and communicating the things I can’t say out loud through poetry or other writing.”

Tess said her parents have done everything they could to help her overcome her stutter, as Tess began speech therapy at six years old and continued going to speech therapy up until her sophomore year of high school, but her stutter just wasn’t going away.

“I thought this was something that was so incredibly wrong with me,” Tess said about her stutter. “I thought it had to be fixed or I was this broken human being that couldn’t do anything, but I have grown from that. My stutter is a part of me, and I have to love it to love myself, which is hard to do but I work towards it every day.”

Tess said her mindset about her stutter changed after learning that one of the prophets in the Bible was “slow of speech and of tongue,” which is interpreted by many scholars to mean a stutter.

“He was still called to do all these amazing things, so that was when I started to change my mindset that ‘if he can do all these amazing things, why can’t I?’” Tess said. “That’s when I started to look at my stutter in a different light, like I can use this to my advantage.”

Tess said that because of her speech impediment, she is often underestimated, and she loves to prove that she can do all those things people don’t think she can or should be doing as someone with a stutter.

“If it’s something that I feel I shouldn’t be doing, I am doing it, in terms of my speech impediment,” she said, citing theatre as one of those things people often don’t think she should be a part of with a stutter.

“I am very involved in theatre because, in theory, I shouldn’t be doing that. I like being on the stage, I like proving to people that I can do it. It feels good to be up there and whenever I don’t stutter, it’s very rewarding.”

And all that hard work Tess has put in to prove that she is more than her stutter has paid off, as she will be attending Savannah College of Art and Design in the fall, where she will be double majoring in film production and creative writing.

One of the first times that Tess said she saw someone with a stutter portrayed in books and film in a positive light was in Stephen King’s It, which was portrayed through the character Bill. That was when Tess began thinking seriously about becoming a writer and director.

“I feel like a lot of people think of Harry Potter and Professor Quirrell. ‘Poor stuttering Professor Quirrell,’ that’s something he literally says, or they think of The Waterboy with Adam Sandler, like someone who is ignorant. Whether people realize it or not, it makes a joke out of something that really impacts people.”

Tess hopes to make a positive impact on the world through her work someday and hopes to change the narrative surrounding people with differences, whether that be by portraying a character with a stutter to help people feel more understood or displaying southeastern Kentucky and the Appalachian region in a more positive light.

“I have never actually written a character who has a stutter because I feel like there is so much I want to say about it or show people about it, but I feel like I need to live a little bit more life before I do that,” Tess said. “But whenever I do, I want as many people to see it as possible so hopefully another child doesn’t have to go through some of the things I did, to create a more welcoming world for people who are different in any sort of way.”

Though Tess will be leaving her little hometown of London in the fall, she will always remember the support her community has given her through the years and the connections she has made as she works towards her dreams. And she hopes that her story can be inspirational to anyone who may feel different.

“You can do it—you need to believe that you can do that,” Tess said. “Maybe you shouldn’t do it, but you can, you have every ability to. Don’t let people or the media tell you you can’t.”