Here’s what I’ve learned from recovery.
The first time I quit alcohol, I was eight years old. My parents were active alcoholics who threw frequent parties where everyone got really loud, smoked up a storm, and seemed to be having a lot of fun. …
How and when to use the three dots.
There are a dozen different ways to use ellipses (singular ellipsis) in your writing. Today, we’re going to look at three major ones.
1: Use an ellipsis to show a pause in dialogue
A pause in dialogue is one of the most powerful punctuation choices you can make in a paragraph. …
A cat teaches me life’s most important lesson.
Brindi sits on my stomach. She can’t purr anymore, she doesn’t have the energy for it. But she still enjoys being petted gently, long strokes. I can rub softly around her jaw, but not too hard. She is dying.
This great love of my life has been in kidney failure…
Trauma, Mental Health
What these really look like, and how to get help when you’re overwhelmed.
You’ve probably heard of the three classic trauma/fear responses: fight, flight, and freeze. Another response has been delineated recently: appease. We’ll look at that one in a minute.
These responses are triggered by a cascade of hormones in our brains when we are put in potentially dangerous situations. This flash…
Repeated trauma causes permanent changes in brain processing centers.
[Disclaimer: The author is not a mental health professional. Article contents are for information purposes only and are not meant to diagnose or treat. See your doctor if you think you need help.]
A friend recently told a story about being worried about her taxi driver and the effort she…
The Most Common Grammatical Errors
Em dashes are a source of frustration for many people. Part of the problem lies in trying to differentiate between em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens. This article will give you a quick outline of the differences as well as some rules of thumb for remembering when em dashes should…
Why some of your favorite writers are shifting gears.
Tim Denning is doing it. So are Shaunta Grimes, Ayodeji Awosika, Nathaniel O Calloway, and others. Amardeep Parmar recently posted a story that was really a short book — an amazing twenty-six-minute read. Writers who have built their careers writing relatively short articles (three to five minutes read time) are…
So, will you be my friends?
It’s my own fault really. Everyone said, “Build your platform. Sign up for all of these sites. Write, respond, follow back. Numbers are crucial!”
So, I did all of those things. On Twitter (sorry, Facebook, but I hate you), on Instagram, on Pinterest, on LinkedIn. Then, Reddit, Quora, and Medium…
Misunderstandings and misleadings on the road to eating plants.
I read an ad the other day that listed the ingredients in a product. It mentioned that the product was vegan. The product was soap.
Soap? Who eats soap?
This is just an example of some common misunderstandings surrounding veganism.
What is veganism?
Veganism is a diet that excludes meat, dairy, and eggs…
Here’s how to tell the difference between three very different words.
Admit it: Sometimes you’re confused by the proper usage of words that sound the same but mean different things. Don’t feel bad, lots of people have trouble with these words. The term for such words is homophones. Don’t worry about remembering the term, just remember which word is which.
Let’s…
DRM
Writer/editor in science, society, environment, and mental health. Also personal essays. And some random weirdness. https://debram315.medium.com/subscribe
