How we speak of our dead to ease the grieving process I’m thinking about death this morning. Or rather, I’m thinking about a convention we use to talk about someone who has died. After the person, or a beloved critter, dies we start referring to them in the past tense. More to the point, we…
Communicate with Kindness to Improve The World Kindness in language has been on my mind recently. Certain phrases and idiomatic expressions in languages are violent and horrifying. We communicate and use them and likely don’t give them a second thought. They are just things we say, but I have found them increasingly worrisome, especially in this…
In today’s Self-made Creative podcast episode, I talk about the dreaded pronoun and pronoun placeholders. Sometimes what’s inside our heads does not come across to the people listening to us. The pronoun often masks the meaning or deflects the meaning all together. I give some strategies on how to be more clear and how to…
Have you noticed how quickly people on the internet want to point out when you are wrong? I am amazed at some people’s need to point when you have made a mistake. If you use a word or phrase improperly, they are all over you like white on rice. And I’m not talking about the…
I’ve realized recently that everything I do involves storytelling. And I like it. I love spinning a tale and getting my audience excited to know what happens next. It is just as thrilling for me as it is for the sixth grader who can’t help but ask, “So, what happened next?” I try to do…