Badass mama jama, storyteller, mental health advocate, and more
Hi, My name is Aimée Gramblin. I’m a veteran wife (18 years and counting), badass mama jama of two kids (a teen and a tween), a writer, a nature enthusiast, and a curious soul. I’m a first generation Oklahoman, in the United States. I’ve almost moved out of state three times, but got cold feet each time. We almost moved to Atlanta, Georgia; Memphis, Tennessee, and Swansea, Wales — all for school related opportunities. We ended up moving from Norman, Oklahoma to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where we’ve lived for almost fifteen years now. It’s green, slightly hilly, a bit more progressive than the rest of the state, and the Arkansas River runs right through the middle of it. We are on a migratory path for birds and butterflies. …
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An Interview on the Idea and Inspiration for Bringing School…
A cheat-cheat for best practices
Do you feel like you just walked into a middle school cafeteria and you’re wondering how to find your seat with some friends who can tell you what school (Medium) is like? What’s okay to do and what might put you on the faux pas list?
Don’t worry about being a nerd. We’re all nerds around here. Medium is the place to nerd out to your heart’s content. Melanie J. recently asked for some help with understanding the etiquette on the platform. I’m giving it my best try.
Medium is a social media platform in which writers can write almost anything they wish and readers read. Often writers are also readers, though readers aren’t always writers. There is an emphasis on the platform being relational. To grow your account, you will want to interact. …
Coming of age in the 1990s
A tableau: my signature scent
Vixen perfume from Hot Topic.
I sported dark red lipstick
dyed auburn hair or a bald head
depending on the year.
I wore disco thrift store dresses
fish net stockings and
a yellow sunflower barrette.
I’ve looked for that Vixen perfume
now that I’m all grown up
but couldn’t find it.
Something about the chemicals,
made my skin pheromone magic.
My friends and I would go to
Salvation Army to create outfits.
Thrift store fashion was in style.
Grunge: flannel and ripped jeans.
At the mall, we went to Sbarro Pizza
the arcade, the CD store.
We went with friends, alone
no cell phones. We ate pizza
played ski ball and Ms. …
January 16, 2021, Newsletter Volume #3
Greetings, Readers and Writers,
Someone recently asked me (Aimée) for references on writing poetry. First of all, poetry is very subjective. My Bachelor’s and Master’s degree is each in English with a Creatives Studies emphasis in writing poetry, so I have quite a bit of training on the form. Honestly though, it has been almost fifteen years since I graduated from school and a lot of what I’ve learned I don’t remember in a concrete way. I write both from what I’ve internalized through education and from my own intuition. …
And, January is National Soup Month
Greetings Foodies Who Don’t Like to Cook, but Do Love to Eat,
Welcome to the Ides of January. I’m going to be honest with you — I haven’t felt very inspired about cooking lately. Maybe it’s the Winter Doldrums setting in. I’m not really sure. David made a fabulous Coq Au Vin recipe a few days ago. My eating game is still on, thankfully. I stumbled on a couple interesting food facts in the past couple of weeks.
- You can make chocolate cake with mayo and it tastes pretty darn good, according to word of mouth.
- January is National Soup…
On the 2020 Hiraeth writing challenge
Melissa Bee led me to a writing challenge hosted by Literary Impulse in 2020. When the seven prompt winners were announced, I was surprised and grateful to see my name listed alongside Gayle Kurtzer-Meyers, Paroma Sen, Kim McKinney, Radha Kapadia, RH, and Sanka Rathnabarana for our efforts in writing poetry and creative nonfiction.
This challenge granted me the opportunity to read exquisite writing from the submissions to this final round that was chosen. I didn’t realize there would be the next step. …
Don’t be fooled by the Executive Imposter scam
We think it could never happen to us. We’re not that dumb, naive, old, or gullible. I’ve gotten plenty of emails about Nigerian Princes, links that I obviously shouldn’t click on, and countless other obvious scams I didn’t fall for. Yet, I got suckered at 40 years old, when I thought I’d avoided it all and knew better. I’m not the only one. The scam that I fell for involved iTunes gift cards.
“While the specific amount lost to gift card scams can be small ($5, $10, $20) or large (in the thousands), the total yearly amount reported for 2018 (January to September) was $53 million when all reported loss was combined.” …
Know your power
Consider this scenario: you write a story about something mental health-related and don’t include a trigger warning at the beginning. Later, you discover one of your readers fell into a deep bout of depression after reading it. As the writer, what kind of responsibility for the situation would you feel?
I’ve noticed a recurring pattern from several new writers over at my publication, Age of Empathy. They are still learning how to write publicly and aren’t aware of the implications.
After discussing some of these concerns with my co-editors, Shanna Loga and Bingz Huang, Bingz recommended I craft an article addressing the awareness of your power as a writer. She told me that she hadn’t really thought about these concerns and suggested many new writers are getting comfortable with their voice and writing publicly — not yet thinking in this much detail about the writer’s responsibility. …
