Tell us your story…
There is nothing quite as powerful as a personal story to help put coercion and coercive control into context.There is nothing quite as powerful as a personal story to help put coercion and coercive control into context. Personal storytelling helps to humanize the issue and supports people to understand how and why it impacts lives, as well as helping people to recognize it in action.
Whether you want to tell your own story of being manipulated, or you have watched someone you know or love being manipulated, we’d love to receive and share your stories with our readers. Stories can be anonymized (as long as we can verify a legitimate source) and will be handled with the utmost delicacy. You can either provide a story you have written, or talk to us about your story before you write it. Either way, we ask that submissions are:
- 100% original. While you can express opinions and use memories, it is essential that the story really happened to ensure that it is useful to our readers.
- tell a story. You don’t have to be a best-selling author, but we do ask that you try to tell a story rather than just listing the facts and that you try to ensure it is well-written where possible. We appreciate not everyone is a natural writer, but the more you can do, the less time our team has to spend reworking any content.
- anonymized, or you have permission to share. If it is your own story and you are happy for us to use your real name, that’s great. However if you want to remain anonymous to our readers, that’s OK too. We only ask that if you write someone else’s story, you either have their permission to use it, or you write it from your perspective and anonymize any named individuals.
- truthful. There’s enough fake news around – in fact that’s one of the forms of coercion we’re trying to tackle – so please make sure your content tells the truth. You can express an opinion, but please don’t present it as fact.
How to submit
Please email us with your completed story in an editable format (for example Microsoft word) and not a PDF. If you would like to keep the story anonymous or you wish to use a pen name, please tell us clearly in your email.
If you would like to include any images for us to use, that is great, but please ensure that you have permission to use them and let us know any credits that we must include.
If you would like to include an ‘author bio’ then please send us 100 words about yourself, with an image and a link to your website if you have one. This is optional and only needs to be supplied if you want to.
A few caveats
- Editors reserve the right to reject contributions at their discretion.
- Editors reserve the right to edit, adapt, update, and republish contributions at their discretion.
- In rare cases, contributed posts may be removed from the blog.
Thank you for your interest in contributing to the Open Minds blog. We look forward to receiving your work.
