Those Writing Class Trigger Warnings

What are they good for?

Alison Acheson
The Unschool for Writers
7 min readOct 2, 2024

--

Cyclist freestyling on an outdoor handrail set aflame
photo: Alexander Popov for Unsplash

This, above, is the photo I was looking for when I typed “extreme life” into Unsplash. It was the twelfth possibility in the line up of photographs.

But in first place, upper left-hand corner, was this:

a meal of soup with a crab shell in it and chopsticks
photo: Vernon Raineil Cenzon for Unsplash

Food won top spot. And if you have a deathly shellfish allergy, okay. But I wonder why.

I could say, “Don’t order the crab!” But I might be missing something. A story could tell me what I am missing. Life is filled with the subtle, and sometimes we do have crabs thrown at us.

Some stories need to be written. Some stories are pain-filled to write. And to read.

Trigger Warning

The following article is going to involve flames. Later. I’ll let you know.

In less than a decade I’ve been through more than I could have imagined: caregiving a spouse diagnosed with ALS, losing him, losing my father to the same disease 18 months later (what are the odds?), moving homes, guiding three sons through what it means to lose a parent, risking a new relationship, and more — too much for here.

--

--

Alison Acheson
The Unschool for Writers

Dance Me to the End: Ten Months and Ten Days With ALS--caregiving memoir. My pubs here: LIVES WELL LIVED, UNSCHOOL FOR WRITERS, and editor for WRITE & REVIEW.