Hi lynnhill, welcome to Psych Central!

From the time you became a member here, you've been able to reply to most posts directly. Your first few replies didn't appear on the boards until a moderator or administrator had had a chance to read and approve them. Now that you have five approved posts, though, everything else you post should show up immediately.

I notice that you've already replied to a few posts, so perhaps you've already answered that part for yourself. If you click on your username at the left one of your posts (the one above, for instance), you'll get a pulldown menu that includes the link:

Find More Posts by lynnhill

After you had a few approved posts (I think the current threshold is 2), you'd also have been able to send Private Messages (PMs) to other members.

You should've been able all along to click the "Thanks" button on posts to tell the author, "Thank you for posting this."

Some members indicate (on their profiles) that they accept email messages. In that case, the system provides a link for sending them an email. If you email someone by this method, the system will tell them your email address but won't automatically tell you theirs. If they reply to your email, of course, their return address will be on the reply.