Toot Toot!

I signed up to become a Top Mommy Blog. TMB is an I scratch your back/you scratch mine blog service. When people visit their site from my click-able banner (look to the right), I get votes which bump me up their ratings list, giving me more visitors from their site. And round and round we go. No money changes hands, and literary/isolated/bleary eyed moms everywhere find writers on pregnancy/special needs/adoption/single parenting/postpartum depression/homeschooling Who Get It. Because sometimes all you need is another person who can put your stress in words. Preferably humourous ones.

After just over a week of my readers clicking, I've jumped to #115th of all the mommy blogs on the site and Number 3 out of 37 blogs in the special needs category. I never won popularity contests in high school (unless there's a prize for having your wardrobe called gay, maternity, and slutty all in one week.) So it's nice to have readers say "We like!"

Also nice: to have the writing community's vote of confidence. I just learned that the Health and Heart column I've written every second issue of Christian Week for 5 years won a second place at the Canadian Church Press awards. Here's what the judges said:

The writer chooses to take on some brutally personal stories, including the cancer journey of the Wiebe family, and her own daughter’s struggles with anxiety. What comes through in everything she writes isn’t a storyline of despair. Rather, she manages to exhibit the hope, to find the positive, to give readers something to hold on to as they come along on a unpredictable, all too human ride. It’s editorial writing that matters, and it’s done with care and grace that never intrudes, always seems to educate and enlighten.

So excuse me for a moment while a toot my own horn. And thank you for your votes!