Thinking Blogger

Okay, so I have been paid the huge compliment of being listed for a Thinking Blogger award by Digger Jones, Desmond, Oblivion, Cat, Aphron and (quite a surprise here) Christian Husband.

I don't always participate in memes and tags, but I am really quite touched by this one. Partly due to the calibre of the people who named me and partly because of their descriptions of this blog: brtual honesty, integrity, struggle, poignant, real substance, will challenge you [pause for a moment of little tears in my eyes]... Although I sound like a real barrel of laughs, don't I?

Now, naming my five Thinking Bloggers is hard to do without just tagging those people right back again. Like FTN, perhaps I should nominate a few bloggers who my readers may be less familar with and might enjoy.

Mu Ling's The Pavilion: Mu Ling tends to highlight the ways in which we can craft complicated solutions to personal problems - rather than advocating the one approach that will fit all problems, she accepts that we can take bits of solutions, even clearly temporary solutions, and sort of paste them together to construct a viable life. Also, I love her beautiful, rather spare writing style. I wish I wrote like her.

LePhare's Lighthouse: LePhare cares for his wife, who is largely bed-bound with Multiple Sclerosis. There is something so moving about the limitations and endless responsibilities he has taken on out of love for his wife. I kind of accept that my own partner's health difficulties may one day take a huge turn for the worse and put me in a similar position. When I read him, I don't know, I feel like I could stand it if I had to.

Tertia's So Close: I woke up one day in 2005 to the fact that two people I had not previously connected were actually the same person. I had previously heard that there was a woman who had endured multiple miscarriages, then achieved a pregnancy with so many fetuses she had to reduce some to give the others a chance to live. She was left with twin boys, one of which died at 21 weeks gestation and the second of which died two weeks after the birth. I remember thinking that this was the worst fucking story I had ever heard. I had not realized that this was a blogger I had actually been reading for some time because she was so intelligent and insightful and funny. I cried buckets, reading back through her archives, and felt so grateful for my own Little Dude. Tertia is a tribute to the human capacity to survive tragedy and still flourish. She is now the proud mother of two year old twins and the author of a book on her experience of infertility. She also writes great posts about her husband, her job, her extended family and post-apartheid South Africa.

Kateri's Wet Feet: Kateri is the mother of two little girls and has a much more "granola" approach to mothering that I do. She is also the mother of another little girl she gave up for adoption. She writes very passionately about Attachment Parenting, adoption and other issues and has made me think very hard about issues of fertility and donation and the other side of the happy stories about infertile couples who are able to adopt.

Ali- Nietzsche's Girl: Ali's life is a lot like mine used to be when I was still at university. She is still wrestling with Kierkegaard and Derrida and, of course, Neitzsche, and I enjoy a little vicarious contact with the world of university, philosophy and radical causes that was such a huge part of my life at one time, but which I seem to have left largely behind. I am really wondering where Ali will end up in five years time. I hope she is still blogging then.