Thinking Blogger Award - I

Two Three weeks ago my lovely friend Corey, founder of the great site Bilingual/Bicultural Family Network and who blogs at An American Between Words, nominated/tagged me for a Thinking Blogger Award. I was absolutely elated since I saw this award/meme going around and I felt that I wasn't "thoughtful" enough to deserve it :) Oh, and I also happened to see it during that time when I was feeling down about blogging, etc, so it was excellent timing!

Corey wrote some delightful words about me:

Lilian is always full of insights and inspiration. She is a literature major from head to toe and you can tell. She doesn't let life go uncontemplated and delights us with her ability to look at it from yet a new perspective and to speak her mind!

Thank you!

These are the directions:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ badge* with a link to the post that you wrote.
* the "original site" has a link to a silver badge if you don't like the golden one or it doesn't fit your blog.

So now I nominate/tag 5 other bloggers:

Dawn at This Woman's Work
Dawn's blog is one of the first blogs I ever read, back in the late summer of 2004. As I've written here before, I have learned a great deal from her. She's always extremely honest and courageous in sharing her life and feelings with her readers and while she does not shy away from discussing extremely tough issues, she does so with such a clarity and thoughtfulness that enable very enriching discussions. She always makes me think. Deeply. And besides, reading her blog made me find the next two bloggers in this list, and many more!

Kateri at Wet Feet
I started reading Kateri's blog after Dawn mentioned an unfortunate argument in the "infertile women's" (large) slice of blogosphere. After I read Kateri's post, I did what I generally do (as a good scholar), I went to her archives to find our her reasons for being so critical of a particular situation. Wow! What I read there was raw and well written and just broke my heart. I learned so much from her (and from the many blogs I started to read after I found hers, such as Manuela's [Thin Pink Line] and others) that I can firmly say that the fact that she shared her experience as a birthmother changed my perspective on many many things, particularly adoption. Later I was able to meet her in person, which was a great treat! Her writing still makes me think and I particularly love her style -- she doesn't use many words sometimes, but they convey so much depth and feeling, it's just amazing.

chicago mama
The moment I found her blog (after Dawn posted a lullaby for her) I was immediately captivated by her amazing pregnancy story (her URL refers to it too: incarcerated uterus) and all her (almost ferocious) snark! In addition to a new baby, she was also adopting a lovely girl from China. Chicago Mama is always very bold in sharing her thoughts with everyone and her writing definitely makes me think (that short post about honesty, Cmama, and the comments people posted, had me thinking for days! To be perfectly honest, I'm still thinking about it!).

Jo at Leery Polyp
Jo's another mother I "met" (both online and in person) because of Kateri and, consequently [actually it would be causality here, not consequence, but I don't know what word to use, by proxy?] Dawn. She's extremely articulate and just incredibly funny. Her posts leading to and then following her daughter's Sophia's birth were just amazing and made me think hard about the birth experience. Oh, and her posts about plastic and other toxic things around the home!! Basically scholarly writing! It's just such a pleasure to know her in person, and I'm even happier that she's recently decided she's going to continue blogging -- so hopefully she'll respond to the meme! ;)

C. Delia Scarpitti at Left-Handed Trees: Writing From the Roots
I started reading Delia's wonderfully poetic and profound blog after we missed being introduced to each other as bloggers at the first and only Mother Talk Salon that I attended. I can't wait to see her in person again sometime since her writing is just so amazing and thoughtful! (thoughtful is actually a shallow word to describe her writings... that's for sure! I just don't have enough words to do it).

So there you go! Now for the second round, since I was nominated twice and I'm thrilled to share the love, or would it be the thoughtfulness?, with five more people!