Almost a month ago now, one of my kind and gentle readers gifted me with the Very Inspiring Blogger Award. Life got in the way, and I am only now getting around to my formal acceptance and thank you to Naomi Wittlin, herself a very inspiring blogger. She has a big, wide open heart full of kindness, and an eye for beauty, a capacity for joy and love, and a desire to share it. She is exactly that–inspiring. I feel so grateful, so lucky to have her as one of my readers, and to have been one of the 15 bloggers she chose to put on her list.

The rules: 

1. Display the award logo on your blog.
2. Link back to the person who nominated you.
3. State 7 things about yourself.
4. Nominate 15 other bloggers for this award and link to them.
5. Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements.

i’m still standing

Seven Things about Me:

1. I am a highly sensitive person, an introvert, an INFJ personality type, a Four on the Enneagram, and a Scorpio. In other words, I’m a passionate mess.
2. I am an open-hearted warrior practitioner of love, hiking/walking, reading, writing, yoga, meditation, and dog.
3. I grew up in the Willamette Valley of Oregon in a little town named Sublimity. I am a small town girl from the Pacific Northwest, and that will never change.
4. My favorite place in the whole world is on the beach in Waldport, Oregon during the summer–walking and walking, looking for shells and agates, gazing at the sky and listening to the waves.
5. Two of my favorite movies are Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Groundhog Day–I value beauty and humor.
6. My favorite author is Margaret Atwood and my favorite poet is Mary Oliver, but as a bibliophile, I have too many favorite books to even attempt a list.
7. When I first started, and for years after, I hated teaching, but now I secretly love it.

I am a total sucker for this sort of gratitude practice, kindness chain, love meme. I adore getting the opportunity to answer the prompts, to have been inspiring to someone and to share who inspires me. However, I realize that many of the bloggers on my list won’t have time or the interest for continuing this meme, for completing the required tasks and passing it along to 15 more bloggers, but again–that’s not really the point. I am simply so grateful to Naomi for nominating me, am so happy to be on her list of 15, and for the chance to once again tell you about these other inspiring, amazing women, to connect you to their work. I suspect if you’ve been reading my blog for very long, you won’t be surprised at all by who I’ve selected.

Inspirational Bloggers getting this award:

1. Erica Staab, “Seeing beauty in all things, living life as a prayer, creating a meaningful life.”
2. Christa Gallopoulos of Carry It Forward, “finding your way back to you.”
3. Julia Fehrenbacher of Painted Path. I’ve written before about how much I love Julia and her work.
4. Judy Clement Wall of both A Human Thing and Zebra Sounds.
5. Andrea Scher of Superhero Journal. I have written before about how much I adore her.
6. Christina Rosalie, “perpetually exploring what it means to live intentionally.”
7. Sas Patherick of Sas’ Magical Mystery Tour, “Like you, I am love, light, life.”
8. Amanda Blake Soule of SouleMama, “mama, writer, crafter.”
9. Courtney Carver of Be More With Less, “a blog about simplifying your life and really living.”
10. Sandi Amorim of Deva Coaching, “An instigator. The spark to your flame. Ruthlessly compassionate. I’ll do whatever it takes to have you shine.”
11. Susan Tierney Cockburn of My Mother’s Apron Strings. Warning: this blog will make you hungry, your eyes and your stomach.
12. Justine Musk, “Because you’re a creative badass.”
13. Jennifer Louden, “Savor & Serve the World.”
14. Susan Piver, “interested in extreme self-knowledge, the Buddhadharma, relationships of all kinds, creativity, the Enneagram, and using every single day to become a more truthful version of who I already am.”
15. Susannah Conway, “I try to be as honest as I can, revealing the light and dark of my life in the hope that it will inspire others to do the same. It’s by sharing our stories that we feel less alone.” I have also written before about how much I love Susannah and her work.

I’m a little sad, because as I put together this list, I thought of at least 10 more amazing, inspiring bloggers I could add to the list–so much good stuff, but a limited amount of space and time.