Three Writers Series – Inspiration and Gratitude

One of the best things about blogging is the incredibly diverse array of talented writers I have had the good fortune to read. I had no idea there was such insight, humor, and wisdom so readily available before I began blogging earlier this year. The community of bloggers I have found to be generous and inspiring.

I occasionally write posts about bloggers whom I enjoy reading. This is one of those posts. I hope you will visit their sites to see if you enjoy reading their offerings too!

OK, so this is actually my dog Benji, not Doodlepip, but Benji is Doodlepip’s doppelganger.

Rory writes a blog called A Guy Called Bloke and K9 Doodlepip. In his blog, Rory writes about his adventures, of which he has had quite a few. He also writes some posts from the point of view of his dog Scrappy Doodlepip. I actually cheated in the picture above. This is a picture of my dog Benji, not Rory’s dog Doodlepip. I think the two dogs look like twins. Rory says he agrees, but he may just be humoring me.

Rory, who is British, is a very talented writer. When he tells a story, you feel as though you are right there experiencing the action with him. Rory’s biggest talent, however, may be in gathering a community of people around him. He likes to get everyone involved!

Rory has invented a series of blogging games and challenges he invites his blogging friends to participate in. I have written several posts in response to Rory’s 3.2.1 Quote Challenge. You can read two of them here and here. I am looking forward to his new Guess the Blogger game. Never a dull moment!

One of the aspects of blogging I did not anticipate was just how much interacting with my fellow bloggers would matter. This has been the most pleasant surprise of my short blogging career. I had no idea I would make friends with people from all over the world. Rory has been instrumental in helping me with this. His generosity and ability to bring people together, to get the diverse blogging community to work on one project, game or challenge, has been amazing for me to watch. For these reasons, Rory is truly an inspiration to me.

Anita Bowden, who writes at One Light. One Source is an intelligent, warm, inspirational writer who writes about a varied array of topics.

Two of my favorite posts from Anita include You Are the Result of the Love of Thousands, and Reflections on Mothers and Mother’s Day.

In the former, Anita writes about completing a mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) test. A mtDNA test follows your female ancestry back thousands of years. It tells you which branch of the human family tree your maternal ancestors belong to (in Anita’s case Haplogroup T2). Everyone in the same haplogroup shares the same female ancestor. To a science nerd like me, this is fascinating stuff. Even more fascinating is how Anita makes this story relevant for today. Here is a quote from the article: “We exist in this particular period in time because of the love of thousands who preceded us.”

In the latter post, Anita pays tribute to her (late) mother and writes honestly and poignantly about how her feelings about Mother’s Day changed over the years. She includes a quote that many women of a certain age can identify with “As I grow older, I am seeing more and more of my mother in me. Physically, I can look at my hands, for example, and I see an exact replica of my mother’s hands at a similar age!” Anita writes about deeply missing her mother, which caused a lump in my throat and made my eyes water. I identify so strongly with that sentiment. Anita is truly a one-of-a-kind writer.

The Magpie at Midnight is a unique and eclectic site. The talented young woman who runs this blog is an artist in every sense of the word. In addition to writing articles on infertility that are so powerful and raw they bring tears to your eyes, and others about her lovely English garden, she also posts pictures of the beautiful pieces of art she creates.

She has a running series on her blog called Objects With Meaning, where she writes about, well, objects with a special meaning to her, such as the wire and wire strippers given to her by her dad, who was helping her with a project, or a hand-bound leather notebook, never written in, that she bought while on vacation (or holiday, as she puts it) in Australia. I have written some guest posts for this series. You can read them here and here (the latter is one of my very favorite posts).

She also discusses some of the art she is working on, and it is fantastic.  I love having a private audience to the inner workings of an artist’s creative process.

My favorite series on her blog, however, is her “Reasons to be Grateful” series. In a recent post, she writes about being grateful for a sudden rainstorm, which hit London in the middle of a very hot summer. She makes standing out in the rain sound delightful and inviting. “Then the weather broke. I could see the clouds gathering outside, and then the rumble of nearby thunder, a flash that could be lightning. I took myself out into the garden and waited for the rain to fall. And it did. Lightly at first, then big fat, delicious water droplets that soaked into my T-shirt and covered the ground.”

These are the three writers I am excited to recommend to you this month. I hope you enjoy checking them out.

I am linking with My Little Tablespoon and Laughing My Abs Off for their Fab Finds Friday.