We’ve Been Liebstered!

“We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other’s opposite and complement.”
― Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

We’ve been Liebstered!

We recently received our first award here at Survivors Blog Here from Rob Goldstein. Rob’s blog,  Art by Rob Goldstein, is a collection of writing, poetry, art, and photographs that support his theme of living with dissociative identity disorder (DID) and the right to full access to health care for people with mental illnesses.  Rob’s many works give us a close-up view of the struggle with DID and the challenges of health care for chronic illness.  Rob’s talent and honest forthright approach humanizes this struggle by bringing it out into the light and showing us the face of a spirit that strives to live a normal and productive life, to gain acceptance by dispelling fear and judgement, and to educate us with a gentle touch and calm tone.  Thank you Rob! You are an inspiration and a true Liebster in the WordPress community.

The Liebster Award is given to bloggers by other bloggers. The award is a way of initiating a post that tells a bit about the blog owner by way of answering questions that serve to introduce more than the average About page. The award is then passed on to more bloggers. It’s a way of having fun and keeping the fun rolling with the snowball effect of a benevolent chain letter, or chain award.

There are a few rules for the award, just like any other award.

1. Post 11 random facts about yourself.

2. Answer the 11 questions asked of you by the person who nominated you.

3. Nominate 11 bloggers with less than 200 followers to do the same.

4. Let the bloggers know you have nominated them.

Eleven Random Facts:

1. Survivors Blog Here – Silent No More, is a collection of nine authors.

2. The founding members are Warrior of Looking for the Light and Army of Angels.

3. We found each other here on WordPress and formed a bond to tell our stories in a way that heals and gives hope and to advocate for the simple truth about all the better options humanity has other than abuse of one another.

4. We bring a variety of the arts through simple journals of our lives, story telling, music appreciation, art, photography, and poetry.

5. The arts we strive to bring to our readers are not the works of genius or skilled artisans or artists.  We speak from our hearts and experiences through our simple works in hopes of connecting with others to hear our message and to come to know their’s as well. Through those connections with our readers, we find hope – together.

6.  The arts and literature represent the greatest expression of the human soul and what differentiates us from other living creatures.  The muse of these expressions often find a genesis in darkness and our efforts are always to seek the light through hope, love, and kindness to others.  We often seek the same for ourselves.

7.  I, Randstein, am the only male member of the group and my job is to help with the mechanical task of getting under the blog’s hood and tinkering with things to try to get them to work.

8. While tinkering, I occasionally let all the smoke out of the various technical parts and get a bit smudged up with soot and electronic bits of bytes.  This allows the true talent to focus on bringing you their message while I scream for someone to lift the hood off of my noggin.

9. Each of the writers have a blog of their own readers can link out to from our many posts and follow an individual writer that they find most closely identifies with one’s interest.  Please do so. You won’t regret it.

10. You can find out more about each writer by following the links at the top of the home page.

11.  We are a new blog with big ideas to help you, our dear reader, find what you are looking for.  If what you were looking for found you at our little way station,  relax, enjoy your visit. Stay as long as you like and come back often. Oh! And feel free to leave comments. We like comments.

Eleven Questions:

The questions are more targeted to an individual than a group such as we are. But, I will offer some answers about myself and a bit of the other authors where possible.  This would be a very large post if we all answered up. 🙂

1. Have you found a theme to your blog? Is there a topic that you return to almost subconsciously?  Yes, our theme is Educate, Enlighten, Entertain and Inform. The topic is often coping with and surviving the trauma of abuse, illness, and our pledge to be silent no more, to speak out through the lens of our collective experiences.

2. What is the one thing you’ve learned about yourself as a blogger?  Generally, we write first for ourselves, to express our experiences in a way that helps us reflect, find answers, and then to share our results with our readers. We’ve rediscovered our humanity this way.

3. What is your favorite way to learn?  My favorite way to learn is by educating myself and then doing it. I learn more through my hands than my eyes.

4. What is the one decision that you’ve made in your life that you will never regret?  Deciding to survive and not be a victim is the one collective step forward that will never take a step back.

5. If you could live in the past, which period would you choose?  I like the period of western culture that became fully invested in Romanticism, the affairs of the heart, as we turned away from the cold objective reasoning of the Age of Reason.

6. What is your favorite music?  Warrior and I like 70’s rock. The big bands that tore down the house.

7. If you had to change careers, what career would you choose?  I would choose oceanography and dedicate my life to saving the source of all life on the planet.

8. Who is your favorite philosopher?  Aristotle

9. What is your favorite poem?  The Hyperion cantos by John Keats

10. What is your favorite myth from Greek Mythology? I enjoy the birth of the Titan gods starting with Uranus and Gaea from Chaos.  Sometimes I think Chaos is still with us.

11. Name one guilty pleasure. This is actually two pleasures combined into one. I enjoy a vintage port wine with a good dark chocolate. It stabilizes my spinning mind and turns my palate into a work of art. 🙂

Nominations

We must do a bit of conferencing to get our nominations sorted and we’ll hopefully finish up soon.  We’ll post those nominations here and notify the blog authors of our selections per the rules. In the mean time, Thank You Robert for your nomination, and we hope you all will visit us regularly.