Vote!

I was farting around on another corner of the web last week when I read that the nominations for this year's Weblog Awards had been announced. I started ticking through categories and did a giddy school-girl squeeeeee! when I recognized someone:

Mel, of the Ever-so-Awesome Sitrrup Queen's (and the informative and supportive Lost and Found ) has been nominated for a Weblog Award in the category Best Medical Health Issues Blog.

You can click on the above links to go vote, and unlike voting for President -- but perhaps if you live in Illinois a bit like voting for someone local -- you can vote daily. (Lighten up, I used to live there. I can poke fun.) I want you to vote daily. Until Tuesday, 1/13. And here's why:

Firstly, you should vote for Mel because her blog is not only wonderful, but a kind of lifeline. She's a fantastic writer in her own right (did you know she has a book coming out this year?), but beyond that, she spends what seems to me to be an impossible number of hours taking care of this community. If you've encountered infertility, pregnancy loss, adoption issues, or infant loss, chances are extremely high you've clicked through Mel's site at one point or another. She not only honestly details her own IF experience, but takes time to answer questions, read other's blogs for inspiration (and provides weekly round-ups), runs a book club of sorts, and started yet another blog which brings together women from under the various headers so we can hopefully all start relating to one another. Building Bridges is what Mel's all about. She's an inspiration.

Case in point: Sometime late in summer, '07, I was reading one of my favorite blogs when she informed the readers she was ditching her blog list. Whu-whu-WHAT? How in hell am I gonna know what all the hip cool tragic blogs are anymore? She said Mel was doing a much better job anyway, so I clicked over to see what the fuss was.

And there it was, almost at the end of the blogroll, the category "Stillbirth, Neonatal Death, Infant Death." There was a whole motherfuckin' GROUP of people like me. And I pretty much decided that day, after clicking around a few minutes, to start my own blog. Mel added me to the list -- in fact, she was one of the first people who wrote me an email.

And that was just me. How many of you read L&F and click over to offer support? Gulp when you see a new addition to this category and go to read the whole story and offer sympathy? You know you do.

Secondly, not to take anything away from Mel here, because she is the Queen in question after all, but I sort of view a vote for Mel as a vote for all of us. I view it as a vote for an issue, a community of people, about whom the world needs to know more about. The world needs to know that there are couples out there right now, who are aching to have children, but have a translocation, or sperm issue, or PCOS. People who are going through miscarriage (after miscarriage). People who have made the decision to do IVF, or to adopt -- domestically or abroad. People who are using surrogates. And finally, people who have lost babies. We're not shunned here, were part of the collective. I see a vote for Mel and a possible win as an announcement to the internets that there's a vibrant intelligent community in here that deserves some recognition and attention.

You're allowed to vote once a day, until Tuesday, 1/13. The Weblog Awards are the big kahunas -- they've been acknowledging blogs since '03 in a variety of categories, and voting trends in the millions. In other words, this is a big deal.

Go vote for Mel. Please tell your friends to vote for Mel. She, and we all, deserve it.