Liebster Award!

I was just awarded the Liebster Award by none other than the fabulous Dar from Tales of an Unlikely Mother, which originated over at the lovely (and fun) Life in Pint-Sized Form.

The rules are that I tell you all 11 things about me, and deem someone worthy to have the award passed to.

1. I'm finally coming into myself as an adult.  I no longer feel like I'm a teenager playing grownup; rather, I feel like a grown up who occasionally wishes I could go back to being a teen.
2. My children are raised in a village.  We home share with my parents, my two siblings, a non-blood roommate, and my niece part-time.  My house is never quiet, and I don't know what I'll do when the day comes that I finally buy my own place.  I'll miss the noise.
3. I loathe doing dishes.  Doing dishes and floors.  I'll scrub the nastiest toilet, but please, don't make me mop or do dishes.
4. I've been known to not only talk in my sleep, but sing as well.
5.  My number of close friends can be counted on one hand.
6. At least one of those fingers is someone I've never met "in real life."
7. I have always been a computer geek. From bulletin boards to IRC back in the day, with dialup and the local freenet, to my current cable connection and blogger.  I don't think I could live without my computer.
8. I have never shoplifted anything.  Not even gum or candy as a kid.
9. No matter how bad the crisis, how devastating the loss, you put me with a horse and I'll be able to breathe.
10. My children literally saved my life.  I used to say I refused to live to see 30.  I'll be there in a few short months and plan to keep on kicking.
11. I don't like wearing a bra.

I'm choosing to pass this award over to KB at Wanderlust. Her life is tumultuous and would break a lesser being, but she manages to bend without snapping, and still find the beauty.  Why don't you go give her a read?

The echo of a million voices needs to be heard.

I haven't blogged in quite some time.  I worked hard to build a network of followers, of friendly faces, of people I care about and who care about me, and I've left without a word.

Life and love have been difficult.  Through my own drama and tragedy, I have been helping to mitigate the dramas and tragedies of a few of the people I love the most, in any way I can.  March has, as is tradition, brought challenges that have tested even the strongest of our reserves.

Today I come to you and I'm begging you - even though it seems as though I've abandoned  you, stand with me.

KB at Wanderlust, a beautiful soul with two amazing children and the fortitude of a giant, needs our help.  Her life has been it's own horror film, full of the horrors that we naturally recoil from.  Child pornography and exploitation, a secret life being lived right next to her, unusual weapons hidden but in plain sight, abuse, threats, and the discovery of chilling "horror porn" being used for sexual purposes by someone she was most intimate with.  These are the things that can choke out a person's light.  They can leave a hollow and empty shell, and that's under the best of circumstances where that person is allowed to leave the scene of the crimes.  KB hasn't been able to.  She stays there, day after day, providing as much stability as she could for her children, the innocents caught in the plot of this twisted screen play that has become her life.

Please go, read her posts, offer your support, retweet, repost, share, text, pull strings, act on ideas... do what you can to help her.  There are hundreds of other women and children that become statistics, but you KNOW about this family, and you have the opportunity to help.  You have the opportunity to lend your voice to hers, to help her be heard, and to help her remain safe.  Maybe in the movement we create, we can establish a protocol, a guideline, a way to keep helping, so that we can pare those numbers down, one by one. The KB spouse and children protection act, or something equally as hopeful sounding.

http://www.wanderlustlust.com - it's not easy reading, but I encourage you to keep going.  Know the extent to which she is trapped.  Let it sink in that it could be you or me.  Help me help her.