***This giveaway is now closed. Sarah is the lucky winner!***

This month I not only hit 300,000 hits on my blog, but it is also my blogaversary! Five years ago, on October 29 I started this website with my first post. I had no idea where it would go from there! I know there are many other more popular bloggers with lots more hits than I have (especially in FIVE years!), but I feel very happy and comfortable with my level of traffic here and the contribution I am able to make. And, interestingly enough, over 150,000 of those hits were during this year alone. And, during just this month I had more hits than in my entire first year of blogging! That slow and steady progress and consistent presence makes me feel really good about my work here. So, to thank my readers for reading and to celebrate my blogaversary and the 300, 000 hits mark, I’m going to offer a giveaway of a beautiful Birth Dancer pendant by Wellstone Jewelry!

“The sterling silver dancing goddess, nurturing her baby, preparing for birth.”

This is not a donated item—I bought it to resell, but decided I’d like to offer a happy giveaway instead!

There are lots of ways to enter to win this lovely pendant and the giveaway is going to last for a long time—basically through the duration of my ongoing blog festival, which will last until December 15. To enter, do any or all for the following:

• Leave a happy-blogaversary comment on this post 🙂
• Become a fan of Talk Birth on Facebook
• Follow Talk Birth on Twitter
• Tweet about the giveaway (and comment to tell me!)
• Share the giveaway on Facebook (and comment to tell me!)
• Suggest Talk Birth on Facebook to your friends.
• Share self-care/self-renewal tips with me that I can pass along to my readers!
• Comment and share your favorite post from Talk Birth (double entry for this one!)
• Contribute to my ongoing blog festival and you will earn FIVE bonus entries (I’ve received some great contributions so far and will start publishing them next week. If you’ve already contributed, you will be automatically entered in the giveaway. But, seven weeks is a long time, so I could really use some more contributions! Remember that you can send me previously published posts that are your own personal favorites. This could be good exposure for your own writing/blogging! I do not want any pregnancy/birth 101 type of posts, but otherwise I’ll happily accept good quality posts on a variety of subjects).

I added an archive drop-down to the sidebar recently in honor of my blogaversary, so if you want to take a walk down Talk Birth memory lane, make sure to check it out on the right hand sidebar, halfway down —>

And, again, thank you. Thank you for reading, thank you for your comments, thank you for feedback and support, thank you for sharing my posts on Facebook and Twitter. Thank you for sharing yourselves with me. Thank you for letting me share myself with you. Thank you for caring. Thank you for participating. Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to share my voice and my thoughts and to be heard in the larger, virtual community, in addition to in my own small, in-person community. When I began writing here, I felt frustrated and uncertain about my ability to make a contribution to the birth world. I desperately wanted to transform the birth culture in the US. I felt blocked and denied in my access to the people I wished to reach. I felt frustrated and “held down” by the needs of my small children. Writing here offered me freedom and reach and enabled me to be a birth educator and activist in the wider world beyond my own rural home, as well as contributing to my local community. It has allowed me to make a (small) difference in many lives in many parts of the world—I have regular readers from Australia and Kenya and Serbia, for example. I could never have made those connections without my writing and I feel blessed to have found an avenue for my voice and ideas.

Thanks for your support!

After my brother’s wedding earlier this month.