By The SIL Blog Staff
It’s part four (4) of our 2016 Wrap-Up series (one part left). Thanks for sticking with us; today’s post is all about saying “Thank You” to everyone who supported us during this first year – hey that’s YOU!!!
To say thank you, we are revisiting our guest bloggers, finding out which posts you liked the most, we finally give you the Halloween Group post we never published, share our progress, and some of the things we have planned for 2017. Get PUMPED!
#Guest_Bloggers_Are_Legit
We were so lucky to have had some amazing Guest Bloggers contribute pieces that are funny, insightful, curious, painful, and a list of other words that just boils down to ‘the feels.’ Didn’t catch them the first time around? What’s wrong with you? Thank you to these Friends of the Blog, for taking the time to write these pieces in the first place and then agreeing to share it with our readers. #VulnerableAF
- 2.24.16 – WHEN A LOVED ONE SPILLS BREAST-MILK: A GUIDE ON DEALING WITH LOSS by Y.G. Marley
- 3.12.16 – ON BEING A NINE YEAR OLD GIRL IN TODAY’S WORLD by Hermioneela
- 4.8.16 – POLITICS + SOCIAL MEDIA + MILLENNIUM = HUH? by Chandi
- 4.24.16 – HARRIET TUBMAN AND THE $20 BILL by Froianna
- 7.25.16 – AN AMERICAN ABROAD by Abbey
- 9.16.16 – FIX YOU- THANK YOU COLDPLAY by Michelle W.
- 9.28.16 – THESE ARE MY CONFESSIONS by HipHop Anonymous
- 12.16.16 – INDEPENDENT CO-DEPENDENCE – by Dr. Miranda George
#Top_Posts
This list was cumbersome to compile, it involved analyzing clicks, likes, reads from wordpress and facebook “insights” and a lot of spreadsheeting. Also it was probably hard because the person looking at the analytics gets intimidated by numbers (Puja). Interesting observation to be made, the top posts for Laura, Sneha, Nancy, and Mey were also their favorites to write. The top posts for Puja & Rashee are not the ones they felt were their favorite. What’s the commonality of our top pieces? Our current theory, they are all about real stuff. Real. Heavy. Stuff. Thank you all for responding to that. It really goes a long way to know that your ‘tribe’ has more allies than you thought.
Fun fact #1: there were two posts titled “Happy Birthday?” one written by Sneha, and the other by Puja. Guess those two don’t really celebrate birthdays if they both had to ask about them. Fun fact #2: Sneha, Puja & Laura accounted for 112 of the 181 posts (not including Group Post contributions). So thank you guys for sticking around for Sneha’s chiding, Puja’s lecturing, and Laura’s reality checks; you must really like us. Fun Fact #3 everyone loved Rashee’s Reclaiming My Body article across both platforms, it was our runaway top post of the year as well. Congratulations Rashee! (also congratulations on your empowerment!!!)
Puja has a question though…
How is #SingleAF the most clicked of my pieces on the blog and no one gave me any advice? Ya’ll just read it and said ‘she’s good?’ Why would you do that? You’ve read this blog right? You think I am kidding about being a terrible flirt? I can give you the names of a few guys to ask about my flirting skills and they will probably ask “Is that what she was doing?”
#LOL
Originally, this section was supposed to be the answer to the question “What made you laugh? Or in the alternative, what was your favorite meme of 2016?” It was too hard to narrow down, if you are interested in what the top memes of 2016 are BBC News has you covered. We over here on SIL Blog share memes, GIFs, vines, and links with each other ALL day, almost every day via text, twitter, and Instagram. We are scattered all over the place and our text string feels as if we are walking and talking in a group. We were there for each other for some great times: meeting Laura’s daughter moments after birth, cheering Mey on as she went on her big interview, we accompanied Nancy as she drove from Dallas to San Diego this May, we lounged on the beach with each other, went with each other on business trips, traded pictures of Halloween costumes, talked about our vices, complained about mundane things, spoke in dramatics, always cheerleading, and threw shade when deserved. We were there for tough as hell moments like when Rashee’s, Puja’s and Sneha’s lives fell apart. We got through election night together on this text string. The only thing is the phones aren’t really good at giving you a hug. Someone should work on that (Puja reminds everyone that she does NOT like being touched, so the lack of hugs does not affect her). As a gesture of gratitude, for your support, here is an outtake that never made it to publication. Most of our group posts are done via text, or email if it is especially long (this isn’t hello giggles, behind the curtain is not glamorous). Here is an outtake text conversation we were having planning a group blog post for Halloween. We never published it because one of the MAJOR life stressors hit and we rushed to support mode. #GIRLfriendPOWER. Happy Halloween.
#Humble_Brag_Alert
Thank you to everyone who clicked, read, shared, posted, took the time to comment, let us know how you felt and/or that you related to what we said. On that note, on to
#The_Future
We will try and get some kind of podcast thing, we talked about that already, but that is a long-term goal. Blog wise, the Table for One column will become a recurring column with hopefully more contributors and crowd-sourced pieces (via social media, so add us!). We will also launch a new column called Goodbye Shame, where YOU tell us how you moved on, rose up, drove past, burned down and salted the earth on something that was preventing you from living. The next four years are going to be ROUGH and we want Goodbye Shame to be a safe space to find inspiration and recharge for whatever battles you have to fight.
We also want to get more interactive with you. We’ve already promoted the advice column and that will be a quarterly feature, with room to grow. SIL Blog embraces all peoples, including men. We have some gathered some XYs who are willing to try and answer some of your burning questions and/or provide a male insight to an issue you may be having. That being said, these columns will only be as successful as you make them, so SEND IN YOUR QUESTIONS (info below) until we can get a dedicated submissions page up.
Do you want to be a Guest Blogger? At least two of the guest posts started off as the author’s facebook status. It’s that easy. And to those of you with stories to tell that you are sitting on because you don’t think you can write, that’s the lowest hurdle to clear. Your authenticity, experience, and insights will come through, we promise to take good care of you. Get a hold of us or just complete the form below, and we will get back to you!
SistersInLawBlog 
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