Drinking Diaries Goes to BlogHer 2010

Greetings, Drinking Diaries readers! We had an amazing time at BlogHer 2010, a conference for women bloggers which was held at the New York Hilton on August 5-6.

The best thing about the conference, besides the yummy desserts and the cool giveaways (a less expensive version of Spanx is particularly noteworthy), was the chance to meet face-to-face and schmooze with some of our Drinking Diaries contributors. Some of them we’ve already met, and some we haven’t–and we realized that we’ve built up quite a community of smart, plugged-in women. It’s great.

Let us introduce you to the amazing women we ran into at the conference. If you click on their name, you’ll be directed to their Drinking Diaries post(s), where you can also find links to their blogs:

Gretchen Rubin, of The Happiness Project

Caren (l.), Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project, and Leah (r.)

Ellie, of One Crafty Mother

Becky Sherrick Harks of Mommy Wants Vodka

Laura Vanderkam, who wrote a book called, “168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think,” (she should know; she brought her 10-month-old to the conference)

Rachel Sarah of Single Mom Seeking

And then there were the women we were excited to meet–women bloggers whose voices we think you, our readers, would be interested to hear. They are:

Maggie dammit, of the blogs, OkayFineDammit and ViolenceUnSilenced, about domestic and other forms of abuse

Caren (l.), Aunt Becky of mommywantsvodka.com and Leah (r.)

Alissa Gould, who is not a blogger, but a PR person at the homeopathic company, BOIRON. She told us about using Nux Vomica for hangovers.

Polly Palumbo, Ph.D., of mommadata, a scientist who digs deep to find the real truth behind all those studies. We think we’ll have a lot to learn from her

Stephanie Wilchfort of The Mama Bee, a blog about women, work and the politics of Motherhood

Tara Cousineau, a therapist who is starting a blog for teens called Bodimojo, about health, fitness & fun. We’re sure she’ll have some things to say about teens and drinking when her site is up later this year.

We heard through the grapevine that the Debbie and Kamy from one of our favorite hangouts, She Writes were there, but alas, we didn’t run into them.

So–keep coming back to Drinking Diaries and adding your thoughts and feelings and sharing your stories. Your stories help other women so much, whether they are about celebration, revelation or devastation. You, our readers and writers, can’t be pinned down or labeled: drinkers, abstainers, children or sisters or mothers or lovers of drinkers, recovering alcoholics, active alcoholics, married, unmarried, single, divorced, straight, gay, bi-sexual, childless by choice or happenstance, mothers, stepmothers–you run the gamut. The one thing you all have in common is your lives have been touched by alcohol, for better or worse.

We learn from all of you. And we hope you enjoy discovering new voices, as we do…

Caren & Leah