Winners Galore! - Silver Bloggers Writing Contest - in collab with @ericvancewalton: Memoir Monday

You did us proud, Silver Bloggers, BUT, you have made it so very difficult to choose a winner!

When we wrote our announcement post and told you how super excited we were about our whopping contest collab with @ericvancewalton, we never would have dreamt just what a tremendous writing contest this would become!
You have set an all-time record with a whopping 31 entries!

Thank you Silver Bloggers, and, a big thank you to @ericvancewalton for the inspiration, and the collaboration, which of course has been a resounding success!

Eric joins us as a guest judge and has this to say:

Throughout my nearly decade of blogging on the blockchain I’ve tried my best to dream up initiatives to engage the Hive community and have some fun in the process. None of these have brought me more joy than Memoir Monday. I’d like to personally thank all of you who participated in Memoir Monday and this very special collaboration with the Silver Bloggers community. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your posts and getting to know you and your backstories. We need much more of this kind of sharing and synergy in this divisive world of ours. Congratulations to all the contest winners, and thank you to each and every one of you for your incredible contributions. Your words truly make a difference!

Your responses to the question 'What makes you sad?' brought tears to many eyes, but also a few smiles as some tried to turn their sadness around, and look on the bright side.
A common thread that popped up in many posts was how sad the political and social situation in Venezuela makes our Silvers.

Everyone who entered has added one more memory for future generations.
Remember you can always look back at past Memoir Monday posts, and still write on those topics, even though the date of the prompt has expired.
I personally have a bunch of catching up to do!

Housekeeping

Before we announce our winners, the usual bit of housekeeping: we now have 2,495 subscribers, and I must say our #silverbloggers do not disappoint when it comes to producing quality posts.
This community would not be what it is without YOU!

Incubation and support

We would be remiss in not thanking the team at @ocd for their awesome support of our community, and we think particularly of @acidyo under whose leadership it operates.

Delegations

We remain ever grateful to our delegators. Remember, each delegation adds value to the Mother account's vote.
We put our money where our mouth is and our delegators not only receive an autovote but also receive automated delegation rewards.

Silver Blogger of the Week

Each weekend Silver Scot sets a POLL on Threads to choose the Silver Bloggers Author of the Week Please look out for those posts and VOTE.

Writer's Block?

@ericvancewalton's #memoirmonday may be coming to an end, or not?? and we hope to tell you more about that next time. You can still look at old #memoirmondays, and write about topics you missed.
One sure thing is that you will end up with a treasure chest of memories here on Hive!

Remember, we always look forward to reading your posts. And we manually select and recommend good content to be supported by OCD.

Back to the contest:

Our founder @lizelle responded to the prompt - ^{not eligible for a prize} SHARING her journey with grief after losing her husband, but also spoke of how close happy and sad feelings are.

Heartbreaking sadness has followed me throughout different seasons of my life, but so has immense happiness. At the end of the day, I chose to remember the happy times, be happy, and not let sadness overwhelm me!

Image taken by @lizelle

𝙒𝙞𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙛𝙪𝙧𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙖𝙙𝙤, 𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙒𝙞𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙨!

Sadly, not all of you read the rules or simply forgot to drop your contest entries in the announcement post.
We're not sticklers for rules though, so have considered some of those for honourable mentions. But, you could have been in the top three! Always a next time, right?

The Judging Panel

@coquicoin, @lizelle, @mondoshawan, and @tengolotodo, plus our guest judge @ericvancewalton, made our choices. We then used a weighted scoring system to determine positions. Our winner was a unanimous decision!

Honourable Mentions

Prizes - 50 Hive in total sponsored by @lizelle

The following four followed the rules and each win 8 Hive:

@irvinc spoke of his sadness about the ELDERLY

@isabelpena shared how it makes her SAD to see abuse of animals, even pets, giving good advice:

Don't have a pet if you're not going to commit to it.

@yolimarag shared HER SADNESS of losing close family, the sad state of her home country Venezuela, as well as many other sadnesses, but ends on a positive note that the are many more good things in life.

@ungranulises spoke of his immensely personal SAD stuff, and how he managed to overcome it.

The following two honourable mentions did not qualify for the big prize, but each win 4 Hive:

@nancybriti SPOKE of many things that make her sad, but also said it's wise not to let it overcome us.
Nancy is said to be the life of the party;)

@myjob shared her awful sad STORY which made a turn for the better, but then ended badly for her family, the river, and its creatures. You for sure will shed some tears!

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Our Winners share a pot of 50 HBD sponsored by @ericvancewalton

We had a tie for third place:

Image taken by @carolinacardoza

A tie between @carolinacardoza and @asiamalay - 5 HBD each

@carolinacardoza said I don't want the earth to ever die, and spoke of her sadness that people are destroying the planet.

@asiamalay shared her heartbreaking story of the sadness after unexpectedly losing her grandmother.

Our first runner-up wins 10 HBD:

@owasco wrote a heartfelt post of My Mother and My Sadnesses which made us laugh and cry when she had to say goodbye to her daughter who had to leave to get on with her life.
Many of us can associate with that feeling, right!

OUR WINNER wins a whopping 30 HBD!

We were unanimous in our decision, so it is a big congratulations to @edith-4angelseu who shared a beautiful poem of her sadness at the gross abuse of girls and children in general.
Edith also shared how she longs to once again be...

Grandma's girl, protected, tenderly nurtured and loved...

Don't we all long for that nurturing we once had?

Finally, a big thank you to everyone, and to Eric, for making this such a very special and fabulous contest!

𝙁𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙩 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩

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^{Artwork by @artywink}

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in the Silver Bloggers server

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A handy table below if you wish to delegate to Silver Bloggers community

And, thank you in advance

Delegation	Delegation	Delegation
10	20	40
50	100	150
200	500	1,000