This week I received another email, telling me I earned a badge for being a “top 30 widow blog”.
This is what it said:
Hello!
We are a team of experts who are in search for the best blogs in the world. We find your blog to be pretty awesome and very informative. Your articles are well-written and possess the qualities of being one of the best.
We are glad to announce that your blog is included in the Top 30 Global Widow Blogs: https://www.startdating.dk/top-30-global-widow-blogs on our website.
We would like to commend you for your passion and as recognition, our team has created a special badge that you can post on your blog: https://www.startdating.dk/banners/top-30-global-widow-blogs
If this interests you, please send us a message and we more than willing to answer your queries.
Thank you and hoping to hear from you soon!
Sincerely,
Lisa Kok
Junior Project Manager
StartDating.dk
I clicked on the link to see what they had to say about my blog:
A chronicle of how a woman went through loss and came out stronger than ever, widowbadass.com is a resource that is definitely worth reading. It’s got a lot of great content to share about the matter of overcoming the sadness after losing someone and then looking forward to living again.
OK. I guess that’s all right. It sounds like someone actually read my blog.
Then I went directly to the website to figure out what this site was all about. Just the name of it (StartDating) is giving me a serious case of side-eye.

There is no English language option on this site. Near as I can figure it is an online dating site, though. For Europeans. But a team of experts that search out the best blogs in the world and they found lil’ ol’ me?

I wonder how many more of these emails I will receive, now that I have a contact form and email address for the blog.
I won’t be grabbing this badge and I’m removing the other badge too. As far as I’m concerned, they are meaningless and/or a ploy to get bloggers to put something up on their blog to advertise their own site.
I don’t like wearing clothes that have a brand’s name (as opposed to a band’s name, which I am in favour of!) prominently displayed on them and I certainly don’t want to be advertising a dating website on my blog.
On a more upbeat note, by this time next week I will be cavorting with the tropical sea life in Barbados again. I’ll also be lulled by tropical breezes while reading lots of books under the palms and chugging back icy Banks beers with my 50 years of friendship pal, Mizz CJ. For 2 glorious weeks!
Rock on,
The WB