"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." "Beauty is only skin deep." "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Bartlett's Quotations is full of quotes about beauty. Great words by great poets.

This week we'd like to introduce you to another great poet talking about beauty: Stephanie from The NieNie Dialogues is our BlogHer of the Week with her post Do You Still See Me?

The description in her About section is deceptively simple:

Stephanie Aurora Clark Nielson returns from an almost fatal plane crash. Happy to be blogging again from Utah and recovering too. Four happy children and one sweet husband make her life as good as it gets.

Her blog, on the other hand, takes us through the kind of complex emotions and experiences that very, very few of us can even begin to imagine, let alone re-live.

After a chance (painful) encounter at the grocery store, Stephanie's post is a rumination on how others see her, and how she sees herself. Does her husband still see her? He says "yes." Do strangers see her as more than an outward manifestation of their inner cares and fears? We cannot know.

Yet through Stephanie's words and pictures, we are right there with her as she admits that, despite her many blessings:

"...part of me hurts for outward beauty"

And we are right there with her as she finds beauty too, during a perfectly still, quiet moment:

And the Lord was talking to me. He was whispering to me his love for me. He was proud of me and I felt my blessings restored to me. He is so real. He is there. He sees so much more than we do. He is the light and truth and anything that is good that I have, is of Him.

And then, I felt beautiful. 

Reading this post, being moved by this post, the quote about beauty that came to me was from John Keats:

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty
That is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Congratulations, Stephanie, your truth and beauty is why you are this week's BlogHer of the Week.

Thanks to everyone for sending in your nominated posts. We urge you to remember to nominate individual posts, not entire blogs, and keep them coming! If you want to check out all the BlogHer of the Week posts, check out the BlogHer of the Week archive.

Best,
Elisa
For Elisa, Jory and Lisa, BlogHer Co-founders