That Time I Ugly Cried After Winning An Award

Did I ever tell you about the time I melted down and cried all the way home after winning an award?

I managed to hold it all together till I got out to the car, but it was a struggle. But let me back up and tell you the whole story.

I've been a member of the Junior League for many years now. Some people have never heard of the League, some think it's a kind of snooty organization. Well, at least in my experience, it's not our grandmother's Junior League and I've met some of the coolest women I've ever known there.

For those of you not familiar, it's an organization of women who do work to improve their communities, and develop the leadership skills of women. 

Each league has their own community projects and volunteer shifts to move those projects forward.

My first several years I served on a committee called Between the Lines. It's a program in the local women's prison where we bring in a huge assortment of children’s books, then record women reading these books to their children. We buy a new copy of the book, wrap it up like a gift, and send that with the recording to the children.

It's a way for the children and the mothers (or grandmothers or other important caregivers) to connect while she is incarcerated and it encourages literacy in the children.

My third year in the program, I served as the chair, and at our end of year meeting for the Junior League, I got an award.

I was given a heads up that I was going to receive this award, so I could invite my husband. What I knew of past awards was that they tended to be really nice. Kind of fancy if I’m honest.

I'm going to give you a little context as to what went wrong. What my tender-spots were that were triggered by this award. So let's get back to the actual award in a minute.

I've mentioned before that I'm the rainbow sheep in my family. In some traditional belief systems they would say that my spirit was so excited to be born that I jumped out of my little basket that the baby delivery spirits use to get us to the right family. When this happens your born into a family that wasn't your intended family. 

In other traditional systems it's said that your soul chooses your family based on the lessons you need to learn. So all those differences are our soul's journey in this lifetime. 

I switch back and forth depending on the day, but it often really feels like I jumped out and landed in the wrong family. 

Now, don't get me wrong. My family isn't made up of horrible people. Just like me, they try to do their best, and like me, they get it wrong a lot.

So some of my biggest tender-spots come from feeling like I don't fit in. (Me and everyone else, right. But it's still real) I'm very sensitive to feeling left out and short changed. My family literally goes on vacations without me. A couple of times I asked if I could meet them, and they got mad. Yes, they actually got mad. I know that's weird, but it is what it is. I have tender-spots around feeling unwanted, excluded, and unappreciated.

That night I showed up to the Junior League meeting, it's at this beautiful Swedish American cultural center. They always have good snacks. Don't laugh, these meetings are around dinner time.

A lovely friend gave me a ride, and I waited to meet my husband. 

We found our assigned seats at a table up front. Because that's where you put the award winners, right?

A woman who'd been on my committee the entire time I'd been on there, and who'd probably nominated me for the award gave me this gorgeous bouquet of roses. Some people would come up and chat but it slowly became evident that the other people assigned to my table found other seats. If my husband hadn't been there, I would have been sitting there alone. Up front. Ugh. Awkward.

Fortunately the terrific and thoughtful woman who was becoming our new president that night used our table as her base when she wasn't speaking. That softened it some too, but it was still a big table that was almost empty.

I see these bags from Tiffany & Co holding the awards, and it isn't until my award is handed to me that I realize that my award was different. It was a plastic smiley face trophy. I'm not joking. All the other awards were from Tiffany, and I got a plastic smiley face trophy.

I wasn't very familiar with the different awards that our League handed out. Now I couldn't help but wonder if I'd misunderstood something. 

I remember being told that I was being given the award because of my positive attitude and perseverance.

Now I felt like I was being punked. I couldn't reconcile the mixed signals and I wanted to hide.

When it ended I remember a haze of people coming up to talk to me, I know they were saying nice things. But in the fog of uncomfortable emotions I can't remember anything other than wanting to get out of there. 

When I made it to the car the waterworks burst forth and I ugly cried the whole way home. I got home, changed out of the cute outfit I’d bought for the event, and then I just couldn’t control the tsunami of tears. The next morning, I had a hangover from the dehydration.

I felt humiliated. When people who knew I was getting the award found out about the plastic smiley face trophy all the reactions fell into one of two categories. The first was "They gave you WHAT?" (sometimes followed by "no grown-ass woman needs a plastic smiley face trophy"). The second category was "is this some kind of joke award, like something silly?" I still wasn't sure myself.

I reached out to the new president, trying to understand what this award was. I wanted to burn it, to erase the memory. 

That's a persistent theme in my behavior, I seem to think that if I resist something strongly enough, I can go back in time and erase the offending experience. It often just makes me look like I'm guilty of something or dramatically overreacting.

It turns out that this award is named after someone who served the League for a long time, and was known for her positive attitude and perseverance. It wasn't a joke. It seems some people thought the plastic smiley face trophy was reasonable. I've still been afraid to find out if they continued giving out that ridiculous trophy or changed to something less absurd. The next year all the awards were hidden in nondescript gift bags.

Between sitting there at that table, almost alone, and getting an award that struck me as a cross between being environmentally irresponsible and maddeningly childish…..that was a terrible night.

Though I can halfway laugh at that trophy now, I still can't change the way I feel about that night.

I didn't quit the League. I've served in other roles since then. I continue to meet amazing women, but I'll always remember how crappy it can feel when something isn't as thoughtful as it could be, and how that can cause it to land completely wrong. It’s not all their fault, they were my tender-spots after all.

It may sound ridiculous to you, a serious case of first world problems. I probably sound ungrateful, and maybe shallow, but when something pokes us right in our tender-places, it hurts. 

So the end of this story is I still love the Junior League, but I also have this longing to earn an award that gets me a trophy, or a gift, or whatever, from Tiffany.