How About A Person Of The Month Award?

Hello ILs,
I would like your feedback about instituting a new award category ‘The Person of the Month’ award.

We already have Finest Posts for the most moving, touching, helpful, resonant or eloquent writeups. These go to the posters who are best able to express themselves. This award is different.

There is another category, a growing one, of notable members who may not be necessarily eloquent or expressive. They are regular women, not particularly feminists or some other label, who are simply facing and trying to solve some problem or the other in their lives. They are authentic and unafraid to put themselves out there, warts and all. Their stories resonate with us. Their write-ups and updates are honest, even often quite unsparing of themselves as needed while analyzing or discussing the problem. Over time, what is notable is that they evolve their thinking and change their approach and are ultimately successful in surmounting the hurdle. We see them struggle in real time, get invested in their struggle and cheer at their success as our personal victory.

There are many such members here and I feel their stories are an inspiration to the rest of us as we struggle with our own problems. @mangaii @Vedhavalli, come immediately to mind. In the past @shravs3 and @Anusha2917 in the younger generation too notably overcame their problems of employment /visa and motherhood respectively, if I recollect correctly.

We are in a historic time when womens’ rights in general and a woman’s agency in particular (her right to organize and live her life according to her wishes) are being systematically being chipped away at or outright taken away, the world over. I feel we should celebrate these exceptional members, who while going about their daily lives are somehow finding the strength and devising ways to overcome the obstacles and retain or reclaim their agency.

Specifically I’m proposing a Person of the Month award, for a member who crosses a significant obstacle or achieves a significant milestone, through hard work, consistency, ingenuity.

There can be more than one person of the month if needed because when someone achieves success cannot be regulated by calendar month. There can be months where there are no nominees too.

It is our way of celebrating the member and their victory. If the person wishes they can provide a short writeup in the felicitation thread summarizing their story- less on the specifics to preserve anonymity and more details of their mental journey, what enabled them to find the courage and persistence to keep trying.

What do you say ILs?

If this is considered acceptable I would propose @mangaii as the first candidate.

 

@Viswamitra
I carefully went through both the threads links you provided above. With all due respect, these threads don’t fulfill the purpose I had in mind for ‘Poster of the Month’ and as I have stated above in the OP.
The referenced threads call out and mention various posters for their posting style/personal quirks/interests in a light hearted and affectionate way. One is a holiday seasons greeting thread and the other is puzzle thread - a guess who this poster might be. These threads serve the purpose you had in mind when you created them. They clearly establish that we have a considerable and thriving community of long term posters who know each other well. This was never in dispute. However I don’t think these threads can be repurposed to include Poster of the Month as I had sketched out above.
What I am proposing is to celebrate how the poster overcame a particular problem or issue. As a group we provide support when posters come forward with problems. It’s natural to wish to celebrate when the poster passing through various vicissitudes achieves victory. We celebrate their victory, and their story becomes an inspiring example for others to follow. So one thread dedicated to the poster with people chiming in about what about their journey they found inspirational or resonant or identified with. Strictly optional but if the poster wishes they can either summarize their situation and solution or link to their earlier threads with a final update. Ultimately I envision a sticky of such linked threads in each forum - Relationship, Career and Parenting etc. This will also boost positivity in the forums overall, when new posters arrive seeking answers to their problems, and get inspired, energized or comforted by going over these threads.