It's easier to overhear a compliment or to get it second-hand, instead of directly.
I've done some things I'm kind of proud of, but I'll probably never get compliments from certain people about them. My mother passed away years ago, but my father is still alive. However, he'll probably never notice the new section of my Website, and that's probably for the best. How would I explain it? He doesn't even know I've been diagnosed or that my sisters and I think he's on the spectrum. He's a conspiracy theorist, and I think he suspects vaccines of causing autism, but he's so far gone into his conspiracy theorizing that i don't think I can convince him to let that one go. Instead, he'd probably freak out about my diagnosis, or simply disbelieve it, so I'll never hear from him that he's proud of me for what I've accomplished with my site. I worked hard on creating that resource, but neither parent can congratulate me now. I feel kind of sad about it. My father has said he's proud of me for other things, though, including the parts of the Website he has already seen, and I've been able to sort of store the compliments for later processing, which helps me to deal with them.
One of my sisters has seen my site, and she's linked to it from her blog. In one of her blog posts, she also mentioned it with some nice praise that I could digest privately, at home, taking all the time I need to process it. The other sister hasn't seen the site yet, and I don't know if she'll ever be interested enough. But she's generally supportive, so that's decent.
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Life is a classroom for a mind without walls.
Loitering is encouraged at The Wayshelter:
http://wayshelter.com