What is the use of pride?

Not a damn thing other than to make you feel superior to everyone around you. At least that's what every Sunday sermon I every heard on the subject hammered home into my teenaged heart.

No one likes a braggart. Let your actions speak for themselves. Well if I don't have pride in them, why are they worth doing?

Recognition from my parents never came, only you could have done better. Just once it would have been nice to hear Mom say, "Well done! I'm so proud of you."

Instead I got a litany of the errors, stumbles, and glitches in anything I attempted to do. I never could get my mother to understand 99% was the highest mark I could get. The printers and computers back then didn't allow for three digits in the form. Perfect wasn't an option. Therefore, I could have done better.

As an adult I finally got over it. Realizing all the comments from her friends, our neighbors, others who knew her were the only way she could express her pride in me. She was brought up under the church's litany of sermons as well. Mom broke away from the church, but it was when she was considerably older than I was. I got smart sooner.

Yes, Mom, there is a use for pride. It gives a child a sense of self-worth. A reason to like and love themselves. It's not just an expression encompassing inclusiveness and equality for sexually divergent souls.

And it is something us neurodivergent ones truly struggle with for our entire lives.

You know what? I think I'm going to put this into a letter to my mom. It might just make me feel a whole lot better.