This reminded me of something a marriage counselor said to my ex and I. In assessing our failure-in-progress, he listened to the ex's little list of "valid attempts" to stop his lying-cheating-stealing-narcassistic-pathological-immature-nonsense and said (something like "Those do seem like HUGE efforts on your part! But not because they are, rather because you've never made any effort before." (And that was that. One of my best days e.v.e.r! ) But ...

These types of honors seem so awesome, until you think about how looooooong it took to get around to doing it. Wonderful and shameful ... at the same time.