#Winning

On Sunday 20 March, Ultimate Planet held the Awards ceremony for the third annual Ultimate Planet Awards at Catford Broadway Theatre. 

It’s always such a lovely occasion, with nearly two hundred women coming together from a range of backgrounds, events, experiences, and who all have something in common: working to make the LBQ community a better place for all. This year Naomi had to work extra hard to make the event happen in such a successful way as I was not able to put as much energy into it as I would have wanted.

With an amazing shortlist across 40 categories, it was always going to be tough to triump in the public vote of nearly 4,000 people casting around 40,000 votes.

Not being allowed to campaign for votes, I did not set myself any expectations; especially with the tough competition in the journalist category. But… somehow the votes came in and in my way they came. The lovely Helen Oakleigh read out the nominees and I was shaking with anticipation and to my complete surprise she suddenly started reading out my bio as the winner and finally she shouted out my name. I could not believe it! 

Completely awe-struck I wandered up to the stage, high fiving friends along the way, it truly felt like a Hollywood moment. I was so surprised I had not really prepared a thank you speech and spluttered out a few words… it’s hard even now to describe how much winning this awards means to me. 

There are very few mechanisms for people to show appreciation, all I have to go on sometimes are the hits I get on my articles and on the website as a whole. There are some pieces I have written in the last 5 years that I am proud of, that I know are a good job; more than that I am proud of the platform we have built so I have invaluable freedom to write about subjects of choice and can remain authentic to my lesbian queer voice. 

To be recognised for that is truly an honour, and the feeling of being announced winner is something I will never forget.