Peace when “Pride” feels far away
Earlier this year in 2023 I stepped into a board member role for the Queer Business Alliance, an LGBTQ+ non-profit helping queer business owners thrive through community, education, skill building, and more. As part of this role, I lead monthly mastermind calls to create a space for members to connect, support one another, ask for help, celebrate wins, and dig into juicy soul-topics to cultivate a stronger connection with themselves. During June, we dug into “Pride” — the idea, the movement, its origin, and our various experiences as multi-faceted queer folks. My goal was to create a container where folks could unburden a little bit — where we could unclench our jaw, relax our shoulders, and find some sense of calm within the tumultuous social and political landscape.
If you’re like me, Pride season brings up a range of emotions and I often feel a bit of an emotional hangover at the end of the month. A lot of times that feeling is more intense because pride events are so commonly a party-forward experience. I’m all for a good DJ and a fun vibe, but I’ve also found myself searching for a more diverse set of spaces that honor other parts of my queer experience. Pride as it’s defined in the dictionary was not something I could claim for many years as part of my queer identity. So much healing and unlearning had to happen first; reframing “difference” as not just okay but also an opportunity for creativity and a new perspective on more than just gender and sexuality. I’d like more spaces and celebrations during Pride month to honor those elements, too.
Something that has stuck with me from the mastermind call last month was an idea that one of the members shared in response to my question “what does pride require of you?” One member said it feels like an invitation, a yearly pulse-check to re-investigate the words they use and the spaces they occupy. What feels affirming? Before being openly queer, the invitation of Pride is a way for folks to feel safe to show up in queer spaces where they might not be so bold the rest of the year. The door is open a little wider and there is somewhere they can clearly come to find others of a similar soul-fabric.
Another member offered that it can feel like a platform with a mic, with the promise of others showing up to amplify the voices of the collective to further the conversation and claim that “We are still here”.
In my more cynical moments, Pride can feel performative. It can feel like “doing” rather than just “being”. It reminds me of the feeling of being called on by the teacher, a spotlight to conform or present a very polished version of ourselves. Within me though, there’s a part that pushes the cynicism away from that performance. It is beautiful to take up space, it is beautiful to be bold and visible and vulnerable and earnest. I’m thankful that I have the opportunity to even have these reductive feelings about celebrations that can only try to represent the robustness of the queer community.
It’s okay to have complicated feelings about representation, participation, and the intersection of queerness with all our other identities. What I keep coming back to is gratitude for the yearly opportunity to reflect on my own queer journey, and how it has allowed for deeper compassion for others and a drive to fight for a more equitable world for all.
Pride is ours to claim, and when the feeling of pride is far away — I’m reminded that peace is just as worthy of a goal, and just *being* among our community is enough.