LGBTQIA+ Pride Without Your Person

With Pride celebrations kicking off this week – both IRL and virtual – it’s easy to feel left out. If your person is missing, parades and parties just don’t feel the same. Certainly after this last year, nothing really feels the same.

Celebrations of any kind are hard when there’s a hole in your world. This holiday month focused on love and equality can be extra hard when you’re missing your partner, your friend, your child – anyone who made Pride month special.

Deaths within the LGBTQIA+ community – due to hate crimes, violence, and reduced access to appropriate healthcare – should also be acknowledged here. It’s hard to celebrate diversity and inclusion if your person died as a result of targeted exclusion and hate. It’s hard to believe in that multi-colored flag if you aren’t really welcomed.

Whether you’re out and proud, not out, planning to come out, unable to come out, or still figuring things out, you are valid and deserve love and support exactly as you are.

Take things at your own pace this Pride Month, friends. You’re balancing the awkwardness of newly open social venues with your party RSVP plus one of grief. That’s a lot.

Looking for some company inside your grief? In the Writing Your Grief e-course and community you’ll find a place where you can tell the whole truth about how incredibly hard all of this is, without anyone trying to cheer you up or remind you to be grateful for what you have or once had. ⁣As fellow grieving people, we can be there for each other in a way that others simply can’t. Visit this link to learn all about it and find the next open session.⁣

Illustration by Leanne Walker