When Pride Comes with Grief

As we celebrate Pride, we also carry grief. Both can exist at the same time.

Pride is about what it means to protect your joy.
On what it means to choose yourself when others won’t.
On how deeply queer people know the ache of losing people they love.

For so many in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, Pride is a complicated season.
Yes, it’s a time for joy, visibility, and community—but it’s also a time when the weight of rejection can feel especially heavy.

We grieve the families we hoped would understand.
We grieve those unable to come out and feel safer hiding their truth.

Words like “confused” or “going through a phase” are often not used to understand someone’s identity, but to dismiss it.
There are so many coded ways to undermine the truth of queer and trans lives.
This kind of language is hurtful. It’s not just dismissive—it’s invalidating, dehumanizing, and deeply isolating.

This betrayal, whether it comes from relatives, communities, faith spaces, or even close friends—opens a familiar wound.
Because this isn’t just one person’s story.
It’s the story of so many.

The grief of being the first to come out in a family.
The exhaustion of having to educate when you just want to be embraced.
The heartbreak of realizing someone only got close to you in order to hurt you.

It’s the grief of showing up to a family gathering and feeling alone.
Of being deadnamed, misgendered, or excluded entirely.
Of realizing that spaces once filled with familiar people are no longer familiar.

And it begs the question:
If someone hears hate and stays silent—are they really an ally?
Because silence isn’t neutral. Silence is complicity.

No one should lose their family, friends, or community because they couldn’t choose love.

And yet… we persist.
We choose queer joy in the face of rejection.
We choose truth, even when it costs us comfort.
We choose ourselves.

Because the pain others carry, the shame they try to project, does not belong to us.
That weight is not ours to hold.

Family isn’t defined by blood.
It’s defined by safety, presence, and love.
Family is who shows up when you’re hurting.
Family is who fights for your joy like it’s their own.

This Pride, we reflect not only on who we’ve lost but also on what we’ve gained.
Partners, friends, chosen family, and a deeper connection to who we truly are.
We reflect on the strength it takes to stay soft in a world that can be so hard.
We honor the journey it takes to find wholeness in our truth.

To every queer person who has had to grieve the loss of love, the loss of safety, or the loss of imagined futures: we see you.
We honor you.
You are not alone.

Because Pride isn’t just a celebration.
It’s a space for communal grieving.
It’s a form of resistance.
It’s a bold statement that we will keep living—fully, freely, fiercely.

This Pride, we hold space for:

Those who’ve cut ties with family to protect their peace
Those who’ve left faith communities that once gave them community
Those forced to hide their truth to stay safe
Those who’ve watched loved ones deny their existence
Those mourning lives lost to violence and hate
Those who don’t feel safe using public restrooms
Those who are watching their resources become limited
Those who heal and teach in our communities, holding all the pain

And this Pride, we also honor:

The families who uplift us loudly and proudly
The friends who become chosen family
The faith leaders who fight for our inclusion
The teachers, therapists, and mentors who affirm our identities
The communities that protect us, celebrate us, and show up

Pride is joy.
Pride is grief.
Pride is choosing to love, to hope, to build something better for the generations that come after us.

We, as queer, people, carry all of this.
And still—we build new homes. New families. New joy.

We deserve safety.
We deserve belonging.
We deserve to be loved out loud and proudly.

Happy Pride.
Even when it’s heavy.
Especially when it’s heavy.

Amanda Lyon, Student Intern