Blog Post
Rain or Shine – An Unforgettable Pride
The month of June is a special time of celebration, joy, community, resilience, and protest for the LGBTQ+ community. Parades, drag shows, library readings, dance parties, conferences, and many other festivities pop up, large and small, around the world. Rain or shine, this is our moment, and we won’t let anyone take that away from us.
“Rain or shine, this is our moment, and we won’t let anyone take that away from us.“
We asked our community of LGBTQ+ young people across the U.S. to attend their local Pride events equipped with It Gets Better stickers, buttons, and tshirts with the message to uplift, empower, and connect LGBTQ+ youth. We’ve been sharing those experiences with you throughout the month on social media, but we wanted to take a closer look at the impact Pride events can have on LGBTQ+ young people.
We asked Akiko, a 17 year old Youth Voice from Iowa, what their most memorable pride moment has been. This is what they shared with us:
There are rainbow flags scattered about the clearing, cheerful even as they are sodden. A warm rain speckles the landscape, and the sky has descended so low that when the tips of my fingers reach up and brush the clouds, the gray masses can’t help but release their swirling hold on the rain: the watery result paints us polka dot until the spots stretch into and embrace one another, and our hair drips into our eyes with each turn of our heads. The 6 of us colliding feels momentous—because two wrongs don’t make a right, but our existence was never wrong despite what they want us to believe.
“…our existence was never wrong despite what they want us to believe.“
The drizzle] doesn’t stop, and we are turning our heads so much now; back and forth, jumping up and down to echoing song. My eyes are filled with water. That is what happens when you dance in the rain. But we don’t stop to brush the blur from our eyes because “Bohemian Rhapsody” is playing, and we are too busy shouting a garbled, incorrect version of the lyrics. 6 children holding hands, we start to spin now. Grasping tightly to one another around and around, we fight against the powers that threaten to fracture our circle of interlocked arms. We’ve learned to resist the centrifugal forces that pull us out and away and to who we should be. Water fills my eyes again, but this time it’s salty. That is what happens when you are free in the rain, and you don’t let go.When I look up, the strings of light that bridge the surrounding trees twinkle translucent through our blurred vision; the speckled rain creates a prism: all angles and light. We move, and the world is rainbow. We are momentous.
“We move, and the world is rainbow. We are momentous.
