Design Your Pride (And Celebrate Queerness on Your Own Terms)
Queer Joy Practice #21
This is How To Queer Joy, a newsletter dedicated to LGBTQ+ mental health and joy practices, written by queer psychologist Dr. Kiki Fehling.
This week’s queer joy practice: designing your Pride. Pride is our collective invitation to celebrate queerness. Approaching Pride with intention can help you practice queer joy more fully.
It’s officially almost June! I even have some LGBTQ+ events this weekend. Thus, I’ve got Pride on the mind. It’s an exciting time. Pride events can be incredibly connecting, fulfilling, exciting, and fun. But, let’s be honest, they can also be a bit… difficult. In this week’s post, I hope to help you plan for your Pride season, so that you might be able to overcome some common stressors and get the most queer joy you can.
Why Pride Matters for LGBTQ+ Mental Health
Pride started as protest. As you likely know: in June 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn (a gay bar in New York City), and the bar’s queer and trans clientele fought back. The first annual Pride march followed in 1970 as a direct consequence. It became a way to fight for gay liberation (and all LGBTQIA+ people’s rights). To challenge LGBTQ+ stigma and discrimination. To claim, loudly and proudly, that our community exists, has always existed, will always exist, and deserves to live joyful lives out in the open without fear.
These days, there’s still plenty of protest during Pride Month, but it can sometimes feel like the focus has moved to commercial parades, rainbow merchandise, and getting the perfect Instagram post. It can sometimes feel performative, stressful, or judgment-laden. Like there’s a “best” way to celebrate, or certain “correct” ways you need to be queer in order to attend Pride. I’ll talk more about that part in a moment, but it’s important to first recognize that Pride is still important.
Although the relationship is a bit complicated in the research, we know that connection to LGBTQ+ community is one of the more powerful protectors of LGBTQ+ mental health. Whether through cultivating chosen families and other queer kinship models, participating in LGBTQ-focused organizing and mutual aid, participating in online queer communities, or physically visiting your local LGBTQ+ center, connecting with queer people supports queer joy.
Pride specifically matters, too. Attending Pride events offers LGBTQ+ people the chance to creatively explore self-expression, better understand and accept themselves, connect to queer ancestors, and feel less alone. By centering and celebrating queerness in all its forms, Pride events help queer people challenge the shame and internalized stigma they may have learned from growing up in a world full of anti-LGBTQ+ messages.
I’ve previously defined queer joy as playfully exploring, wholeheartedly accepting, or enthusiastically celebrating queerness — yours and other LGBTQ+ people’s. Thus, inherently, Pride is our collective invitation to practice queer joy. This year, I suggest you accept this invitation, making sure you show up on your own authentic queer terms!
How Do You Actually Want to Celebrate?
So, Pride matters. And it can be stressful and tricky to navigate. There are so many things that get in the way of people experiencing the queer joy that Pride has to offer…
Maybe all of your friends love colorful parades, loud clubs, or substance-fueled partying, but you personally feel over-stimulated, overwhelmed, or dysregulated by these things.
Maybe you struggle with chronic illness, disability, or financial constraints that make it logistically impossible to attend the biggest Pride events near you.
Maybe you’re pansexual, and you keep reading all of the social media “hot takes” about how bi+ people in “straight” relationships shouldn’t come to pride. Or, maybe you’re ace and see people roll their eyes as they say “asexual people aren’t really queer, anyway.” When you attend Pride events, you feel like an imposter, self-conscious and unable to fully enjoy yourself.
Maybe you’re in your 30s or 40s, or even older, and are only just discovering your LGBTQ+ identity. It may feel like it’s “too late“ or “not appropriate” for you to show up to Pride events, so you choose not to go.
Whatever the reason, getting the benefit of Pride may be tougher for you.
Approaching Pride with intention can help. Rather than mindlessly doing what you think you’re supposed to want to do, avoiding certain events because of conditioned shame, or just giving up on Pride altogether when you can’t get exactly what you want, plan ahead and mindfully decide. Tap into your values, your desires, your limits, your needs… What do you specifically want and like? How do you specifically enjoy celebrating queerness? Then, take steps towards that. Design your Pride.
How To Practice: Designing Your Pride
Part one: Check-in with yourself
First off, ask yourself those above questions: What kinds of things do you truly like? How do you most enjoy expressing or celebrating queerness? Try any of the following:
Consider how you’ve felt in the past attending Pride events. What have you enjoyed? What has kept you from enjoying yourself? What have you disliked? What one thing could change to help you enjoy is more? What could this tell you about what you actually want to do?
Consider what stories you’ve been taught about what it means for someone to “really be queer” (or not) and “deserving” of attending Pride events, or what it means to have a “good” Pride season. How could you challenge these stories? How might you support yourself in showing up anyway? How might you let go of expectations of what you or Pride are “supposed” to be?
Consider your queer values. Are there specific types of Pride events that would help you live out those values?
Consider your sensory needs and preferences. Are there typical parts of Pride that just totally drain you? Would it actually be better to skip them, or to figure out some accommodations you could make for yourself to make them easier on your nervous system?
Consider your interests, passions, and desires. What simply feels good to you? If you could create your perfect LGBTQ+ community event, what would it be?
Consider what you hate missing. If logistical, financial, or health reasons keep you from coming out or from attending certain events, which events most sadden you to miss? What bothers you most about missing these events? Is there a different way for you to get that missing piece, even a little bit, without that specific event?
With all the above, identify the specific Pride events you want to attend, and then move on to…
Part two: Take action
Actually go to the Pride event! Actually do the thing you like to do to celebrate queerness!
Also, don’t go to the Pride event you truly just don’t want to go to! Don’t do the thing that you hate or causes queer stress or judgment (rather than queer joy)!
Sometimes, it really is as simple as just going/doing (or not). But sometimes it might take a bit more preparation, planning, or “coping ahead” (as we say in Dialectical Behavior Therapy) to do things that you want to do but that are hard in some specific way. For example:
If you want to go to a parade, but you always have a headache afterwards because it’s so loud, make sure you buy ear plugs and bring them this year!
If you want to go to a sapphic mixer, but feel like an imposter because you’re bi or worry that you “don’t know how” to flirt with women, get connected to bi+ organizations who can help you make bi+ friends, learn how to fight biphobia, and gain confidence. (Or get connected to any organization that centers and celebrates your specific LGBTQ+ intersectional identities!)
If you’re struggling with anxiety, shame, or depression that makes it hard for you to go to Pride events or savor your queer joy while there, learn coping skills to help you.1 (And, find an LGBTQ-affirmative therapist if you continue to struggle.)
If you can’t go to out-in-public Pride events, practice queer joy in a different way. Read queer books. Watch queer movies. Wear rainbows in the privacy of your own bedroom. Donate to an LGBTQ+ nonprofit. Engage in an anonymous online queer community. Whatever helps you access queer self-expression, belonging, or pride. (See my previous posts for more ideas, too!)
Your Pride Is Yours
The above examples are just that: examples. You will need to problem-solve whatever your specific needs and limitations are. It may take some effortful planning or creativity, but it’s worth it. You deserve a Pride that actually fuels queer joy, rather than one that feels performative, obligatory, or unfulfilling.
It doesn’t have to be perfect—it won’t be! It just needs to be authentically you. Whatever that is, mindfully take your time now. Prepare for it. Design it. And approach it with playful curiosity, rather than judgmental expectations. I hope you have a very queer joyful Pride season!
See you out there,
Kiki
While I was planning to announce this in a separate post sometime soon, this seemed a good time to mention: I have a new book coming out on this coming Monday, June 1! It’s called The LGBTQ+ Mental Health Workbook, and it teaches dozens of coping skills to overcome shame/anxiety/stress, figure out your queer values, understand your unique desires, and basically do most of the things I describe in this post. And in much more detail than I can provide here on Substack! So, please check it out. I hope it will help you find more queer joy this Pride season and always. <3
Great tips--thank you! 🌈