Reclaiming Pride, Rewriting History

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

Maya Angelou’s words have been echoing in my chest this Pride season.

Because the truth is this: many of us carry histories that ache. Histories that were never written in our favor. Queer lives erased from the record. Queer childhoods lived in shadow. Homes where our light was dimmed. Fathers who left or never truly showed up. Systems that told us, again and again, that who we are is wrong. That how we love is unacceptable. That our story is too much—or worse, not enough to be worth telling.

And yet—here we are. Still loving. Still living. Still choosing to rise.

Pride didn’t begin as a celebration. It began as a riot. A resistance. A refusal to disappear.

As we celebrate this month—with flags, glitter, and joy—let’s not forget the power of righteous anger. The kind Harvey Milk meant when he said, “Hope will never be silent.”

Because it’s okay to be angry! Angry at being erased. At being told—over and over again—that our love is less. That our life is fringe. That our story doesn't belong.

It’s okay to feel neglected by a culture that praises "family values" but never meant families like ours. That hands you a script built for someone else and calls it tradition. That affirms heteronormativity as natural, and everything else as other.

But here’s the truth: You don’t owe anyone your silence.

Angelou reminds us that pain doesn't have to define the future. That facing our stories with courage—real courage—is how we make sure we don’t live them over and over again.

That courage looks like saying no. No to inherited shame. No to silent suffering. No to the myths that call themselves tradition while erasing everything else. As we dance and rejoice and wave our flags, it’s okay to still feel the anger. To still grieve what was taken.

It’s okay to feel the sting of being left out—by a culture that never quite loved like you love, or lived like you live.

June also brings Father’s Day, and I’d be lying if I said that didn’t stir something tender—and sharp—in me.

I find myself thinking about my own father. About his absence. His broken promises. About the boy I was and the adult I’ve become now.

And I wonder: What does it mean to become the father you never had? To love with presence, to guide with tenderness, to protect without control. To reclaim a childhood not by revisiting it—but by offering someone else (maybe even yourself) the care you were once denied.

This is what chosen family teaches us: That blood doesn’t define love. That healing is possible. That even if we came from pain, we are not destined to repeat it.

This Pride, we honor history—but we don’t have to relive it.

We get to write something new. We get to choose differently. And that, too, is a kind of revolution.