Happy Pride Month to all my LGBTQ+ followers! While June is dedicated to showing our pride colours, we should celebrate and be proud of who we are all the time. And yes, I said we.

As some of you know, and many of you don’t know, I am pansexual, meaning that I’m physically and emotionally attracted to people regardless of their sexuality or gender identity. I embrace all sexualities and genders because while they help define our identities, many other characteristics and behaviours define a person. I am open to dating people of all sexes and genders because I love people for their souls to which there are no limits.

Learning about my sexuality was very gradual, especially since labels, like pansexual, were something I learned later. In grade 7, I had my first crush on a girl but didn’t learn the term ‘bisexual’ until high school. Throughout my adolescence, I made friends with people of all different sexual orientations; they helped educate me in the LGBTQ+ community. It wasn’t until university when I met a transgender man and understood that I could get butterflies from being around anyone that I liked.

You like beings. You like what you like. It doesn't have to be a girl or a guy, or, ya know, a he, a she, a they or this or that. It's literally you just like a personality. You just like a being.
BELLA THORNE

This is not to say that I’m aroused by or attracted to anyone and everyone that walk past me on the street – I still have my standards of attraction and find certain things unattractive. My pansexuality has shown me that I’m capable of loving and being romantically attracted to people of all sexes and genders.

I don’t have a notable coming-out story. I suppose this blog is part of that story, but my sexuality was never something I felt I needed to tell people, only those who I felt needed to know. I figured that when I was with the right person, their sex or gender wouldn’t matter to bystanders. I’m grateful for this feeling and I hope it’s a feeling that can be passed on.

But whether you are heterosexual, homosexual, pansexual, transgender or identify as another gender or sexuality, pride is about love and acceptance to all. Pride and the LGBTQ+ community give me a home of belonging while I search to understand my identity. Sometimes people do not have to search long to understand themselves, but others may be searching forever. There is no right way to live your life.

While some of us may not appear colourful on the outside, we are all surely colourful on the inside. It can be hard for us to turn our colours from the inside to the outside and express ourselves, yet hopefully, we all find our unique way of doing so.

I am a writer and I felt it was fitting to express my sexuality through my writing, yet I hadn’t found how to do this till now. While I’ve only recently put the words on paper that I’m a pansexual woman, I have not changed.

I have held this identity and my pride for quite some time, but I don’t feel it is always a defining factor. At the end of the day, we are all people. Some of us may look a little different and some of us may have different biological bodies, yet we are all trying to live our lives in pursuit of security and happiness.

I've asked a few of my friends to speak about what pride means to them - read them below! Happy Pride to everyone! 🏳️‍🌈

To me, pride month is about 30 days within a year where the LGBTQ+ community is not “taboo.” Where our issues, our history, and our very existence isn’t “tip toed” around but is proudly shown, spoken about, and celebrated. I went to elementary school in a small town, and none of us understood what “pride” was or what being accepting of LGBTQ+ people looked like. When our new principle put a rainbow flag on the door to her office, we spread a rumour that it meant she was a lesbian, and our parents either didn’t want to or didn’t know enough themselves to correct us. I think about that principle now and how she was probably one of the first in my area to make kids who felt different feel a little less unsafe, and how many kids who knew their identity before I did that she probably helped. Every year we have pride, we get closer to a world where the rainbow flag isn’t some “secret symbol” that’s used to tell a child when its okay to be themselves but is projected on the CN Tower or flown at the local fire station. Imagine the difference it makes to a kid to see himself on something that big, like the whole country is saying “Hey, YOU matter!” and I think that could potentially be life changing. It would’ve been life changing to me.
GRACE

Pride to me is about our community with all its variety linking arms in solidarity, celebrating our beautiful and worthy lives 🥳, helping those who are joining our rainbow 🌈 and remembering all those who came before, and strengthening our dedication to make the world inclusive for all of us.
LEE SWIFT (@leeswiftauthor)

I recently discovered that I'm bisexual. Pride helped me realize that I don't need to fit within the box I'm expected to be in. It's a liberating feeling.
ANONYMOUS

For me, pride is simply being able to openly talk about my sexuality and treating it as just another normal characteristic about myself like hair or eye colour. I've met a lot of great people in the LGBTQ+ community and believe that anyone should be able to speak their pride if they want to.
N

Pride for me is inclusion, acknowledging, and more importantly, accepting someone’s true self. Whether that is gender identity or sexuality. It gives them the confidence and support to live their true lives.
ANONYMOUS

Pride Month. Proud Story.

Cheers to Summer Solstice! 🥂

My 2021 Summer Reading List