It’s June, and suddenly everything is rainbows.
Corporate logos get a queer little glow-up, drag queens are reading storybooks in shopping centres, and rainbow-themed cocktails pop up at your local bar like it’s queer Christmas. And while a part of me genuinely loves the visibility and joy that Pride Month brings, there’s also another part, a much quieter, tender part, that wants to crawl under a blanket and not come out until July.
Because here’s the thing: for those of us carrying the weight of religious trauma, Pride can feel complicated.
Not because we’re not proud to be queer. But because some of us were taught with the full force of theology, community, and “love” that there was nothing pride-worthy about us at all. For years, we were told that our identities were sinful, shameful, or outright demonic.
- We prayed our gay away.
- We fasted to stop having “impure thoughts.”
- We stood at church altars weeping and wondering why the healing never came.
Pride Month can feel like trying to celebrate your birthday in the ruins of the house you grew up in. Sure, you survived it but the dust still clings to everything.
So if Pride feels complicated this year, you’re not alone. And you’re not doing it wrong.
Pride Month When You’ve Survived Shame
For a long time, I didn’t know that what I was experiencing was trauma. I thought I was just “sensitive” or “too emotional.” But what I was carrying wasn’t just pain it was harm. Deliberate, systemic harm wrapped in holy language and stamped with a divine signature.
Religious trauma doesn’t just attack your identity. It goes for your core. It teaches you that your instincts are wrong, your desires are dangerous, and your body is a liability. If you’re queer, it tells you that your love is counterfeit and that your life will be marked by loneliness unless you change.
And if you do try to change? If you sign up for the accountability groups, the “healing prayer” sessions, or the ex-gay counselling? You learn, eventually, that the only thing being healed is the church’s discomfort.
So when Pride rolls around with its glitter and celebration, it can stir up everything, joy, yes, but also grief. Rage. The ache of what could’ve been if you hadn’t spent years believing you were broken.
The Layers of Undoing (and Why It Takes So Long)
Coming out isn’t just one conversation. It’s an ongoing process of unbecoming the version of yourself you were told to be. And when you’ve grown up or existed within a high-control religious environment, there are layers to that undoing. Some of them sneak up on you years later.
- Like when you realise that the first person you came out to was your pastor hoping he could help “fix it.”
- Or when you hear a worship song in a shop and find yourself frozen, flooded with memory.
- Or when you’re kissing your partner and some old, dusty voice whispers that this is sin.
Healing doesn’t move in a straight line. And it rarely happens in time for Pride.
But here’s what I’ve come to believe: Pride isn’t the final destination for people who’ve “done the work.” It’s not reserved for those who’ve fully deconstructed, fully healed, or finally found the perfect queer community. Sometimes, Pride is the most radical when it’s chosen in the middle of the mess.
Embodiment as Resistance
One of the deepest wounds religious trauma can leave is disconnection from the body. We were taught to mistrust it, to silence its desires, ignore its cues, and treat it as something to be subdued.
But queerness invites us back into our bodies. Not just through sex or romance, but through presence. Breath. Movement. Pleasure. Embodiment becomes resistance when you’ve been taught that even your posture is suspicious.
This Pride, I’ve been thinking less about the rainbow flags and more about the quiet acts of coming home to myself.
- Like noticing how my chest softens when I wear clothes that actually fit me, not a version of me made to look “modest” or palatable.
- Or how my breath deepens when I kiss my wife’s forehead without flinching at imagined judgment.
- Or how I can move my body in ways that feel like celebration, not penance.
Pride might be loud and glittery on the outside but for many of us, it starts quietly, inside the body.
Healing in Pieces, Not Perfection
If you’re still carrying religious trauma, it can feel like your queerness is somehow less valid. Like you have to earn your seat at the table by being louder, prouder, or more sure than you really feel.
But the truth is you don’t have to be fully healed to belong here.
Your grief is welcome, your confusion is welcome and your “I’m still working it out” is a sacred time.
There’s no Pride exam you need to pass to be part of the queer community. You don’t need to throw glitter if you’re still wiping away tears. You don’t need to wear a rainbow if all you have is grey.
- You are still enough.
- You are still queer.
- You are still allowed to take up space.
Finding Pride in the Quietest Places
Sometimes, I think about the version of me who used to sob into her pillow at night, begging God to make her straight.
I want to go back and tell her that Pride wouldn’t always feel this painful. That one day she’d be out. Married to a woman. Running a business that actually affirms queer people. Sitting on the couch with her little Cavoodle beside her, writing a blog that doesn’t pretend to have all the answers just a few honest truths.
I want to tell her that the pride would come. Not all at once, not in fireworks. But in whispers. In deep breaths. In moments where the shame started to loosen its grip.
So if that’s where you are now, in the quiet, complicated, still-figuring-it-out place, I see you.
And I’m proud of you.
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