content notice for this issue: pregnancy criminalization, racism in healthcare, coercion and non-consent.
On this last pride weekend of 2022, I am heartbroken. Devastated. The overturning of Roe and the named implications for queer intimacy and marriage illuminate the specific hellscape we’ve known exists in some places, has been waiting in the wings in other places. There’s no sugarcoating how terrifying this all is. The wracking, all-encompassing crying I’ve been releasing the last few days is like nothing I’ve known before. As my friend Morgan texted to me recently, this is a grief process. She’s so right. We must embrace it as grief, and engage in all of its non-linear, unwieldy tethers as they come and go. All while knowing that the very real logistics of patients needing care right now may not have time for our grief - they need care, as urgently as we can help them get it.
Today, I am sending love, strength, and safety to my community at pride this weekend. As is said often but not nearly often enough, the first pride was a riot. I hope that truism is palpable at events today. And I hope that queer folks can embrace how our existence and our liberation is linked with all who remain marginalized, oppressed, and disenfranchised. As so powerfully stated by Murri Indigenous elder Lilla Watson,
“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
For the final time this year, Happy happy pride to you all.
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