June 2025: What Pride Means to The Pack
What Pride Means to MeBy Jill Wolf, LCSW (she/they)
Pride isn’t just about rainbows — though I love them. It’s also about the rain. The weeping, the release, the soaking-through. Rain feeds growth. Puddles are cool too — messy, reflective, temporary reminders that something has moved through.
For me, Pride lives in self — in taking stock of who I am and who I’m not. Some people celebrate with parades, glitter, and joyful visibility. Others, like me, seek quieter spaces that offer room to breathe, reflect, and build something more enduring than a single month or moment.
Being yourself — really, really yourself — is radical. Especially if you live on the fringes, or outside of what’s considered “mainstream.” But you can’t be yourself without doing the work to know who you are — and who you aren’t. That work is sacred. It’s not always easy. But it’s been the foundation of my Pride.
I’ve come to understand Pride as an everyday act, not a seasonal campaign. It’s not performance — it’s practice. Pride is choosing to live in integrity. It’s showing up with gratitude for a neurodesign that refuses to let me live outside my values. It’s refusing to be flattened by systems that misunderstand us.
Pride is anti-racism. Pride is disability-affirming. Pride is accessible. It’s fighting for collective care and challenging norms that leave people out. It’s the quiet knowing that even if the world doesn’t get it, you do - and you belong.
What Pride Means to Me
By: Liz Weck, LSW (she/her)
What I have always found beautiful about being queer is our shared imagination. We build the worlds we want to live in—rooted in care, creativity, and chosen family. We create spaces where we are loved and loved wholly, regardless of what is happening in the world at large.
When I think about Pride, I return to Ocean Vuong’s words: “Often we see queerness as deprivation. But when I look at my life, I saw that queerness demanded an alternative innovation from me. I had to make alternative routes; it made me curious; it made me ask, ‘Is this enough for me?’”
Pride, to me, is about celebrating the creativity and curiosity that queerness has called out of me. It’s not just visibility—it’s innovation, reinvention, and community care. It’s the refusal to settle for systems or norms that were never built with us in mind. It’s a celebration of the lives we’ve created despite their best efforts to stop us.
Pride is about honoring our ancestors–centering and uplifting the Black and Brown Trans Women who have always been at the forefront of queer liberation, even when they have not been protected by it. Our Pride exists because of their courage, resistance, and relentless vision for a more just world.
Pride is not a life free of harm, but one full of beauty, resistance, and rebirth. When I say I’m a dyke, there is no quiver in my voice—only power.
My Suggested Events:
Out and About at the Lake: Family Beach Day
Sunday, June 22Kathy Osterman Beach (Hollywood Beach)All ages, free
Out and About at the Lake: A Family Beach Day is a joyful day of sun, swimming, and community at the lake created especially for transgender and gender non-conforming individuals, kids, and their families.
Back Lot Bash
Sunday & Sunday, June 28th & 29thCheeta Gym Parking Lot21+, $25-$50
Back Lot Bash in Andersonville is one of the best-attended Pride events dedicated to women. The block-party-style event, a staple for more than 20 years, includes a full day of music, capped off by performances from local DJs.
South Side Pride
Saturday, July 5thThe DuSable Black History Museum and Education CenterAll ages, free
The Right to Pride’ at Pride South Side, held at The DuSable Black History Museum in Washington Park, is an annual event featuring performances, dancing, local vendors, and more.
What Pride Means to Me
By Lori Light (she/her)
As someone who came out later in life, I’ve found meaning in the etymology of the word proud. In Old English, the word prut meant “having a high opinion of one’s own worth” - this is where I found the courage and determination to be myself. The most proud queer person I have ever loved passed away in 2021, and at the time, he was one of only a few people who knew who I really was. I have lived every June since then as an out queer person because of the high opinion I had of his worth and the opinion he had of mine.
Because of my beloved friend, I believe pride means being brave enough to be who you really are, even if it causes the firm structure that you stand on to crumble. My friend and the ancestors before him, paved the way for folks like myself to be able to own who we are in the face of so much adversity. Though there have been many tears in this transformation, each tear has been countered with the pure pleasure of queer joy.
Pride is something I was able to find because I had someone in my life who was unabashedly himself for the 22 years that I knew him. As a tribute and an honor for the gift that his integrity brought to my life, I live my life proud of the person I am today and the person that I was - the person who persevered.
My Suggested Events:
Queer Sober Social
What Pride Means to Me
By Tori Shaw Morawski, LSW (she/her)
When I think of Pride, I think of my beloved cousin Kelly—cooler than cool, brilliant, kind—who left us far too soon. Well before he had the chance to live his truth or his dreams out loud as a gay man. Kelly grew up in a home where it was not safe to be who he really was, let alone celebrated.
Kelly got “cancer” in his late teens and access to him was cut off. Calls went unanswered; we were left in the dark with sadness and confusion. Later we’d find out the devastating truth: He died from HIV/AIDS complications. His parents robbed him of the love, support, and dignity he deserved. They robbed our family of the chance to hold sacred space for him before saying goodbye.
His memory and this painful story have shaped a huge part of who I am — as an ally and the work I’ve committed my life to. My work in global health and social work, particularly in the fight against HIV/AIDS through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), is dedicated to him. Because Kelly deserved much more. He deserved joy. He deserved love. He deserved to live – like so many others we’ve lost along the way, in similar circumstances, way too soon.
To me, Pride means that EVERYONE—no matter who they are or who they love—gets to live fully, loudly, and unapologetically. His memory is a beacon, a call to action, a reminder of what was lost, and what still must be fought for.
We love you forever, Kelly.
What Pride Means to Me
By Chelsea Laliberte Barnes, LCSW (she/her)
Pride Is Protest—and a Promise
To me, LGBTQ+ Pride is about more than parades and celebrations. It’s about embracing identity without limitation, honoring the beauty and diversity of every person, and fighting for dignity, equity, and access for all. It’s about belonging—and the resistance and resilience it takes to build it.
I’ll never forget a moment from when I was 8 or 9. My family was out to dinner, seated next to a group of people I’d never seen before—men dressed as women. I thought they were stunning, glamorous, and interesting. But not everyone at our table felt the same. One of my family members began using a word I didn’t understand, repeating it over and over with venom. While I didn’t know what it meant, I could feel it was hateful.
I watched my mom’s face turn bright red, and then, without saying a word, she and my dad got up and moved us to a different table. In the car on the way home, she said something I’ll never forget: “In our family, we respect everyone. Got it?”
She explained that love and families take many forms. She told us the story of Matthew Shepard. And she made it clear: loving is never wrong—but hate always is.
That moment planted a seed in me. It was my first understanding that protest can be as simple as walking away from hate, and that children are always watching, listening, and absorbing.
Today, I’m a parent. And I know I can’t shield my child from the messages of intolerance coming from some of our so-called leaders. But I can teach him what the LGBTQ+ community has taught me: to love and care deeply, boldly, and without condition.
This month—and every day—we must SHOW UP, SPEAK UP, and ACT UP, just as LGBTQ+ leaders and groups like VOCAL New York did at the height of the AIDS crisis. Pride is not just a celebration. It’s a promise to stand for love, equity, and justice in every room, every month, every day.
Happy Pride. Let’s keep fighting!
What Pride Means to Me
By: s. malefi hall-adeyefa
Pride 2025 witnessed the second coming of who’d be “crowned” the 47th Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America. 47’s administration appears to be the embodiment of selective right wing disdain, outrage, and a bizarre compulsion to not only literally disappear people, but through policy, rhetoric, and ostensibly fascist sensibilities engage in the erasure of identities not in alignment with their limiting beliefs. Not only is this egregious, but terrifying. However, to imagine this is a novel zeitgeist in an otherwise tolerant, inclusive, and kumbaya enveloped society at best is naive and at worst is complicit in the State-sanctioned historical revisionist enterprise that seeks to sanitize the truthful history of American politicians, and the people who elect them, erasing people.
I am a cisgender, heterosexual, Black man living in the United States of America in one of the most segregated cities in the country, Chicago. My very first conscious experience of social erasure happened in the fourth grade when an older white student counseled a younger white student to never let a (the n word) get in front of you in line. This was said right in front of me. I note this was my conscious experience of erasure, but this was preceded by an erasure I wouldn’t be aware of until many years later: an erasure facilitated by systematically forcing my Black parents to live in a particular part of the city–redlining. We were effectively erased from other parts of the city because we were Black.
Pride, to me, is about vulnerable people refusing to be erased in the violence of the ubiquity of dominant culture norms. Pride to me is about courage demonstrated through defiance. That is, a defiance against a system that refused to acknowledge not only the humanity of Queer people, but the misguided, yet State supported, belief they had a right to eliminate those whose lives they didn’t believe had a right to exist. Pride, to me, is not only a mandate to, but a battle cry rallying all peoples to “Fight the Power.”
Lastly, the Stonewall Uprising, led by Black Queer folks, namely Trans and Non-Gender Confirming folks, was a justifiable reaction to a police regime and body politic that refused to acknowledge LGBTQ plus citizens, often resorting to exploiting absurd and antiquated laws to support their lawful oppression and persecution of a community that didn’t fit into the image of heteronormality. An aside: laws may be legal, but lack moral and ethical foundations. Again, this is not new for America. But Pride is a reminder to defy, resist, and a willingness to lay down one’s own life in the name of authenticity.
What Pride Means to Me
By: Heather Bodie (she/hers)
The first pride parade I attended was by accident. I was in London in the summer of 2003. Wandering through the streets in my white denim jacket, bedazzled shirt from BeBe with a disposable camera glued to my hand, I was sure I was blending in - tourist, me?! No no, I live here darling. As I navigated my way, determined not to publicly reference the printed google maps folded up in my mini backpack, I turned a corner to find the street blocked off. For the next hour I stood in awe as I watched people parade by in, what I can only describe as, a state of being “truly alive”.
For me, the Chicago Pride Parade is one of the most life-affirming events of the year. The welcoming energy radiating off of the crowd is palpable. It’s powerful. Vibrates in your chest. Leaves a buzz in your bones. To see people in large numbers, sharing public space, showing up in celebration of simply existing is…for me, it’s fuel. Fuel to keep loving, to keep fighting, to keep showing up and standing up for all people.
My suggested events:
June 29th, 2025
11:00AM
*If crowds aren’t your thing, find a shady spot to set up a folding chair just a couple blocks away and soak in the energy of the people as they make their way toward the celebration.
