June is Pride Month to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. This event sparked the civil rights movement for the LGBTQ community. Each year following this historic event, marches and parades are organized across the country to honor the courage of the original Stonewall participants.
In her advice column, “Dear Sugar” describes one of those parades as “That Ecstatic Parade.” With her characteristic “radical empathy,” she opens us to the sacred moments in everyday life.
To live in the present moment with authenticity takes courage, no matter who you are. The feeling of vulnerability can hijack even the simplest expression, like speaking in class for the very shy child. While that moment can feel like life or death, we honor the fact that for some the consequences are not just imagined. For some, the courage really does risk life and/or losing the support of loved ones.
Excerpt from Dear Sugar’s Advice:
Have you ever been to a LGBT Pride parade? Every year I take my kids to the one in our city and every year I cry while watching it. There are the drag queens riding in Corvettes. There are the queer cops and firefighters all spiffed out in their uniforms. There are the lesbians on bicycles pulling their kids on tag-alongs and trailers. There are the gay samba dancers in thongs and feathers. There are the drummers and politicians and the odd people who are really into retro automobiles. There are choirs and brass bands and battalions of people riding horses. There are real estate agents and clowns, schoolteachers and Republicans. And they all go marching by us while my kids laugh and I weep.
My kids never understand why I’m crying. The parade seems like a party to them and when I try to explain that the party is an explosion of love that has its roots in hate, I only confuse them more, so together we just stand on the sidelines, laughing and crying, watching that ecstatic parade.
I think I cry because it always strikes me as sacred, all those people going by. People who decided simply to live their truth, even when doing so wasn’t simple. Each and every one of them had the courage to say, This is who I am even if you’ll crucify me for it.
Read the full column online
DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #57: That Ecstatic Parade
Read “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar“
The advice column has been beautifully organized and reprinted in book form. You can also read the advice column online at therumpus.net where it was originally published. The column was retired in 2012. The author was anonymous when the columns were originally published, but now we know that Dear Sugar is an alter-ego of Cheryl Strayed.
Read my prior blog on Dear Sugar.