Pulse, Pride, and the Fear We Carry Every Day

Nine years ago today, I was just a block away from the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando when the shooting happened. I was asleep at the Ronald McDonald House, my newborn micropreemie in the NICU at Winnie Palmer. She had just turned a month old.

At 2:30 a.m., the sound of helicopters and smoke bombs ripped through the night and shook us out of our sleep. A call from the front desk confirmed what we didn’t yet understand: something horrible had happened. As the news began reporting details and the hospital went into lockdown, my instinct screamed one thing—go to your child. But I couldn’t. For a full day, I wasn’t allowed to see her. To hold her. To know she was okay. The city shut down in fear. And all I could do was sit and wait and ache.

In the days that followed, the park I’d come to love during our NICU stay—quiet, green, and full of small moments of peace—became a place of mourning. Candles, photos, names in chalk. A memorial to 49 souls whose only crime was existing freely. Dancing. Loving. Living their truth out loud during Pride Month.

I knew I was gay then, but I wasn’t out. And if I’m being honest, that night only reinforced my fear. Fear of what could happen if the wrong person found out. If I held the wrong hand. If I loved too visibly. Pulse made the danger undeniable: you can be killed simply for being who you are.

And yet, most of the world kept moving.

That’s the part people don’t understand. Queer people don’t just live with the memory of hate—we live with the possibility of it every single day. It shapes how we walk into rooms. How we dress. Who we kiss in public. Whether we hold hands or shrink back. Whether we come out or stay silent. There is always a calculation happening in the background of our lives: Is it safe to be myself here?

We celebrate Pride because it is an act of resistance to this fear. But celebration doesn’t mean safety. Even today, in 2025, queer people are targeted in legislation, attacked in bathrooms, denied medical care, excluded from schools, churches, and families. We’re shamed, threatened, harassed—and still expected to keep showing up for work, keep smiling in public, keep shrinking ourselves down so that others feel comfortable.

The truth is: being queer is still dangerous.

And still—we live.

We rise.

We love fiercely.

We dance anyway.

We tell our stories. We build chosen families. We fight back. We grieve our dead, like the 49 from Pulse, and so many others who never make the headlines. And still—we dare to dream of a world where we don’t have to weigh safety against authenticity.

Pulse happened during Pride Month. And that matters. Because Pride isn’t just a party for us—it’s a protest. It’s a public declaration that we will not be erased. That we will continue to live, and love, and mourn, and rise.

We remember Pulse not just for what was taken, but for what it revealed: the cost of hate and the power of being visible.

To my fellow queer folks: your existence is sacred. Your fear is valid. And your life is worth protecting and celebrating.

We carry the memory of Pulse in our hearts.

We carry it in our courage.

We carry it every time we dare to be seen.

No One Showed Me How, So I’m Showing Them Different

Last night, sitting on the back porch with my husband—just the two of us and the quiet hum of the night—we sank into one of those deep, soul-baring conversations. The kind that doesn’t rush. The kind that only happens when the world goes still for a minute and the kids are finally tucked in, the chaos quieted, and we can just be.

We’ve been claiming this time lately. Our little ritual of reconnection under the stars, unpacking the invisible weight we carry through the day.

I told him about the heaviness that had been gnawing at the edges of my thoughts. The quiet ache I couldn’t name until I started to speak it out loud. We wandered into the topic of our parents—who they were, who we are now, and all the tangled roots in between. The ways we’ve tried to become something better for our kids… for ourselves. But no one ever handed us a guidebook. No one taught us how to grow past what hurt us.

We were thrown into adulthood dragging a history we never asked for, trying to raise children while still re-raising ourselves.

And even in our efforts to heal and evolve, we sometimes caught ourselves stumbling back into the very patterns we swore we’d never repeat. That’s when I said it—something that sat bitter on my tongue but needed to be said:

“I tried to be like my mom… because for a long time, I thought my mom was better than my dad.”

But she wasn’t.

And once that truth settled into me, once I peeled away the layers of loyalty and longing, I realized: I don’t want to be the kind of mother she was to me.

I want more for my children than what I was given.

More tenderness. More accountability.

More safety. More presence.

More truth, even when it’s hard.

Because breaking cycles isn’t just about choosing differently—it’s about choosing bravely. It’s about sitting with the grief of what you didn’t get, while still showing up every day to give your kids what you never had.

It’s about realizing that healing isn’t always a beautiful, Instagrammable process. Sometimes it’s crying on the porch while the neighbor’s dog barks and the past refuses to stay quiet.

But it’s also where change begins. In those small, gritty, sacred moments when you say, “This ends with me.”

And maybe that’s what real love looks like….not perfect, but determined. Not always graceful, but always growing.

When Growth Gets Heavy

There’s a potted lily in my living room, one my husband just bought me, and it stopped me in my tracks.

It had grown tall, its bloom full and radiant. But the flower at the top was so large, and its stem so long, that it couldn’t support the weight anymore.
It bent.
Not because it was weak, but because it was too full of life.

And instead of breaking, it leaned—resting against the other blooms for support. That image struck something deep in me.

Because that’s exactly what growth can feel like.

We like to think of healing as light. That once we’ve done the work, we’ll feel freer, stronger, more independent.
But sometimes, growth brings new weight.
The kind that humbles us. That asks us to admit: I need help here.

Writing Purity Reclaimed has been that kind of growth.
Each word peeled back a layer.
Each memory carried the weight of everything I’d survived.
And as freeing as it’s been… it’s also been heavy.

What moved me even more about this lily was something I didn’t notice at first: the blooms weren’t all the same color.
One plant, many shades.
A soft pink here, a deep rose there, ivory petals in between.

That, too, felt like a mirror. My healing hasn’t been one note. Some days are bold and blooming. Others are pale with grief. And sometimes, they exist side by side.

This plant didn’t just remind me that I’m growing.
It reminded me that growth is complex.
That even beauty can feel like a burden when we carry it alone.
And that needing support doesn’t make us fragile—it makes us real.

So if you’re in a chapter where you’re rising, but feeling the weight of everything it took to get here…
If you’re blooming, but also bending…
Know that it’s okay to lean.

Even the strongest blooms need support.