PRIDE 2026 Series: P is for Permission

Pride Month is here, and with it come the ubiquitous rainbows. The logos changed overnight with a precision not seen since XMAS became such an industry. But wait – HERE COME THE POSTS because we all have something to say, right? (And actually “yay!” I love the posts!) The language gets warmer, brighter, and more affirming. Suddenly, the word “belonging” starts floating around like glitter in a conference room, and everyone wants to make sure we know how deeply, publicly, and conveniently committed they are to inclusion for the next thirty days.

And listen, I love queer joy. I love the color. I love the audacity. I love the glitter and the chosen family and the sacred refusal to disappear. I love the fact that we can take everything that was used to shame us, silence us, isolate us, and make us afraid, and somehow still turn it into music and dancing and art and tenderness and a parade full of people who are finally, even if only for a few hours, breathing inside their own skin. But Pride has never been only about visibility. Pride has never been only about celebration. Pride has never been only about being seen by the world, especially when the world still so often wants to see us only in ways that are safe, marketable, contained, and easy to applaud without actually having to change.

Pride is about permission.

So, what I mean by permission is not the kind we wait for, and not the kind granted by a workplace, a parent, a faith leader, a lawmaker, a partner, a policy, a comment section, or some deeply unwell person with a podcast and a microphone who has confused their discomfort for moral authority. I mean the kind of permission we reclaim. The kind of permission that says I am allowed to exist, I am allowed to know myself, I am allowed to love who I love, I am allowed to become who I am becoming, and I am allowed to stop translating myself into something more comfortable for other people. I am allowed to say yes to myself because I fucking said so.

That is where this PRIDE series begins. P is for Permission, because for queer folx, permission is not a cute affirmation or a little sticky note on the mirror, though honestly, sometimes that little sticky note is doing holy work. Permission is often the first act of radical self-love after we have spent years being told, directly and indirectly, that who we are is something to explain, defend, soften, hide, delay, apologize for, or earn the right to express.

When the World Acts Like It Gets to Decide

Many queer people grow up surrounded by voices that behave as if our authenticity requires approval. Sometimes those voices are loud and cruel and easy to identify:

“You can’t be that.” “That’s not natural.” “You’re confused.” “Don’t talk about that here.” “What will people think?”

Sometimes those voices are softer, which can make them even more slippery, because they arrive dressed as concern or politeness or “family values” or “professionalism” or “I’m just trying to understand.” They say things like, “Just don’t make it your whole personality,” or “We support you, but do you have to be so public?” or “I’m fine with it, I just don’t want it around the kids,” or “You’re welcome here, but maybe tone it down.”

After hearing those voices long enough, sometimes they become internal. That is the part that people who have never had to negotiate their own existence often miss. The harm does not only live in the external rejection. It lives in the way we start editing ourselves before anyone else even enters the room. Maybe I should wait. Maybe I should soften this. Maybe I should make this easier for them. Maybe I should not correct them. Maybe I should not wear that. Maybe I should not say who I love. Maybe I should not ask for what I need. Maybe I should not take up so much space. Maybe the safest version of me is the one that arrives pre-shrunk.

This is one of the quiet wounds of queer experience. We are often trained to treat our own authenticity as something that needs to be negotiated. We are taught to scan the room before we arrive in it. We are taught to assess safety before we speak. We are taught to read tone, posture, silence, policy, language, risk, mood, power, and consequence. We are taught to use emotional intelligence not just to grow, not just to connect, not just to lead, not just to become more self-aware in the lovely workshop sense of the phrase, but to survive.

So, when people talk about Pride as if it is simply a celebration, I want us to remember that Pride is also a recovery process. It is the recovery of self-trust after shame told us we could not trust ourselves. It is the recovery of voice after silence that was rewarded as maturity. It is the recovery of the body after we were taught to treat our own becoming as dangerous. It is the recovery of joy after joy was treated as inappropriate, excessive, embarrassing, sinful, unprofessional, confusing, inconvenient, or too much. Pride is the recovery of our right to exist without asking someone else to validate our humanity first.

Permission as Radical Self-Love

Permission is not selfish, and it is not indulgent, and it is not rebellion simply for the sake of rebellion, though honestly, there are days when even that kind of rebellion has its place. Permission, at least the kind I am talking about here, is the practice of returning authority over your life back to yourself after a world full of people, systems, laws, doctrines, policies, and tiny little social punishments tried to convince you that authority was never yours to begin with.

For queer folx, radical self-love often begins with noticing where we are still waiting. Where are the places where the ache is so great? From waiting to be accepted? To be understood? To be less afraid? For the family member to come around? The workplace to be safer? Waiting for kinder laws? Or like many of us, are you waiting for the world to become worthy of your full expression before you allow yourself to believe that your full expression is worthy at all?

Nuance matters, and because I am not interested in turning liberation into another impossible performance standard, safety, strategy, and timing matter. Not everyone can be fully out in every space without real consequences. Not everyone can correct the pronoun, hold the partner’s hand, use the name, wear the outfit, challenge the joke, confront the boss, tell the parent, leave the church, or post the thing without risking something real. Permission is not a demand that queer people risk everything to prove we are brave enough. That’s not love, it’s just performance dressed up as empowerment.

Permission is more tender than that. Permission says I may need to protect myself in this room, but I do not have to abandon myself inside my own heart. I may not be able to tell everyone yet, but I can tell the truth to myself. I may need to move carefully, but I do not have to mistake caution for shame. I may be afraid, but fear does not get to be the author of my identity. I may have to make strategic choices for my safety, but I do not have to confuse someone else’s inability to honor me with evidence that I am not worthy of honor. Our relationship to Permission can be the difference between strategic self-protection and self-erasure.

What Permission Can Sound Like

Permission can sound like a lot of things, and not all of them are loud. Sometimes permission sounds like, “I am allowed to use the name that feels like home.” Sometimes it sounds like, “I am allowed to dress in a way that lets me recognize myself when I pass the mirror.” Sometimes it sounds like, “I am allowed to love without shrinking the joy out of it so other people can pretend my life is less real than theirs.” Sometimes it sounds like, “I am allowed to grieve what I lost while becoming who I am, even if I am also grateful to have become.”

Permission can also sound like, “I am allowed to feel anger when people debate my dignity.” It can sound like, “I am allowed to want more than tolerance.” It can sound like, “I am allowed to stop calling crumbs belonging.” It can sound like, “I am allowed to take up space without over-explaining why I deserve it.” It can sound like, “I am allowed to not have all the language yet, and I am allowed to change, and I am allowed to be queer in a way that does not make sense to other people.”

And let me say that one again, because some of us need it:

You are allowed to be queer in a way that does not make sense to other people.

Be soft. Be loud. Be complicated. Be sacred. Be uncertain. Be in process. Be done explaining. You are allowed to have joy that is not educational. You are allowed to have grief that is not palatable. You are allowed to have anger that is not neatly packaged for someone else’s learning journey. You are allowed to say yes to yourself.

That yes is not small. For some, that yes never comes because we lost them, and we have permission to mourn them. For those of us who are lucky, that yes has taken years. For some of us, that yes cost us family, faith, community, safety, certainty, and belonging. For some of us, that yes is still forming, still trembling, still whispering from somewhere beneath all the old survival strategies. For some of us, that yes is shouted in glitter and eyeliner and a shirt that finally feels like skin. For some of us, it is quiet enough that no one else even hears it. Every yes counts.

The Role of Emotional Intelligence

This is where emotional intelligence matters, and it is also where I want those of us who practice, teach, coach, facilitate, research, or sell emotional intelligence to get really honest with ourselves. Real emotional intelligence is not about becoming calm enough to tolerate harm. It is not about regulating ourselves into acceptability. It is not about taking the fire out of our truth so other people can hold it without burning their hands. Emotional intelligence, at its best, helps us listen to emotional data and make choices that are more humane, courageous, connected, and aligned.

For queer folx, Permission invites us to ask questions that are not always easy, because the answers may show us where we have been surviving in ways that made perfect sense at the time but now demand updating. What am I feeling when I silence myself? What fear is asking for my attention? What shame did I inherit that was never mine to carry? What joy keeps trying to get my attention, even after I have ignored it, because joy can feel suspicious when you have been trained for threat? What would become possible if I trusted my longing instead of automatically organizing myself around other people’s comfort?

Permission is an EQ practice because it asks us to know ourselves deeply enough to recognize the difference between safety, fear, shame, strategy, and self-betrayal. EQ asks us to notice when our bodies are giving us information, and charges us to honor the emotional data without letting every emotion become a dictator. EQ asks us to move with wisdom, not performance, and releases us from using self-regulation as a way to become easier for oppressive systems to manage, and instead use it as a way to stay connected to our own truth long enough to make choices that protect our dignity.

That is sacred work.

For Allies: Permission Is Not Yours to Grant

Now, to our allies. Please hear this and know that I give this to you from a place of radical love. If you want to support queer people during Pride Month, and I mean actually support queer people rather than simply enjoy being the kind of person who supports queer people, start here: permission is not yours to grant. You do not give queer people permission to exist. You do not give us permission to belong. You do not give us permission to be safe. You do not give us permission to tell the truth about our lives. Our humanity is not waiting in some sad little administrative queue for your approval stamp.

You do have a role in queer permission. Your role is to help remove the conditions that taught us we needed your permission in the first place. That means paying attention to the systems, language, assumptions, jokes, policies, forms, norms, and leadership behaviors that quietly communicate who is expected, who is tolerated, who is celebrated only when convenient, and who has to work harder to belong. It means noticing when queer people are being asked to educate, soften, explain, prove, perform, forgive quickly, or make their pain easier for everyone else to digest. It means you interrupt harm when we are not in the room. Especially when we are not in the room.

It means not making your allyship dependent on whether a queer person is patient enough, gentle enough, grateful enough, or palatable enough. It means remembering that support is not the same as control, and that sometimes allies accidentally turn their support into another permission structure. “I’m okay with it.” “I accept you.” “I support you even though I don’t understand.” I know those phrases are often meant with love, and for some people, they may represent a real step. But I also want allies to listen underneath the language, because “I accept you” can still subtly position the ally as the one with authority, as if queer people are standing at the doorway of belonging, hoping someone kind enough will let us in.

What if instead of “I accept you,” we practiced something more like:

“I honor you.” “I believe you.” “I’m grateful you trusted me.” “You do not have to make yourself smaller here.” “I will work to make this space safer, not just warmer.” “I will not require your exhaustion as the price of my understanding.”

That shift matters. Queer people do not need allies who see themselves as benevolent gatekeepers. We need allies who understand that liberation requires shared responsibility, and that holding space for queer permission means helping create conditions where queer people are not constantly asked to trade authenticity for access.

Holding Space for Queer Permission

If you are an ally, holding space for Permission might look like using people’s names and pronouns without making it weird or turning your effort into a small theatrical production. It might mean not asking invasive questions just because someone trusted you with part of their identity. It might mean challenging “jokes” that rely on queer or trans people being the punchline, and doing it even when everyone else is laughing, and doing it without looking around for a queer person to validate that yes, that was in fact harmful.

It might mean no longer assuming everyone is straight, cisgender, partnered, monogamous, binary, or interested in fitting your expectations. It might mean making your forms, examples, policies, bathrooms, benefits, and language less lazy. It might mean not waiting for queer people to bleed in public before you believe the room is unsafe. It might mean not confusing someone’s silence with comfort. It might mean not making Pride Month the only time queer people are visible in your work, your leadership, your teaching, your coaching, your facilitation, your parenting, your theology, your politics, or your practice of emotional intelligence.

Perhaps most importantly, it means doing your own emotional work. Notice your discomfort. Notice your defensiveness. Notice where you want to be seen as good more than you want to be useful. Notice where you want queer people to reassure you that you are one of the safe ones. Notice where you are tempted to make a queer person’s pain about your intent. Notice where your empathy needs more courage, where your kindness needs more justice, and where your allyship needs more evidence. Emotional intelligence can give our allyship a spine.

A Practice for Queer Folx

This month, I invite queer folx to practice Permission as radical self-love. Not as pressure. Not as another thing to perform. Not as a demand that you become the loudest, bravest, most healed, most inspirational version of yourself by the end of June, because honestly, no thank you. Practice Permission as a gentle return to yourself, one small yes at a time.

First, ask yourself:

Where am I still waiting for permission that was never theirs to give?
Where have I mistaken being tolerated for belonging?
What part of me wants to be welcomed back home to myself?
What “yes” have I been afraid to say?
What would it look like to honor my truth without abandoning my safety?
What does my body know before my fear starts editing the story?
Where am I confusing the old need to survive with the current possibility of becoming freer?

Then, choose one small act of permission.

Wear the thing.
Say the name.
Write the truth.
Rest without earning it.
Feel the anger. Feel the joy.
Tell one safe person more of the truth.
Stop apologizing for the part of you that is finally breathing.
Let your own life be more than a case you are constantly preparing to defend.

Remember, your “yes” doesn’t have to be loud to be real.

A Practice for Allies

This month, I invite allies to practice Permission differently.

Instead of asking, “How do I show that I accept queer people?”
Ask, “How do I help create spaces where queer people do not have to seek acceptance in the first place?”

That is the deeper work that is needed. That is the move from kindness to justice. That is the difference between wanting queer people to feel welcomed inside unchanged systems and actually helping change the systems that made feeling welcome conditional.

Broaden your awareness and empathy by considering:

Where your workplace still requires queer people to translate themselves.
Where your language assumes a world that erases people.
Ask what you need to interrupt.
Ask what comfort you are protecting.
Ask what policy, norm, or behavior needs to change.
Ask where you have mistaken friendliness for safety.
Ask where you have mistaken kindness for justice.
Ask where you have celebrated Pride without challenging the conditions that make Pride necessary.

Then choose one visible action. Not a rainbow logo. A change. A conversation. A correction. A policy review. A brave interruption. A redistribution of emotional labor. A moment where your allyship becomes evidence.

Allyship is not a self-concept. It is a practice.

This Is Where PRIDE Begins

This is the first piece in my PRIDE 2026 series: Permission, Radical Love, Ignition, Daring, and Empathy. Each will be an invitation to understand Pride not only as a celebration but also as a practice. For queer folx, PRIDE is a way of returning to ourselves. For allies, PRIDE is a way to become more accountable to the people and communities you say you support. And for those of us who practice emotional intelligence, PRIDE is a reminder that emotions are never separate from justice, because fear tells us something, joy tells us something, shame tells us something, anger tells us something, grief tells us something, and love, if we are brave enough to listen, tells us something too.

The question is whether we are courageous enough to make choices worthy of what we hear.

So, let’s begin with Permission. Not the permission we beg for. Not the permission we perform for. Not the permission someone else believes they are generous enough to grant. The permission we reclaim. The permission to know ourselves. The permission to love ourselves. The permission to stop asking systems of harm to bless our becoming. The permission to stop confusing someone else’s comfort with our calling. The permission to stop treating our own lives like a request pending approval. The permission to say yes to ourselves, and the wisdom to know that “yes” is holy.