Pride is upon us in San Francisco.  It is a great time to celebrate, reflect and make further resolve to continue the movement to full equality.  Great strides have been made and still further more still need to be made. In the truest sense the greatest work is ahead and we must fight our own apathy and lethargy to stay the course.

Personally, these celebrations represent the long road that it took for me to reach self-acceptance and to come out fully.  I have lived a full life knowing what it is like to live a life of wife and children before finally coming out to my true self. That part of my life is an important component of what makes my being. My children are the center of my love and they literally saved me from falling into despair during those days directly following my divorce and my incursion into a life I had no real idea about.  That centeredness has helped me weather many challenges and kept what was most important in life in front of me.

I found love as my true self with a man I had an eleven year relationship with and learned many things.  One is that true love needs to be nurtured every day in order to grow and last a lifetime.  I learned the meaning of real heartbreak. I thought I would never recover, but I did.

I have been able to gather around me many friends who have helped me transitioned to my current life of singledom.   I have become involved in the causes important to the community.  I love my community.  I have learned a lot about myself.

I have been dating and exploring that part of my life one day at a time.  Yes, I hope for the kind of love that last a lifetime. I believe it is possible.

Pride has meant love to me.  It has meant love of self and the courage to be who I am really am.  Living that honesty has made me a more powerful person in terms of my ability to navigate and truly enjoy this life. It has been love of the new family I love which is as diverse as the rainbow.  Diversity should never mean divisiveness. It is the one element that glues us together in a perfect collage that we call human.

Pride is for all of us.