For the kids. To be visible. To show them what recovery, resilience, and community can look like. When I was a teenager in the 1990s, I didn’t really have queer role models. I knew about David Wojnarowicz and Andy Warhol, but there wasn’t much beyond that. Pride wasn’t something I imagined myself attending. Being openly queer often felt dangerous. The murder of Matthew Shepard left a lasting impression on me and reinforced a fear that if you were out and proud, you could beco