In a world passing increased hateful anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and spewing anti-LGBTQ+ and racist rhetoric, programs like the Pride and Joy Foundation's Keynote Queers, Leaders for Inclusive Change, OUTWrite Authors, and Pride and Joy Parent Events, hold spaces for the queer community to come together and share our stories, use our voices to elevate our stories, and dive into deeper conversations with allies through education, advocacy and outreach.

Events like this remind me that we are not alone. Events like this remind me that we do have allies out there standing alongside of us. I am grateful for our Pride and Joy HEROs who helped us sponsor our operational costs in 2023 so we can host events like this. I am also grateful for every single person who donated their time, energy or money to the Pride and Joy Foundation, who signed up for our newsletter, who liked or shared our content, who showed up to spaces and events and I am grateful for us, the LGBTQ+ community,...

We are days away from our biggest Pride and Joy Parent Event: Prepping Your Family for Pride. We sat down with one of our incredible panelists, Kalyela Josephs (she/they), and also known as Coach K, to chat about pride, family and purpose. Kalyela has been partnering with the Pride and Joy Foundation for a long time. She was featured on our podcast, Out of Queeriosity last season and you can listen here.

Kalyela will also be part of our Pride and Joy Summit - a two part series on Friday May 12 and Saturday May 13 of all LGBTQ+ public speakers across a variety of topics you won't want to miss. Coach K will give their talk "Coming Out to Your Purpose" on Saturday May 13 in the second round of our speakers. 

Their work as a public speaker, coach and LGBTQ+ advocate has changed and empowered individuals and organizations. Kalyela has dedicated their life to helping others find and live with purpose. We hope you will enjoy our meaningful conversation.

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We are one week away from our biggest Pride and Joy Parent yet, Prepping your Family for Pride. This zoom event is a panel of distinguished guests that includes a trans activist, educator, and drag performer, Junior Mintt; a licensed therapist and author of Gender Magic, Rae McDaniel; public speaker and queer coach, Kalyela Josephs; and public speaker and inclusive educator, Elena Joy Thurston. It will be moderated by Sara Dean of the Shameless Mom Podcast.   

As the Director of Operations for the Pride and Joy Foundation, I had a preliminary conversation with our Founder and Volunteer Executive Director, Elena Joy Thurston, about pride, allyship, parenting, drag and the importance of visibility. We got into truthful and transformational conversations about it all and even how important her Aunt Nöel was (read on for more!) Elena is making waves in the LGBTQ+ community and her work with parents and allies is empowering. She has dedicated her life's work...

We had an exciting opportunity to chat with our headline panelist, the one and only Ms. Junior Mintt. Read more to hear about drag, her makeup line Mintty Fresh, and all things LGBTQ+: pride, allyship, and community.

Junior Mintt will be part of our next Pride and Joy Parent Event: Prepping Your Family for Pride, open to everyone and anyone who would like to be part of the conversation. Learn a little more about Junior Mintt on this post and catch her on Tuesday May 16 at 4pm PT/ 7pm ET for more on the conversation around all things pride. You can save your spot here!

"Being queer means embracing change and fluidity. Queer does not mean one thing, so embrace the fluidity of identity if you’re an ally and check your assumptions at the door. As a 28-year-old Black Trans woman, I am still learning and growing as I get to watch the queer youth begin to expand even further our understanding of gender. From Neo-pronouns to Tik Tok, think of being an ally as a...

I’m not a therapist or a trained mental health professional in any way. And when I find those resources and they help me, I’ll share them. 

What I am is an LGBTQ+ mom with at least one LGBTQ+ kid. And I’m not here to actually give you advice, I’m here to share and also hear from you. I’m here to start the conversation. 

First, thank you for even asking yourself this question. It means you’ve truly internalized your child’s identity. If you thought it was a phase, this event would feel like it happened to “others”, it would feel distant and not so immediate. 

But for those of us in the community, it’s very immediate. It’s right here. There is a mix of anger, sorrow, and fear. This emotional cocktail is normally squashed, we don’t allow it to take up much rent in our brains. When we do, it feels like we’ve let them win.  

But waking up yesterday to the news of what happened in...

Takeyla Benton is a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Analyst by day and revolutionary poetic bodhisattva soul every other day.

She has over 15 years of experience in banking management and career mentorship. She's a life coach, mystic, and guided meditation coach helping Black and Brown women find their purpose through the pain. She's a mother, writer, and activist for transformational growth from within.

Takeyla is speaking at the Parents and Leaders as Allies track on the Pride and Joy Summit about Corporate Allyship.

Join us to learn more!

Isabella Armour (she/they) is a Digital Marketing Specialist who serves LGBTQ+ owned and inclusive small businesses.

They focus on normalizing queerness within digital spaces, like Pinterest and Instagram and they push to make the online business world a place that is human-first and trauma-aware.

She is speaking on the Coming Out Early in Life track at the Allyship, Communication, and Boundaries Panel about "Supporting your Fellow Queer People".

Join us to learn more!

Hey guys,

The LGBTQ community is having a collective realization and it involves you.

My daughter and I were driving in the car when the Dixie Chick's song Gaslighter came on. She asked what it meant and I explained that gaslighting is what happens when someone hurts you, but when you call them on it, they refuse to apologize.

Instead, they say things like "You're being really sensitive!" or "You took it that way, that's not my fault. I wasn't intending to be hurtful." Or the BEST is "I never said that. I think you're imagining that."

Overall, gaslighting creates a sense of confusion, of not being able to trust your gut or the validity of what people say and mean. If you notice your LGBTQ co-workers, family, and friends, looking at you a little strangely, there's a reason.

We're having a collective moment of realizing that while 80% of our nation says they support us, 50+% voted the opposite of that. Their words and their actions are not adding up.

So we're questioning everyone...

As a lot of you know, I am a pretty open-minded individual. I would go as far as saying that I am probably one of the more socially progressive people in most of the local groups I volunteer with, my small circle of local friends, my lifelong friends from childhood, and even my immediate family. I mean, one of my favorite shows on TV right now is "We're Here". It's a series on HBO about three drag queens traveling around to small, conservative communities with hopes of opening the minds and hearts of the folks who live there, to be more accepting of people within their communities, who feel like they don't belong. It has ALL the feels and the best cast! I'm also an empath, I'm learning how to be a better ally, and I always pull for the people who feel like they don't really fit in. Mainly, because I know that feeling all too well.

I have very short hair, I have broad shoulders, not much to speak up for hips, I wear a t-shirt or hoodie every day and I rarely go without...

It takes insight and intelligence to know our ‘self’. Not everyone dares to discover it and embrace their real whole self. Because it takes immense strength too.

 As a straight ally, I have tried to know the puzzle and pain one has to go through in the process of finding one’s ‘self’. It is quite a baffling state of existence where you don’t identify with the terms society has attributed to you. Because for the majority of the society, sexuality is something to be attributed to a person based on the biological or physical appearance they can interpret. For them, everything is either black or white, no greys in between.

Coming out for LGBTQ people would have been an easier process if their society would start to understand that sexuality never exists in binary. It’s a spectrum of different shades.

I have friends who ended up in forced marriages against their will and got...