pride 2025

june 2025 • digital collage

“There are no rules to being queer. No benchmarks you need to meet. Despite what society might like to say, being queer is as fucking human as you get. It takes more work to try and keep up with the status quo, and meeting those demands, than it does to just be…you . . . You belong. Okay?” — Will Foster, ‘All We Are’

The quote in this digital collage comes from one of my very favorite series by the immensely talented Jessie Walker.

I wish I could go back in time and gift these words to myself years and years ago, but I think, maybe, they tumbled into my life when I was most ready to receive them. I’m sharing them, now, at a time I think my community—and the world—needs them most.

The background art is “Variations 8” from Variations Quatre-Vingt-Six Motifs Décoratifs En Vingt Planches (1928) by Édouard Bénédictus. I found it in Raw Pixel’s public domain library, a.k.a. my favorite place online. The collage was created using Canva.