On June 1, the first day of Pride Month, I posted this story to my company’s employee newsfeed. I know how fortunate I am to be safe and comfortable enough to do that. I wish everyone could feel that way.

Each year at the beginning of June, I think about Edie Windsor and Thea Speyer. Though they’re both gone now, in the not-too-distant past, Edie fought a long battle to have her marriage to Thea legally recognized in the United States.

She refused to give up on the promise of America. And she refused to shrink any part of herself in order to fit into the America that she dreamed of.

Her victory led the way for the US Supreme Court to declare marriage equality the law of the land in June of 2015. Edie died two years later, at the age of 88, having been a freedom fighter for LGBTQ rights since the 1960s. She spent her life fighting for justice and equality and truth.

She won. And love won.

Each year, in the middle of June, I think about the truth. Eleven years ago this month, on a Sunday night, I came out. I was 41 years old. I’d been married nearly 21 years. Our kids were 16 and 13. And I was full of guilt and shame.

The instant I said the words and left the proverbial closet, I learned that the truth is both a beautiful and terrible thing. The truth wasn’t going to feel hopeful to most of the people I loved. And, in or out of the closet, there would be a heavy price to pay.

The deeper truth I wouldn’t come to understand until later is that I didn’t realize how much you can take from someone by denying them the words they need to describe themselves. By denying yourself the words you need. By denying the truth – and the reality – that is you.

I have to pause here and say that I truly owe a lot to the City’s Employee Family Assistance Program (EFAP). Around this time, I found my first good therapist through that program. My head was like an unsafe neighbourhood back then – I couldn’t go there alone.

So, every other week, I would sit next to that therapist’s sagging bookshelf, on a couch that had seen better days, and unlock my incarcerated self. It was there I first learned that our wounds are often the openings to the best and most beautiful parts of us.

And, it was there I learned that not all families are like fine glass vases that go from treasure to trash the moment they’re broken. Something else sometimes happens to them. We can pick up our pieces – and help others gather theirs too – and we can all go on but, in a new way. Maybe not so much broken as broken open.

Each year, at the end of June, when Pride celebrations are over, I think about how we’re able to have moments like Tri-Pride and the staff event today in the City Hall Rotunda – because we stand on the shoulders of giants. The shoulders of everyone who came before us and fought for our right to openly live our best and most beautiful lives. The countless, nameless heroes and generations that we honour now by carrying on what they started so that others can live their best and most beautiful lives, too — in safety and comfort and love.

Because that’s what Pride is. It’s a protest for – and a celebration of – the right to live our best and most beautiful lives in safety and comfort and love. It’s more than the Stonewall riots that got the movement started 50+ years ago.

It’s also the countless small acts of courage of millions of people – across the decades – who stood up, who came out, talked to parents, parents who loved their children no matter what, folks who were willing to endure bullying and taunts, and who stayed strong – and came to believe in themselves and who they were.

They showed us that love wins. #lovewins. That’s the mega-trending hashtag throughout Pride Month, originally meant to commemorate the victory of marriage equality. It’s the sentiment that will be on our volunteer shirts as City staff make our first official appearance at the local Tri-Pride celebration next weekend. I chose it.

I love the sentiment because it invokes the one thing that unites us all – love. But I’ll be wearing it knowing that #lovewins is still just an ideal. Something we must all keep relentlessly fighting for – because there are still so many 2SLGBTQ people in the world for whom love has not won.

#lovewins is a reminder that we cannot lose sight of the fact that history doesn’t just travel forward – rocketing in an ever upward arc toward victories like marriage equality. It can — and will — go backwards if we don’t keep working hard.

We see it daily, right now, if we look. Transgender women are still the most likely group to experience discrimination, harassment, and violence. We’re losing scores of transgender kids every day to suicide and addiction. 2SLGBTQ people are three times more likely to experience physical or sexual assault. Many countries around the world continue to mutilate or put 2SLGBTQ people to death. Right next door in the US, we’re seeing the systematic dismantling of 2SLGBTQ rights and the rebuilding of stigmatizing views, on a daily basis.

So many 2SLGBTQ stories end before they can ever really begin. These stories were and are incredibly important. They may be the only thing that could ever truly shift hearts and minds. Because it’s harder to hate someone when you know their story.

Stories connect us. They show us our own humanity. They teach us to accept and appreciate and value that which is not us. They help us all to feel less alone in the world. I think one of the most important things we can do on this earth is to let people know that they are not alone.

So, I tell this story – for whatever it’s worth. It makes me a little braver each time I do it. Hopefully, it makes the world a little braver. I think we could all stand for the world to be a little braver. Especially right now.

It’s now the beginning of June and I’m thinking of Edie Windsor today. “Don’t postpone joy,” she said.

Don’t. Postpone. Joy.

I know I’m privileged to really revel in those words at least twice a year. Once in June, at the start of Pride. And once in October, on the day I married my wife.

May we all feel as safe and happy as I did that day. May we all live with ease and liberation. May we all celebrate that the lives we’ve been given – and those we’ve given our children – will be lived authentically. When it’s all over, may we all look back and know we lived our lives exactly as we truly are: fully known and full loved. May we all be free.

#lovewins when this is the story that we can all tell about our lives. Until then, there will be a parade.