What Pride Means to Me
Please excuse my emotions. It’s about to get rambly in here.
Over the last six months, I’ve been blessed to be involved with a truly remarkable and awe-inspiring movement — the willful birth of acceptance for LGBTQ+ kids growing up in rural Michigan. The group is called I’ll Be Your Rock, and this Saturday will be our first ever Vermontville Youth Pride. As part of the event, I was honored to create a contest for area kids, ages 10–19, to submit art or written pieces that explain what Pride meant to each of them. It’s only three days until the big day, and I’m neck-deep in logistics and plans and the fluidness of life, and I had no intentions of writing my own answer to the prompt. But here we are.
I spent the first eighteen years of my life tethered to Vermontville, Michigan by the umbilicus of home. Vermontville strived to be the land of milk and honey, where everyone was white and “from here.” Except of course — even thirty years ago — not everyone quite fit. Some people were implants, and some were misfits. Some had committed a societal taboo, and some had a family member, some years back, who “was trouble.” Some are just shy, or had bad luck. In small towns, social hierarchies are just as hereditary as royalty, and growing up, you knew where you fit from birth. No one expects things to change, which is why I did everything I could to leave my hometown behind as fast as I could.
Despite the slow-turn of time that seems to affect rural areas, giving them the sense of hominess that makes cozy mysteries a cash cow, I grew up knowing and understanding the sharp, hidden edges of a small town. But I also grew up knowing the very best kind of people. I knew people who would give you the last dollar in their wallet, though they’ve been ground down by generations of midwestern work ethic for midwestern wages, and who still and forever call Vermontville home. I grew up surrounded by “Saturday nights shooting pool at the bar and Sunday mornings at the church” people. I knew the last several branches of most of my friends’ family trees, and you couldn’t get away with sneezing if you didn’t want your mom to know. I know plenty of people who experienced full-on panic attacks while buying condoms for this exact reason. Because people look out for each other, even when we don’t want them to.
Back in the 80s and early 90s, I didn’t really know how anyone I knew voted, save perhaps a few outspoken family members. I remember going with my mom when I was in kindergarten to vote. There were two little booths, surrounded by curtains like dressing rooms, at the village office. I asked her why we had to hide to vote. She said it wasn’t to hide, but to give people the absolute freedom to vote their own conscience, without anyone else influencing our choice. I guess I wasn’t quite old enough to influence my mom’s vote, but after she showed me how the machine worked, I turned my back so she could be free to choose. In Vermontville, everyone I know believes in freedom.
In 3rd grade, 1984, the teacher, held a mock election in class. Everyone voted for Reagan except me. My grandpa didn’t trust Reagan, which was good enough for me. Walter Mondale’s singular vote mocked me from the chalkboard, but I was proud to be different. After that, I started to realize that the way I saw things wasn’t always the way people around me did, but that didn’t make them bad people. In America, we had the right to be free to choose what’s best for our family. I knew that the neighbor’s house smelled the same way the teenagers who sat on the library steps did, and my mom swore that was marijuana, but somehow she didn’t notice when she went to coffee. Because people back then trusted each other to live their own lives, and she figured people had their reasons.
I wanted to learn everything, do everything, be anything except a repeat of what I believed were people stuck in a small town. I was an ass. I’m sorry. Every moment I spend back in Vermontville, now, decades removed from my childhood here, I remember so much of both the good and the bad, and how closely they can be related. As we’ve prepared for this Pride event, concerned parents have reached out to the school board, we’ve been threatened on social media, we’ve been called “groomers” and “pedophiles,” and a prayer vigil is being held to balance out our wrongdoing. And I am doing my very best to remember that so often, what brings out the worst in us is our best intentions. I know that the people fighting against our little, grass-roots group truly believe that we (and others like us) mean their children harm. I know, because I know them — or people close enough like them not to be able to tell the difference. I know because in Maple Valley, in mid-Michigan, in American, the only thing we can all agree upon more than football season and construction delays is that we love our children and we want their safety more than anything else.
So tonight, as I get ready for the last 48-hour push, I want to say this loudly and as eloquently as I can. I am proud to be from Vermontville, Michigan. I am so proud of the love I see in this town on both sides, and I’m so proud of the hope I see sparkling in the eyes of young people who are finding their people. I fled my hometown nearly 30 years ago, with no intention of ever returning in any meaningful way. But with the incredible outpouring of joy, hope, acceptance, generosity, love, and belief I’ve seen these last six months, I am so proud to be a small part of this movement, and this change. And I’m so sorry I didn’t have the faith to be involved sooner.
I was a big nerd with too many books in my head, divorced parents, and weird rules, growing up in Vermontville, and some days were rough. Growing up is lonely in the very best of circumstances. Not fitting makes every moment of loneliness all the more unbearable, because you can’t even fit in a simple round hole with your stupid square body. But my experience, my slow realization that you can create a hole where you fit best, has taught me that no one needs to go through decades of disconnect from their home or themselves. Only when I got to know my own children as young adults did I realize that we can give our kids the tools to carve out their perfect hole, right where they are.
On Saturday, a group of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, teachers, pastors, doctors, and various other good and decent people will be celebrating how proud we are that Vermontville is welcoming and accepting of everyone. No matter who they were born to be. We’ll have some music, some games, probably some laughter and tears, we’ll blow bubbles and sing-a-long with Encanto. We’ll create art and joy and peace and love, and we will be building a suit of armor made of self-confidence around any child that doesn’t feel like they fit perfectly in the hole that’s been made for them, building them up so they have the tools they need.
If that isn’t something to be proud of, I don’t know what is.
To learn more about our group, check out our GoFundMe page including updates and our story.
News Coverage: Lansing State Journal
Christine’s Story on Coming Out + Beyond Podcast
And above all, if you’d like to join us in person: We’ll be at
The Vermontville Community Center
108 N. Main St., Vermontville, MI
Saturday, August 20th
12 noon -7 p.m.
Featuring Nikki Holland & the Dirty Elizabeths and special guest, Ellie MacIntosh!
