It’s June which is Pride month and if you’ve been following along with me over the years, you know that I’m very passionate about inclusion and how we make others feel. When it comes to pride month, coming together as a collective to celebrate who we are as individuals and spread love is my jam. I think it’s a beautiful thing to witness people being authentically themselves and feel safe doing so. And that’s something that I have always strived to be for others, a safe space to be whoever they are and not feel judged.
Pride encompasses the celebration of things like self-affirmation, dignity, equality, and to feel truly seen for who you are. When I think of these things, it reminds me of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. If you’re unfamiliar, Abraham Maslow created this hierarchy of needs to showcase his theory of human motivation. Maslow’s theory is that our actions are motivated by certain physiological and psychological needs that progress from basic to complex. He created a five-tier model of human needs and believed that people have an innate desire to be all they can be (aka “Self-Actualized”). But to achieve this goal, the lower, more basic needs must be met before you can keep going up the pyramid.
Now, I’m not here to give you a sociology lesson but what I do want to do is highlight that the need for pride is very much worked into the psychological needs that Maslow says that we all need in order to achieve our full potential. I would argue that pride is also baked into the basic needs of needing to feel safe and secure but if we’re just focusing on the middle of the pyramid – feeling like you belong and feeling confident to be yourself and know that others love and respect you for that is so important for us as individuals to then be able to take that out into the world and make a difference.
You can take or leave Maslow’s theories but what you can’t deny is that when people are living in their truth and have a community of people supporting them, magic happens. It doesn’t matter if you’re part of the LGBTQIA+ community or not. You can still embody everything that pride stands for which is having pride in yourself for who you are, having pride for other people for being who they are, and coming together to celebrate ourselves and one another. How freaking amazing is that?!
So as people are celebrating Pride this month and hopefully every single month, reflect on the pride you have for yourself and how you can use that to be a light in this world for others. Making people feel like they belong is a power that everyone has, so why not use it?
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