Hi Friend,

Do you like strawberries?

I love strawberries.

Fresh from where they grow wild all along the edges of our yard.

On top of the cake. In ice cream. As part of a smoothie. Dipped in chocolate. With cream.

Strawberries are many things to many people. In the Haudenosaunee Words Before All Else (the Thanksgiving Address), they are the leaders of the plants.

And as you may recall, they are a key part of the origin story and purpose of Krissy's non-profit, Strawberry Wisdom. So much has been happening at Strawberry Wisdom since I last shared about it with you all - it really deserves a much longer note than I am writing here. I'll try to share more in a few weeks....

Happily, this June, Strawberry Wisdom is offering TWO online circles... and both of them include an invitation to bring strawberries to the circle. Yes. We will celebrate strawberries by eating them, not just talking about them. We encourage you to bring a strawberry to this online circle if you are so inclined! Expect storytelling, sharing, and active participation! The first one is this week!!!

Learn more here

You may have noticed that June is Pride Month, honoring the protests and subsequent gay rights movement that emerged after the violent police raid of New York City’s Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, in 1969. Thirty years later, President Bill Clinton designated June as Gay Pride month, and it has been gaining strength in cities and counties across the nation - and around the world- ever since.

In recent years, the resistance by people who feel threatened by many forms of diversity, including against all things LGBTQ+, has also been growing.

One of my clients is based in Tennessee, and so I've been hearing about the rising (though hardly new) anti-queer (amongst other forms of freedom and diversity) sentiments in that state. Tennessee has enacted more anti-LGBTQ+ laws than any other state in the country. Tennessee was the first of what’s now 25 states banning gender-affirming care to remain in place. (For more, see: Human Rights CampaignKFF)

This past spring, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee designated June 2026 as “Nuclear Family Month.” This defined the family unit as “one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children.” The resolution explicitly describes this as “God’s design for familial structure.” Yes, the timing is meant to push back against LGBTQ+ visibility during the month of June. Nor is Tennessee alone. In part inspired by Tennessee’s actions, Indiana’s Governor declared June “Nuclear Family Month” on the first day of Pride Month as well. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders proclaimed June “Fidelity Month.” The Advocate + 2).

And that's just a few headlines….

When checking in with a queer colleague in the region about how they are dealing with all this, I heard both fear and anxiety as well as clear resistance: We see you trying to get us to pick this ‘Nuclear Family Month’ thing up. And we aren’t playing that game. We are not engaging.

They are still finding ways to celebrate Pride month.

I was heartened to hear that.

In these times, it might also be helpful to remember…

For centuries, the Church and societal norms condemned same-sex intimacy as unnatural. "Unnatural" was based on interpretations of nature.

However, those interpretations are, science is increasingly finding, untrue.

There's a growing field doing research on this, including “queer ecology", which reveals a long history of non-exploitative, intimate bonds throughout the natural world. A key insight of queer ecology is that gender and sexual fluidity don’t appear in nature as exceptions. They show up in many forms, across many species. In other words: queerness is natural. (Here is an article on this is: Queer ecologists are spreading knowledge & changing lives amid climate crisis (LGBTQ NationGrist)

I wrote about some of these themes last year in this article: Our Queer Kin-dom: Science Keeps Finding That Sexual Diversity Is Nature’s Original Design. It was inspired in part by realizing how many people needed stories from their more than human kin, not just from their beloved human families - gender-fluid clownfish to lifelong gay dolphin couples. Same-sex and gender-fluid behavior has been documented in over 1,500 species. You can read the piece here.

I admit: I don’t do much to celebrate Pride Month, per se. But I do love celebrations in general, and Krissy and I tend to celebrate ourselves and our communities and the landscapes we are lucky to live within fairly often. And I like to offer something to the long line of queer ancestors behind me, who have made it possible for me to live a life that is not especially defined by my sexuality- at least not so far.

For everyone out there who is feeling the social pressures of fear, anxiety and uncertainty for yourself and/or your loved ones… take courage.

And don’t believe the lies. Stay in your truth, including that you can keep exploring what that is.