Pride 2022

It's been a tough year for a lot of reasons, but as they say, after the storm comes the rainbow. 

Owen has an incredibly supportive group of friends at Duke Ellington and a number of these friends are LGBTQ+. So when they invited him to join them at Pride, he immediately said yes and then in turn invited Nora. I was more than a little anxious about the two of them going off on their own in downtown DC, surrounded by throngs of people (Saturday was both the March for Our Lives protest and the DC Pride Parade), but they assured me they could handle it. And they did. On Saturday, after climbing with Gabriel, Owen and Nora metroed downtown and met up with the Duke crew.

It turned out that Owen was actually not just meeting up with his friends at Pride, but rather, he was joining his friends to march with Duke's Gender & Sexuality Alliance in DC's Pride Parade. After a flurry of texts to get a DCPS Field Trip Form in place, Owen and Nora became flag bearers for Duke.

For Owen, it was cool experience (although exhausting after two-hours of climbing followed by two-hours of marching), but for Nora it was something more. Hearing everyone cheer as they marched by felt as if everyone was cheering and celebrating Nora being themself.

As everyone should.

(To see all of Nora and Owen's pictures, click here.)