Pride and Joy Foundation Launches Online Community
June marks the beginning of the long-awaited Pride Month, the annual celebration of the queer community across the globe. This year, June marks the launch of The Pride and Joy Foundation, an online, support community raising awareness of issues in the queer family.
The Pride and Joy Foundation aims to help LGBTQ families find allies, support for inclusivity and resilience, and a library of digital courses and tools that will teach concepts of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. This is meant to support families within the queer community, including parents and children of queer folks.
Whether it’s LGBTQ parents or LGBTQ children, families within the queer community need additional support facing the challenges not found in the traditional family setting. From bullying, exclusion from activities, lack of validation and affirmation, or uncertainty in general, queer families need assistance in a heteronormative society.
According to research done by the Trevor Project, the risk of suicide for an LGBTQ youth can decrease as much as 40 percent with just one trusted adult in their life. With The Pride and Joy Foundation, adults can develop the skills to become the one, trusted adult that every youth deserves.
Pride and Joy Foundation founder Elena Joy Thurston was married for 18 years and was a devout Mormon for more than 20 years before she came to terms with her sexuality. She describes coming out to her four children as the scariest moment of her life.
“I had raised my children to be devout, conservative members of our faith. I now had to tell them that I, their mom, actually embodied the evil that I had taught them was tearing down society,” Thurston says. “I had already lost my entire community, my marriage, my business. Was I going to lose my children, too? Would they flee to their dad’s house, disgusted with who I am? I have never felt fear like that.”
As a Mormon and a wife, she felt that it was only right to enroll in conversion therapy to try to get rid of her “deviant” sexuality. However, the therapy she encountered has traumatizing and devastating consequences. As a way to try to heal from the experience, she now speaks out against the practice of conversion therapy.
After being asked to do a virtual TEDx talk on her experience with conversion therapy and coming out, Thurston recognized the unique and necessary need for support and community for queer families. When the COVID-19 crisis led to speaking engagements and social gatherings being canceled, she found youth reaching out to her directly looking for support while being quarantined with their families. This is how the Pride and Joy Foundation began.
For the grand opening of the foundation, small business leaders have stepped up to create products in support of the launch. The Lather Bath Bar will be selling an artisanal PRIDE soal and the Joyful Jewelry Box had specially crafted custom PRIDE jewelry. Proceed for these sales will be donated to the foundation.
