 When I was about 12, my mother preached a sermon about Queen Vashti. She praised Vashti for her self-awareness and healthy pride, for refusing to leverage herself as a commodity or for casual entertainment and for loving herself enough to resist the status quo. I don't recall much else about that sermon, but I absorbed the lesson on dignity and disobedience and when the church in my family could not nourish me. That lesson did. Pride celebrates embodied pleasure, but it's also about our resilience, integrity, dignity and empowerment. These are values I inherited from my family and faith and I hope one day we'll be able to celebrate them together.