What Pride Means To Zulily’s VP of People, Kelly Wolf
Zulily welcomes everyone to celebrate all our LGBTQ+ members, families and allies throughout Pride Month. Pride Month is so many things – a gathering of community, a celebration, and a time to celebrate love. In honor of Pride month, Kelly Wolf, Zulily’s VP of People, shares what Pride means to her and her family.
Happy Pride everyone!
During Pride month I’ve been reflecting on what Pride has meant to me through the years. Growing up in a small town in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the LGBTQ+ community was not discussed — except in the occasional whisper — or later, about the emerging AIDS pandemic.
As I reached my 20’s, the lack of visible LGBTQ+ lives in the media left me and my friends without examples of what our lives could become. Pride was a time when the community came together, and I could see the richness, diversity, and simple existence of the LGBTQ+ community.
As I approached my 30’s, my wife and I prepared to welcome our first child into the world. Being visibly pregnant at Pride in 2000 gave me a sense of pride that we could build the families and lives we wanted, but also a sense of insecurity as we wrestled with how to legally protect our rights as parents and as a family.
As I entered my 40’s, the possibility of the right to marry became a reality. By this time, my ‘wife’ and I had been together for 17 years, had two children, a mortgage, and a family and community that embraced us and valued our relationship. I wasn’t sure getting married would make a difference, particularly when the rights it afforded weren’t recognized at the federal level. When we married in 2012, it did feel different.
When Washington became one of the first states to legalize same-sex marriage in 2012, Pride meant that our rights as a family were protected. Reflecting on Pride in the last several years, I took pride in my daughters. In the short distance from my childhood to theirs, they have seen monumental social change. They have grown up understanding what it meant for their moms to be granted equal rights to marry under the law, and they have been part of an increasingly open and inclusive community. I can see how this has shaped their identities as advocates for equal rights for all. Their generation is one of the first to grow up in a world where LGBTQ+ visibility and representation have made it increasingly safer for young people to be their authentic selves.
This year, I’m reflecting on how fragile these rights still are. The last five years have shown us that despite this incredible progress, many would reverse progress made in equal rights for women, the BIPOC community, and the LGBTQ+ community. It reminds me that despite ongoing change, our work is not done, and we must stay alert, active, and engaged in fighting for equal rights for all.
Let’s make Pride both a celebration of progress and a commitment to supporting the work that lies ahead.
The history of Pride Month
We celebrate Pride in June to commemorate the LGBTQ+ Liberation Movement, which was sparked in June 1969 after a police raid turned violent at the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Manhattan, NY. At the time, LGBTQ+ activities in public were still largely illegal.
The subsequent Stonewall uprising and protests ultimately contributed to the expansion of LGBTQ+ rights in America and beyond. A year after the protests caused by the Stonewall raid, movements across the country organized Pride marches to inspire the growing activism movement.
Now, every year, the Pride marches are remembered at annual parades in cities throughout the world. Pride Month focuses on awareness, tolerance and education to foster LGBTQ+ equality with vibrant, colorful, full-of-love pride.
Wear Your Pride
Our team thoughtfully curated a collection of products to help everyone in your family show their pride and express themselves in every shade of the rainbow.
