I find myself looking back on Pride in Maine with a conflicted sense of nostalgia.

Pride is meant to be a very happy time of year, a time to celebrate how far our communities have come. And I love Pride Month. But, this year, my joy has been tempered by anger and fear.

I’m a Massachusetts girl who moved to Portland from New Hampshire in the spring of 1994. I’ve been invested in LGBTQ+ rights for as long as I can remember.

I proudly took part in the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. I remember volunteering with the gay rights group Maine Won’t Discriminate in the 1990s, feeling fired up about the fight for basic human rights and equality.

I was young and idealistic back then. I was hopeful and perhaps a bit naïve. I was sincere and determined. And I believed that love and kindness would conquer all.

Little did any of us know that some 30 years later, LGBTQ+ rights would still be bitterly contested, here in Maine and nationwide. And now with the added bonus of hateful internet trolls.

In 2009, it was a crushing blow when same-sex marriage was denied in the voting booth by my fellow Mainers. Redemption came in 2012; same-sex marriage was legalized in Maine. (We had to wait another three years for it to become legal federally.)

But back to Pride.

Through the decades, I’ve attended and participated in countless Portland Pride parades and related events, including the legendary pier dances of the late ’90s/early 2000s. I have many happy memories of these celebrations, and each Pride season here I’ve made a few more.

But this year hits different.

This year I feel there’s a target on the back of pretty much every LGBTQ+ person. This year I’m wondering, as a gay woman, if my own marriage could wind up being revoked. Is that unlikely? Maybe. But I know for sure that some people in Maine wish people like me didn’t exist. This year I’m very worried about the well-being of my trans friends. This year feels hard.

Despite the emotional baggage and worry, I’m trying to hold my head up as high as I can muster. I will stand up and be counted and will lift up anyone who needs lifting up. I won’t let the current political climate consume me and I hope you won’t, either.

This past Saturday, I attended the 2025 Portland Pride Parade and, despite everything I was worried about, I had a hell of a good time.

The parade itself was entirely joyful. I ran right into it several times to hug marching and/or driving friends, including just-retired radio legend Lori Voornas, a pair of educators and a longtime staffer at the Frannie Peabody Center. I also cheered for every single float, organization, church group, business, nonprofit and anyone else who was marching.

I even ran out in front of the Central Maine Power marchers and yelled at the top of my lungs, “Flip a switch, and I’m gay!”

A Pride T-shirt was handed to me (OK, I begged for it) from my favorite cheap-cup-of-iced-coffee establishment: Cumberland Farms. My spouse and a friend of ours helped to carry the gigantic rainbow flag down to Deering Oaks Park for the festival.

This Pride season, I hope that everyone out there who is fearful has an opportunity to feel seen and cared about. Our lives and experiences matter.

We’ve never wanted special rights, we just want to live our lives.

Aimsel Ponti is writer and content producer at the Portland Press Herald.