MARCHING TOWARDS HOPE

BY FAYE SEIDLER, 2023 PRIDE PARADE GRAND MARSHAL

My name is Faye Seidler and I have the enormous honor of being selected as the 2023 Grand Marshal for the Pride Parade. I’m a suicide prevention advocate that has dedicated my life to improving outcomes in North Dakota. And even with everything happening locally or nationally, I want people to know there is hope and there are many great reasons to have hope.

For one, our LGBTQ+ youth have never had a better chance to grow up with supportive, loving parents. There have also never been more resources, education, or access to queer topics. And whether it is a lesbian taking her high school crush to their first dance, a trans girl who got to fully experience a happy childhood, or a queer youth who’ve you worried about for years turning their tassel at graduation, there is so much hope, beauty, and joy in this world that didn’t exist for my generation or the ones the came before.

I’m not saying there aren’t struggles too. I’m the LGBTQ+ data and outcome expert for North Dakota and a big part of my work is understanding those struggles. It isn’t just data or stories to me either, I’m a queer woman who was born and grew up in Fargo-Moorhead. I’m a survivor of suicide and a ton of other awful statistics. I know what it’s like to carry forward not really living as much as just hanging on for as long as you can.

And while I know this, I also know there are so many phenomenal advocates and allies across every sector and in every community fighting for a better world. I cannot even begin to explain how truly amazing and incredible our LGBTQ+ leaders in this state are. Especially when you know how tough the work can be, what criticism they hear, the personal struggles they don’t talk about, and burn out all while they still keep the lights on, smile, and push forward.

Whenever I feel hopeless, I think about all of that. I think about how we’re a community and our work together is way more important than any of our individual contributions. I think about all of the elders who fought their entire life to get us to today. The defining center of my work has always been about connecting and supporting others.

I’m proud to say that the culmination of almost a decade of this effort resulted in the North Dakota LGBTQ+ Healthcare and Community Directory, a resource I created through my work as a project manager with Harbor Health Initiative, that shows every affirming doctor and LGBTQ+ community organization throughout the state.

It’s sort of funny because in 2015, I was at the FM Pride Parade shouting to a reporter over the roar of the crowd celebrating marriage equality and talking about how the next big push in LGBTQ+ equity would be trans healthcare.

What I didn’t know then was I’d be the one to help start the first informed consent clinic for hormone therapy in the region or that the work there would blossom into North Dakota’s first LGBTQ+ health center, Canopy Medical Clinic. And I never in my life thought I’d step on stage as the Grand Marshal eight years later, but that’s because for seven years I refused a nomination from anyone who asked me.

I refused because I felt scared, not of public speaking, but of letting people down. I felt like as long as I wasn’t too important, then it was okay to be imperfect. And part of me felt like there had to be a real hero out there who would show up one day and figure this all out. What really changed for me was the 2023 legislative session.

Since the start of this year, my waking and working hours have been the same. During the legislative session I submitted 41 pieces of testimony, accounting for 32,800 words. I made hundreds of social media posts, sent thousands of emails, sat on countless meetings, developed bill tracking and voting resources, wrote to every paper, connected everyone working in healthcare, and I even begged for and got the date the North Dakota Senate heard the anti-trans laws moved, because it coincidentally fell on Transgender Day of Visibility and I just wanted to give everyone one warm day of positivity and hope before everything really sunk in.

I worked around the clock to be a beacon of hope. I knew a lot of my effort wouldn’t change the outcome of the bills, but I knew I could change the outcome of the community.

I knew if people saw me working as hard as I did, they wouldn’t feel as hopeless. And after spending seven years avoiding being a leader and waiting for a hero, I had to step up. And what I thought about was what I’d say to myself as a kid. And I don’t think she would benefit from my excuses. I don’t think she’d care that I wasn’t perfect. I think she would be happy that I tried. So, I did. The truth is that the world isn’t full of heroes, but it is full of people who should try anyway. It’s a lesson I learned from my favorite author, Terry Pratchett, along with the knowledge that hope is something we create.

As we celebrate 2023’s Fargo Moorhead Pride, I want people to think about all of the ways we can create hope for ourselves and each other. That we create space and lift up underrepresented voices in the queer community, whether that is BIPOC, transgender, youth, or disabled folks to name a few. Remember that whether it’s through joy or love, the simple act of being happy as a LGBTQ+ person is a radical protest to societal effort to shove us back into the closet.

As we march into the pride parade and subsequently the future, I will always be leading with hope. Anyone can reach out to me looking for or wanting to share resources, connection to community, directions on getting involved, and otherwise taking the call to make the world a better place. You don’t have to be a hero, you just need to be a person who tries.