People really started figuring out that I was queer at the age of 15. I had known for a long time before that, but I never knew what that actually meant for me. So, when the people around me started flocking to me with questions about the community, or “if I’m going to get the surgery,” or ‘should this person receive HRT,” I didn’t know what to do. I needed a space where I could be a kid who liked Dungeons & Dragons, theater, choir, and also happened to be queer. I needed my being queer to just be normal.
The first place I ever found that acceptance was in Rainbow Youth. At the time I started attending, it was still recovering from the pandemic, it didn’t really have a whole lot of youth. Also, a lot of the old programming wasn’t there anymore–but that actually mattered to me. Most of the other youth were queer. Better yet, most of the adults were queer too. I appreciated that I never had to answer invasive questions or defend my pronouns to anyone, because they knew what it was like. We were free to just talk about what video games we liked, or similar interests we had, or whatever else we wanted because at Rainbow Youth we were people first and then queer.
As time has gone on, I’ve started doing more at Rainbow Youth. They consistently table the Pride events, and at all of these events they offer bracelets to hand out. They’re cute momentos from Pride and are always fun to hand out, but more often than not, I would end up taking beads home in order to have enough for Pride later too. It’s fun rushing to get as many bracelets as I could the night before, it was reminiscent of procrastinating on homework.
At one point RY (Rainbow Youth) partnered with 4-H for a summer camp called, Questing Clovers. It was focused on all things geek and was set to happen near the end of summer. Not only that, they were also looking for youth leaders. I, and a few others jumped at the opportunity to get trained so that we could be youth leaders in the Questing Clovers later that year. The training camp was interesting, but I learned a fair bit on how to be a camp leader, and also had a good time with the other RY kids who attended.
The Questing Clovers camp was extremely fun. A bunch of RY kids attended and the camp was all about all sorts of geeky topics like video games, DnD, old books and movie franchises. I also had the opportunity to learn about different plant life, weave flower crowns, and assist with the running of the camp; I returned to the camp the next year because of how inclusive it was.
Now as an adult, I have a good and well paying job. Currently, I’m working towards going back to school, and starting the beginning steps of a long awaited transition. I can confidently say that without Rainbow Youth none of this would have been possible.
-Silver Walls, Youth Program Assistant, former Rainbow Youth attendee
