I am struggling with what happened in Orlando. I feel this desperate need to wrap my arms around the entire LGBTQ community and let them know I value them. That I find their existence wonderful because it broadens the “traditional” meaning of love and opens the world up to everyone. That the way they embrace color and sex and music and dancing during Pride makes me wish I were a member of their community.

My arms are too small to wrap around an entire worldwide community and Orlando’s blow struck too deep for the love of one person to overcome it.

But I can add a drop of acceptance and love into the pool. I can watch it spread out in waves and get bigger as other people add their love in too. Drop by drop each of us can build an ocean of love big enough to wipe away the hatred and create a still and peaceful pool of acceptance. A place where love is recognized as love, and accepted with love, because damn it, it’s love. It’s something so precious we all search madly for it over and over again because we need it to live. Not to exist, but to live.

We should be thrilled to see the number of ways love happens grow. There is nowhere near enough love in this world right now. It is a world ringing with hate and vitriol and separatist thinking and US vs THEM. The world we currently live in isn’t the world I want. I want a world where freedom doesn’t mean the opportunity to think and behave exactly like the dominant population, but where freedom means…free.

So I am going to keep throwing my arms around the people I know in this community. I am going to keep adding drops of love into the morass of feelings everyone is swimming through after Orlando. I’m going to continue to be an ally and fight for equality and that vision of a world where love truly wins.