Mel Defilippo, a prevention services manager with A Place to Nourish Your Health (APNH), explains healthcare offerings to event attendees.
“I’ve never, ever gone to a place like this before,” said Darnell Ray, taking in the flurry of queer-affirming healthcare and self-care opportunities that filled the New Haven Pride Center.
Ray first came out as gay at the age of 19. Now, at 51, he’s recently built up the courage to attend LGBTQIA+ community gatherings.
He had never been to the Pride Center before Friday’s “Pride In Balance” event, a five-hour health-themed festival featuring local artists and businesses as well as over a dozen mental health and medical providers.
“I’m a really shy person,” Ray said. “To come into a place like this helps me to open up and see that there are others like us out here.”
Darnell Ray.
Bennie Saldana, the Pride Center’s support services coordinator, came up with the idea for Pride In Balance in order to “bridge the gap” between health providers who want to serve LGBTQIA+ patients with dignity and clients struggling to find respectful medical providers.
Medical and mental health care has historically been fraught for many LGBTQIA+ people, whom the American Psychiatric Association classified as “disordered” until in some cases as recently as 2013.
Queer people continue to have worse mental and physical health outcomes than cisgender and straight counterparts. In a recent KFF study, one third of LGBT adults reported experiencing discrimination from a medical provider.
And a national surge of legislation has restricted gender-affirming medical care in other states, prompting a handful of trans visitors from out-of-state to recently turn to the Pride Center for help finding healthcare in Connecticut, according to Saldana.
Through Pride In Balance, Saldana sought to offer a more hopeful narrative: that it’s possible — and it matters — for queer people to take care of their minds and bodies.
“We’re here, and we’re not going anywhere,” he said. “We’re not afraid to be visible, and we’re going to be resistant.”
Among the Pride Center clients whom Saldana assists, “anxiety is the first visible reaction” to healthcare conversations, he said. “A lot of people get overwhelmed, specifically for transgender clients.”
But “the resources are more accessible than you might think,” he said.
Victoria Messinger, Jordan Bidwell, and Katherine Buccigross represent Youth Continuum's homelessness, trafficking, and addiction services.
The event championed an expansive definition of health. The two dozen or so vendors included traditional healthcare providers, such as medical centers and mental health counselors, alongside artists, local game shop Elm City Games, food vendors, and organizations specializing in homelessness and domestic violence support.
Over the course of the afternoon, attendees enjoyed food and smoothies, tried out “sound bathing,” and received massages, all free of charge (with an option to donate to the Pride Center’s ongoing fundraiser).
By the entrance, Pride Center bookkeeper Autumn Mortali distributed gift cards for haircuts at the Barberie Salon on Orange Street.
Those gift cards are part of a new program at the Pride Center in partnership with the Yale School of Medicine, an effort to broaden access to safe and gender-affirming hair stylists.
“Our bodies and our minds are connected,” Mortali said. “I feel so good after a fresh haircut.”
Anyone who is either trans or unhoused can sign up for a gift card by going to the Pride Center during drop-in hours, he said.
At a nearby table, local jewelry maker Jordan Perez offered an assortment of stone and metal pieces for sale.
His work is intertwined with his own mental health recovery. “This project came into a dark place in my life,” he said. “I deal with anxiety really badly, and depression. It consumed me really badly. All I could do was stay home.”
Beading helped him through that debilitating period. He first made a bracelet out of round, mint and white-colored Amazonite stone beads. The stone, he had read, represents “truth, harmony, and peace.” He created more and more jewelry, much of which incorporated small vintage keys. He eventually founded a shop called Keystone.
On Friday, he gave a key to every customer who purchased a bracelet or necklace, representing a step forward or a new phase of life. He said he always tells his customers, “Name your key.”
Jordan Perez...
...and his key-themed jewelry.
The organizations advertising LGBTQ-informed services on Friday included:
- MJay Therapy
- Prism Counseling
- Circle Care Center
- The Village Healer, LLC
- GBAPP Inc.
- Stokes Counseling Services
- Cornell Scott Hill Health Center- Grant Street Partnership
- yarnshaper
- Nolla Wellness
- Community Health Center Inc- All of us Research Program
- Elm City Games
- Stable Grounds Therapy
- Temple University’s Phoenix Gender Based Violence Lab
- Fair Haven Community Health Care
- Anchor Health
- Prudential Advisors
- Elm City Compass
- Keystone
- Youth Continuum
- Planned Parenthood of Southern New England
- Hartford HealthCare Rehabilitation Network
- APNH: A place to Nourish your Health
Wow wow wow what an awesome collection of community resources to share out with community. Pride Center, thank you for this brilliant creative gathering. But also, thinking that our city, the public good, should be providing for +