For some members of the LGBTQ+ community, the holidays can be a lonely time if they struggle with feeling rejected by family members. One group is trying to ease that pain with a simple gesture: sending letters to let them know they are loved and appreciated just the way they are.
This year, the Pinta Pride Project brought together more than 800 letter writers from across the country to send cards, letters and drawings to community members who asked to be involved.
“A lot of these people are estranged from their families and feel really alone,” Carolyn Pinta, who founded the nonprofit, tells PEOPLE.
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Members of the Pinta Pride Project display letters they wrote to members of the LGBTQ+ community for the holidays.
Robert Eberhardt
A message or card can be an effective way to suppress that emotion. “It’s a very personal thing to receive a handwritten card,” says Pinta, who has received requests from a range of people seeking support, including a man who underwent conversion therapy, a woman whose family disowned her after her daughter transitioned, and a man who said his Christian roommates “don’t accept me.”
Pinta started the project out of her home in Buffalo Grove, Ill., in 2022 to raise awareness and support for the community after her seventh-grade daughter came out as bisexual.
“Her father and I are doing this to support all the kids who don’t have the support she does,” Pinta tells PEOPLE.
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During the first year of the letter writing campaign, non-religious holiday cards of love and affirmation were sent to approximately 2,100 people. This year, letter writers send more than 35,000 letters, she says.
The effort has spread so far that one letter is even going to Sarah McBride, a Democratic politician from Delaware who recently made history by becoming the first openly transgender person elected to Congress.
McBride was recently the target of a bill introduced by South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace that would bar transgender people from using single-sex bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities at the Capitol and other federal properties around the country that do not match their biological sex.
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Letters from the Pinta Pride project.
Carolyn Pinta
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Receiving holiday cards in the mail, even from strangers, can be truly heartening, says Bert Smith, who lives in Austin, Texas.
“I put off opening them until the day I really needed them, and that day came last weekend, when I made the difficult decision to go through my closets and sort through my late husband’s clothes,” says Smith.
“It was a lot more draining than I thought it would be, but what helped me through it? Opening the cards,” Smith continues, adding that the letters “gave me so much peace.”
Smith adds, “it cannot be understated how much it meant to me.”
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education