03: Queer Resilience
We Don’t Just Witness Queer Resilience. We Help Create It.
Reflection: A Protective Rainbow Shell
A few years ago, I began using the image of a turtle in my Ally:Verb trainings to describe what queer resilience looks like.
Picture it: a turtle with a fabulous rainbow shell, moving slowly but deliberately as it explores the world. Head raised, confident.
And when danger comes—harsh words from other students, shame-filled laws, the erasure of identity—it quickly retreats. Back to a place that offers quiet and protection. It waits until it can sense that it’s safe to be out and open again.
For many LGBTQ+ youth, this retreat is a day-to-day experience rooted in survival. They are not hiding in their shell because they lack strength, but because the world keeps telling them it isn’t safe to be seen.
Still, LGBTQ+ youth continue to emerge and show the world who they are. They bounce back from isolation. They push through rejection, invisibility, and threat. Again and again. Every day. This is what courage looks like.
Queer resilience is more than just enduring difficult experiences or being “othered.” It’s about becoming—because of queer identity, not in spite of it. It means growing up in a world that tells you that you don’t belong, and still discovering connection, claiming identity, and building strength. It means facing rejection and creating belonging. It means understanding the power and beauty held within your “otherness.”
“Queer resilience represents the skills and abilities that are learned and developed because of adversarial experiences or stressors due to prejudice, discrimination, and violence rooted in homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia. These skills and abilities are historically and contextually dependent, as well as intimately connected to related forms of prejudice, discrimination, and violence based on other forms of difference.”
—Adam Greteman
And this kind of resilience doesn’t just happen on its own.
It grows when someone says, “You don’t have to go through this alone.”
It grows when a young person hears, “You have strengths—let’s name them together.”
It grows when we create spaces where LGBTQ+ youth feel safe enough to emerge—and strong enough to stay.
Action: Take Steps to Support Queer Resilience
Across the country, youth-serving organizations and schools are being pressured to pull back from affirming LGBTQ+ youth. Funding is disappearing. Research is being censored. Some advocates are stepping away, afraid of political repercussions.
But LGBTQ+ youth can’t opt out.
In states where laws now mandate outing students or ban gender-affirming care, queer and trans youth are still showing up—every day.
And as allies, we must show up with them.
Queer resilience is relational. It is not only a quality youth possess, but one that grows when we recognize it, reflect it, and nurture it. We have the power to shape the spaces and relationships that help LGBTQ+ youth come out of their rainbow shells—and stay out.
It can be strengthened by:
Adults who reflect a young person’s worth
Affirming spaces that allow for refuge and healing
Conversations that help youth identify the strengths and skills they’ve built through challenge and survival
Moments of celebration where queer identity is seen as something powerful, not just something to endure
This week, ask yourself:
Am I someone who helps others come out of their rainbow shell?
Have I created refuge—in my classroom, my office, my home, my relationships?
Do I celebrate queer strength not just in survival, but in all the gifts being queer holds?
Resource: The It Gets Better Project
For more than a decade, the It Gets Better Project has amplified stories of hope, strength, and resilience from LGBTQ+ people around the globe. What began as a viral video campaign has grown into a global nonprofit dedicated to supporting queer youth through visibility and storytelling.
These stories do more than promise a better future for a young person facing difficult odds. They offer real-life examples of possibility, agency, and power. They create the conditions for youth to say, “I see myself in that story. I see what I could become.”
Watching and using videos from the It Gets Better Project can be a powerful tool you can use to spark conversations, share affirming representation, and help young people see their own dignity and resilience more clearly.
🔗 Explore the videos, curriculum, and youth-led projects →
Closing Thought
Queer resilience doesn’t happen in isolation—it is shaped in community, in connection, and in the presence of people who choose to show up with care.
Right now, LGBTQ+ youth need more than encouragement to be resilient. They need us—adults who create spaces of refuge, who affirm identity, and who help name the quiet, powerful strengths already within them.
That’s what being an Ally:Verb in Action is all about.
If you’re ready to go beyond allyship as a label and start practicing it as a daily act of support, I’d love to work with you.
Learn more or get in touch at mentorist.org
And feel free to take our free, self-paced Ally:Verb courses that includes concrete actions you can take to build resilience in LGBTQ+ youth.
Together, we can ensure every rainbow shell is a place where young people feel seen, safe, and strong.
— Christian