I’ll be honest: I don’t have a dramatic coming out story.
For a long time, I wasn’t even sure who I was. So, I didn’t really hide. I just let people assume what they wanted. There was no big secret, no painful reveal. When I did come out, the people around me at work – colleagues and managers - were kind and completely unbothered. I was lucky.
I know not everyone is.
For many in the LGBTQIA+ community, hiding was never a choice. It was safety. I don’t want to flatten that. I’ve met people carrying far heavier things than I ever had to.
And maybe because my path was easier, I could see it at all. When hiding nearly breaks you, you only have eyes for your own pain. Mine cost me little, so I had room to look up. And I saw everyone, quietly, doing a version of the same thing. That quiet act of letting people assume, not quite showing all of yourself, is not just a gay thing. We are all closeted. The LGBTQIA+ community was just the first to admit it.
We walk into a room and quietly decide which parts of ourselves to leave at the door. The opinions we keep to ourselves. The parts of our lives we keep vague. The version of us we think the room wants to see. We call it being professional. Often, it is quieter than that: I want you to be comfortable, so I’ll be whoever you need me to be.
And it costs us. You can’t do your best work while spending half your energy managing who you’re allowed to be. A person in hiding is a person at half power. You can feel it across a team: in the meetings where no one says the real thing, in the good people who slowly drift away.
That’s why our theme this Pride Month is simple: Be You. Belong Here.
And it happens in that order.
First, Be You. You can’t stop hiding until you know what you’re hiding. That means looking at yourself honestly: your contradictions, the places you perform, the simple question of who you are when no one needs you to be anyone in particular. I had to do this myself before I could be open. You can’t share a self you haven’t met.
Then, Belong. Once you know yourself, you stop trying to fit in. Fitting in always meant changing who you are. Belonging is the opposite: being accepted as you already are. But here’s what we don’t say enough. You can’t belong alone. Acceptance is something a place must give you. You bring your real self to the door; the room must be glad you walked in.
And that half is on us. A person can only be themselves where it’s safe to be. So, this is our promise. As colleagues, as leaders, as Wipro, we will keep building a place where you don’t have to brace yourself before you speak, where being different isn’t something, you survive but something we’re genuinely glad of. You bring the courage to be you. We’ll keep building the room that’s glad you did.
And here’s how that room gets built by each of us. The more at ease you are with yourself, the easier everyone else becomes. When you’re not spending energy hiding, you stop policing how other people show up. You stop flinching at the person who is different. Their freedom stops feeling like a threat. It starts to feel like an invitation.
Because this was never only about one kind of difference. It’s about all of us. The colleague who is shy. The one who thinks differently. The one quietly rebuilding after a hard year. Every person carries some weight. And what I’ve come to admire most isn’t a label. It is anyone who can accept their own flaws, show up honest, and let themselves be seen.
We are not the same. We were never meant to be.
So, this Pride Month, when you take part, don’t do it only for them - the colleague, the friend, the child you love who belongs to the LGBTQIA+ community. Do it for yourselves too. Because you are as similar to them as you are different. The wish to stop hiding, to be seen, to belong without shrinking yourself - that was never only theirs. It’s yours too.
