My family is what keeps me centered and healthy ... Each week in June, we are publishing an essay by an LGBTQ writer that answers this question: Where do you find pride, joy and/or comfort ...

But I am grateful to have my new family — and the loud, boisterous merriment I dreamed of all those years before. Have a personal essay you'd like to share with TODAY? Email TODAYEssays@nbcuni.com.

Only months ago, my family survived Israel’s bombardment of northern Gaza, and I was detained by Israeli forces. Leila’s husband, who was deaf, was killed during Israel’s 2014 offensive in Gaza.

These ratios are impossible!” Read More: The Love Story of My Chosen Family After the song “Yesterday” was released, did anyone complain to Paul McCartney, “You’re not half the man you ...

I'm one of those New Yorkers living in Nashville, but perhaps you will forgive me since my family has deep roots in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Incredibly, my connection to New York began in ...

As a domestic, mixed-Black transracial adoptee, my search for my birth family and my beginnings was far easier to navigate, although I didn’t know it at the time I began searching. Growing up ...

As my family experienced, under a mass deportation regime, the fear and chaos is the point, and those living here with all the right papers are not immune. While my grandfather was never swept up ...