Always So Inclined, Coloring Outside The Lines

“Unpack all your baggage
Hide it in the attic, where
You hope it disappears
This all seems so familiar
But it doesn’t feel like home
It’s just another unknown”
Shinedown – A Symptom Of Being Human

A few days ago, I did Pride At Home’s Pride Month Color Block Challenge with the color red and talked about hope. Red represents life, and as I reflected on my previous post, that meaning felt incredibly fitting. Life is messy, unpredictable, beautiful, heartbreaking, and everything in between. It’s the experiences we collect, the people we meet, the struggles we overcome, and the moments that remind us why we keep moving forward.

While the color itself represented life, the song I chose for that post, Not Alone by Red, centered around something equally important: hope. The reminder that even during our darkest moments, there are people willing to walk beside us. This time around, I’m doing orange. For orange, I chose A Symptom of Being Human by Shinedown as my soundtrack. The more I thought about it, the more it felt like the perfect song for this color. Within the traditional Pride flag (I know it’s been updated but for the challenge the colors are the colors), orange represents healing. Not celebration, not visibility, healing. While that may not be the first thing people think of when Pride Month comes around, it’s a powerful part of what Pride represents.

When I started thinking about what healing means in the context of Pride, I realized it isn’t necessarily about reaching some final destination where everything is perfect. Healing is not the absence of struggle. It’s learning how to move forward with the experiences that shaped you. It’s accepting yourself after years of questioning who you are. It’s finding confidence after periods of uncertainty. It’s discovering that the things that make you different were never flaws in the first place.

For many people, healing can take countless forms. It can mean healing from rejection, judgment, isolation, or simply the feeling that parts of yourself needed to stay hidden. It can mean finding a community where you feel accepted. It can mean finally reaching a place where being yourself no longer feels like something that requires permission. The thing about healing, though, is that it rarely happens all at once.

More often, it happens in small moments. In conversations. In friendships. In finding people who understand experiences that once made you feel alone. In realizing that the things you’ve spent years questioning about yourself may never have been problems to solve in the first place. That’s where A Symptom of Being Human comes in.

One of the reasons the song resonates with me so much is that it doesn’t try to offer easy answers. It doesn’t pretend life suddenly gets easier or that everyone eventually figures everything out. Instead, it sits with the reality that we’re all carrying something. Some people carry grief. Some people carry self-doubt. Some people carry fears about whether they’ll be accepted for who they are. Whatever it is, the song reminds us that struggling doesn’t make us broken. It makes us human.

The song acknowledges the things we often try to hide. The moments when we feel out of place, question ourselves, or wonder if anyone else could possibly understand what we’re experiencing. Then it flips the narrative entirely. Instead of treating those struggles as something that separates us, Shinedown presents them as the very things that connect us. They’re not signs that something is wrong with us. They’re symptoms of being human.

That message feels especially meaningful during Pride Month because so much of Pride is rooted in the understanding that nobody should have to hide who they are. It creates space for people to be seen, accepted, and celebrated. It creates opportunities for people to discover communities where they belong. It reminds people who may still be struggling that there are others who have walked similar paths and come out stronger on the other side.

Organizations like Pride At Home help foster those spaces within Second Life. Through events, community engagement, fundraising efforts, and fun things like the Color Block Challenge, they create opportunities for people to come together in support of LGBTQIA+ causes while celebrating the diversity that makes our community so vibrant.

For this photo, I leaned fully into the color theme with BH9’s Curtain Call backdrop in Hot Orange and AVEC TOI’s Placebo Outfit in Orange Latex. The combination immediately caught my attention because it felt impossible to ignore, which is fitting for a color that represents healing. Orange isn’t a quiet color. It demands to be seen. It radiates warmth, energy, and optimism.

What I loved most was the contrast between the bold, high-gloss finish of the latex and the message behind the post itself. Healing is often portrayed as something soft and gentle, but sometimes healing is about visibility. It’s about refusing to shrink yourself to make others comfortable. It’s about standing confidently in your own space and embracing every part of who you are. The glossy latex of the Placebo outfit paired perfectly with the vibrancy of the backdrop, creating an image that felt both powerful and unapologetic. In a month dedicated to authenticity and self-expression, it felt like a fitting visual representation. Not just recovery from the things we’ve endured, but the confidence that comes from accepting ourselves as we are.

In a lot of ways (beyond it literally being the next color), orange feels like the natural continuation of where the challenge began for me. Red represented life. Orange represents healing. When you think about it, those two ideas are deeply connected. Life isn’t just made up of our successes and celebrations. It’s also made up of our struggles, losses, setbacks, uncertainties, and moments of self-discovery. To truly live means experiencing all of those things, not just the easy parts.

Healing is what allows us to carry those experiences forward without letting them define us. It’s how we grow from the things we’ve endured. It’s how we learn to accept ourselves more fully. It’s how we find strength in places where we once felt vulnerable. That’s one of the reasons A Symptom of Being Human fits this color so perfectly. The song acknowledges every complicated part of life without judgment. It reminds us that none of us have everything figured out, and that the challenges we face aren’t evidence that we’re broken. They’re evidence that we’re living.

That’s why orange feels so important. Not because healing means we’re finished growing, but because it reminds us that growth is happening even when we don’t always see it. It reminds us that acceptance is a journey, not a destination. It reminds us that nobody has everything figured out, no matter how much it may seem that way from the outside. Most importantly, it reminds us that the things we sometimes view as imperfections are often the very things that connect us to one another. Life gives us experiences that shape who we are. Healing helps us understand what to do with them. If A Symptom of Being Human reminds us of anything, it’s that none of us are navigating that journey alone. Credits for everything can be found below, until next time, and yes next time will be yellow.

Pride At Home Presents : Pride Month Color Block Challenge

Celebrate Pride by bringing the colors of the rainbow to life!

Create an original “color block” photograph centered around ONE of the six classic rainbow colors:

Red • Orange • Yellow • Green • Blue • Violet

Your chosen color should dominate the entire image – clothing, makeup, props, lighting, background, accessories, styling, everything!
Make your color the star of the shot, well, as well as you, obviously!

Your photo must be:

– Original
– Taken by you
– Focused on one single rainbow color

That’s it. Simple, bold, creative.

Pose alone, collaborate with friends, or have fun with a group. Whether your style is glamorous, dramatic, minimal, surreal, cozy, futuristic, or chaotic – we want to see YOUR vision.

Selected submissions will be displayed in the in-world Art Gallery on the Pride At Home sim throughout June, and may also be featured across our social media and future Pride At Home projects.

How to Submit? Post your photo on the social platform of your choice and tag us, or share it directly in the Pride At Home server.

Can’t Pick a Color? Tell us and we’ll choose one for you.

Most importantly:

Have fun with it, get creative, and make your color shine.

We can’t wait to see what you create!

https://prideathome.online
https://www.facebook.com/PrideAtHomeSL
https://discord.gg/vM54dtH4zA
https://www.flickr.com/groups/slprideathome/
https://www.instagram.com/sl.prideathome
https://www.primfeed.com/slprideathome.resident

“Sometimes I’m in a room where I don’t belong
And the house is on fire and there’s no alarm
And the walls are melting too
How about you?
I’ve never been the favorite, thought I’d seen it all
‘Til I got my invitation to the lunatic ball
And my friends are comin’ too
On a ship of fools
Don’t worry, it’s all just a symptom of being human”
Shinedown – A Symptom Of Being Human

Credits:

Head: LeLUTKA.Head.NOA.4.0 ~ Jaden Nova
Head Applier: VELOUR: KALEB Skin for Evo X ~ Kiria Mama
Hair: [MFCNT] THOR Bun – Grooming Hair – LeBarbier Alpha
Hairbase: LeLUTKA.EvoX.Hairbase.044 (BOM) ~ Jaden Nova (Comes with the LeLUTKA NOA Head)
Eyes: Avi-Glam. Prism Eyes – Pack 2 ~ Eye Daddy
Ears: ^^Swallow^^ Gauged S Ears ~ Luciayes Magic
Ear Tattoo: RichB. Ears Tattoo #08 ~ Salvy Hexem
Beard: [MFCNT] Ducky Skunk Beard & Stache – LeBarbier Alpha
Beard Layer: [MR] Jimmi Facial Hair for EvoX Heads Style 1 ~ Daniel Whiskers
Body: [LEGACY] Athletic Edition (1.7.1) ~ MeshBody Resident
Skin: VELOUR: PICASSO HOMME Skin for Legacy (FIT/TAN) Picasso Neck ~ Kiria Mama