Ashnikko’s Love Letter to the LGBTQ Community

This Pride Month, Billboard asked artists to write a series of love letters to their LGBTQ fans, highlighting what the community means to them, as people and as artists. Below, Ashnikko thanks the community for teaching her that “love is not conditional or constricting,” or “rooted in fear.”

I spent my childhood in North Carolina, in the Bible Belt of the United States. My adolescence was spent in the notoriously homophobic Baltic state of Latvia. Being queer in those environments is one of the greatest heartbreaks of my life. It will stay with me forever. I have sanded over the rough edges of it, made it hurt less, but the weight of it still sits in my chest, a smooth marble.

I took the seed of who I was and buried it so deep inside myself that it lay dormant, hibernating, waiting. It was only when I moved to London at 18, when I started to find my people in the queer community, that I let the roots take hold and my growth began. I learned that love is not conditional or constricting, it is not rooted in fear. Learning that was like realizing I had been breathing wrong my entire life.

The impact the queer community has had on my life is something I will never have big enough words to say thank you for. Honestly, I’m really struggling to write this, because there’s so much to say and I don’t know how to say it. To the queer kids from places like where I’m from, if you’re feeling the vice grip of what people expect you to be, if you’re feeling the sharp sting of other people’s insecurities projected onto you in the form of fear, please know this; family is something you build, a garden you water. If there’s anything we’re good at it, it’s building community. Mine is extraordinary. I lay my head upon the roots of the willow tree, and she holds me and says, “Who you are is magical. All I want for you is the freedom to explore the glowing life force inside of you, however it evolves over time. Here in this garden, you can just BE.”

The world attacks us because they are scared of the questions our existence makes them ask themselves. The freedom to be yourself can crumble one’s foundations of carefully crafted personality sandcastles. There is a future of forehead kisses, family meals, picnics in the sun, board game nights, holding hands in public, french toast for breakfast, feeling held in every sense of the word, a safe place in this world. I feel so hopeful for you, for us.

To my LGBTQ+ community, I love you. My heart is ten times bigger since meeting you. My art is forever changed knowing you. The only opinions and reviews I care for are yours.

Forever yours,

-Ashnikko