I was unfamiliar.

I have been sad and outraged when black churches have been turned from sanctuaries to targets of hate and violence, but I was unfamiliar with what my black friends felt.

I felt disturbed to hear stories of Stonewall, but I was unfamiliar with what it was like to fear for your safety by expressing your love.

Maybe I never will be able to truly understand those experiences because of the significant differences in our histories and struggles, but last Sunday, hundreds of miles from Orlando, in the safety of a visit to my parents’ home in Iowa, I became familiar.

I became familiar with what it feels like for a body count to knock the wind out of me. I became familiar with an inexplicable grief for the lives of people I will never meet. I became familiar with a hollow feeling of fear — a fear that is stronger and different than the fear I felt during the 13-plus hours I spent with my fiancée in our Watertown, Mass. apartment as tanks rolled down the street hunting for a Boston Marathon bombing murderer who could be in our backyard.

This week’s feeling is deeper. It is more personal.

Most LGBTQ people do not share something so core about who we are with our families. That is what makes the safety and solidarity of the LGBTQ community so profoundly important. To think that in our sacred space of acceptance, hate reigned with merciless terror, brings me to tears.

My privilege has been shown to me in ways I thought I understood, but clearly did not. I came out in one of the safest places to be queer and learn to love yourself and your sexuality – as a student at Mount Holyoke College in Western Massachusetts. By the time I wanted to get engaged, the states I’ve called home (including Iowa) had legalized gay marriage. By the time I looked for a job in Connecticut after college graduation, laws were in place to protect me from discrimination because I am a lesbian.

I have kissed my fiancée on the streets of Mystic without any thoughts but of our love, strutted through town playfully wearing rainbow boas at Pride festivals in Amsterdam, Boston, Providence, Hartford, New York City, and San Francisco, and I have danced all night without a care in the world at gay clubs just like Pulse.

All of this was possible because of the path others fought for on my behalf. The fights at Stonewall. The decades of lobbying for equality. The fierce powers of example. So in the aftermath of this tragedy, the most positive feelings I can muster are gratitude.

Gratitude to those who came before me that allowed for what I feel today to be so shockingly unfamiliar. Gratitude to the LGBTQ family we have in one another. Graditude to the older siblings, parents, grandparents and the great grandparents.

Thank you for teaching my generation that our love is something to be proud of so that today we can call upon your examples to stand together and do what we do best — show the world that love will always trump hate.

Katie Kraschel lives in Mystic. She is attorney for Yale-New Haven Health.