I hadn't seen that there was an instance now so this inspired me to go check it out, thanks! I thought I had the same issue, but it turns out that the email was just getting tagged as spam seemingly because of no SPF, so DMARC fail.
Gsuite, but I presume regular gmail would have the same behavior. If it helps, mine was from pixelfed@pixelfed.sdf.org with the subject: "Confirm Email"
My Gmail account will absolutely not show me any emails from sdf pixelfed, so I just changed my pixelfed email to my phone number @ my carriers email/sms bridge domain, and that let me confirm my account.
I used my phone carrier email, but I haven't actually used pixelfed since verifying. Not sure if there's anything there for me.
I like the tidy forum format and experience that Reddit/lemmy brings. My brain has never been able to make sense of how to benefit from twitter, mastodon, Instagram, tiktok, etc.