BEACH, Nd. – Life for one family in this small community at the edge of North Dakota adjacent to the border with Montana, near the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, has been forever altered after their 19 year-old Trans daughter committed suicide.
In an obituary published by the funeral home, her family expressed their grief and their rage;
“Haley ended her life on November 12, 2021, her pain being too great. She had grown weary of the knowledge of her reality, knowing this country and this world would never stop trying to force her to submit to its ignorance, and her family rages for her. We would’ve burned the whole world down if we’d thought it would keep her safe, and our fury and outrage is eclipsed only by our grief. We struggle against the currents that try to carry us away from love, for those currents only take us further from her. And she is far enough, already.”
This past year has seen record violence against Trans Americans and legislative efforts to marginalize the Trans community as state lawmakers introduced a record number of anti-transgender bills in state legislatures, seeking to restrict transgender people’s access to health care, bathrooms, and sports and recreation.
It has been a year where 47 Trans people, particularly of colour, lost their lives violently and where because of the anti-Trans legislative efforts numerous Trans youth have considered suicide according to the Trevor Project, as their call-in center has been overwhelmed with a sharp uptick in calls for assistance and counseling.
“We are at a tragic and deeply upsetting moment: With the death of Marquiisha Lawrence, 2021 has become the deadliest year ever for transgender and gender non-conforming people. Each of these 45 names represents a whole person and a rich life torn from us by senseless violence, driven by bigotry and transphobia and stoked by people who hate and fear transgender people and the richness of their experience,” Joni Madison, interim president of the Human Rights Campaign, said.
“Dehumanizing rhetoric has real-life consequences for the transgender community, particularly transgender women of color but especially Black transgender women. As we have seen an unprecedented number of bills introduced in state legislatures attacking transgender youth and trans adults, the moment we are in is clear. They have attacked transgender people’s right to health care, right to exist in public, and right to live openly, with the ultimate goal of dehumanizing and erasing their lives and experiences,” she added.
Back in that small North Dakota community, a family grieves.
Haley Gabriella Feldmann was born on November 18, 2002. She was called boy and so we gave her a boy name—now a dead name. We gave her boy clothes, boy toys, boy things. We didn’t know she was our daughter and so we called her son and brother.
Haley spent the first several years of her life content, within and without. She knew nothing of judgment or ridicule. She knew nothing but the love of her family, which she gave back in abundance.
During her adolescent years she retreated into herself and we lost her. She became silent . . . distant. She built formidable walls that became impossible to breach, and she stubbornly refused to grant us passage. She had begun to grow afraid of the world as she began to understand herself and who she was, and the reality of her situation became apparent.
The more she learned of how the world would judge her for not being who it thought she should be, the more she withdrew. She was an atheist, unable to believe in any religion or deity that taught condemnation of her for not submitting to its beliefs of who she should be.
She was a child of God, made perfectly in his image, her body only a vessel for the beautiful soul He created and with which He graced us. She laughed and she loved, and though her humor was dark, her nature was light. Her kindness, her empathy, her hope for others, and her desire to help anyone in need was a blinding light she shone on everyone but herself.Haley gave us the gift of her truth, trusted us to see beyond her body to her soul, to believe her, and to love her.
We will always be grateful for the chance to have her as she was and not who we had thought her to be. Now we call her daughter and sister and we closed ranks around her to protect her and to keep her safe from the willful ignorance that surrounds her.
Our daughter Haley spent most days wreaking havoc on the universe, her time spent being “Imperial Empress of the Galaxies, Conqueror of Solar Systems, Creator of Planets and Nations, Destroyer of Stars”, and loving and adoring Lucy, her best friend and the Best Dog Ever, who loved and adored her in equal measure.
She created her own language with a full alphabet and rules, spending years revising and perfecting it, and, in typical Haley fashion, did not leave a key. She created her own maps, detailed in geography, and her own countries, rich in their histories. She dropped out of school and then graduated before her peers, which made her immensely proud. She taught herself history, geography, politics, and never hesitated to school anyone on the finer points of each. And she was usually correct.
Haley lived most comfortably in a Discord community of just under six hundred people from all over the world, each of whom loved and adored her. We are just beginning to learn of her profound impact within the community and we are grateful they had her and she was loved by them. Her soul was radiant there, unhindered by its physical representation here which had become a prison, freeing her to breathe and be.
Haley ended her life on November 12, 2021, her pain being too great. She had grown weary of the knowledge of her reality, knowing this country and this world would never stop trying to force her to submit to its ignorance, and her family rages for her. We would’ve burned the whole world down if we’d thought it would keep her safe, and our fury and outrage is eclipsed only by our grief. We struggle against the currents that try to carry us away from love, for those currents only take us further from her. And she is far enough, already.
Haley is survived by her devastated parents; her siblings; her grandparents; several aunts, uncles, and cousins; and Lucy, all of whom are inconsolable in the loss of her brilliance, consumed with a grief that has buried us in moments of silence, rage, and sorrow—a void that will never be filled, and a loss that will never be eased. The world is less without her and we will never be the same.
There will be no formal services for Haley. She considered money spent on the dead to be frivolous and of better use elsewhere. Any donations to her family should be sent to The Jim Collins Foundation in hope that a life might be saved.
In lieu of thoughts and prayers, her family asks that you be kind to the living and generous with what you have, be it your love, hope, or wealth. Do better unto others as you would have done to you, and reach back to those in need, lift them up, raise them higher, and love love love thy neighbor.
