By John Berger

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Haylin Dennison had been a licensed clinical social worker involved with “at-risk” adolescents for almost two decades when her work became personal: Her child came out, first as bisexual and then as transgender, choosing the name Mat, and using he/him pronouns.

“When he first came out, he came out as bisexual,” Dennison said. “He wanted to see how I would react to the bisexual thing, how I would react to the gay thing. He told me he was trans in the seventh grade. That’s when things got really dark for him, and that’s really what we’re talking about for LGBT kids in general. It’s very common for them to experience bullying in middle school and high school.”

Dennison and her 17-year-old transgender son Mat share their experiences and celebrate his growth into a more confident young man in short film “Learn With Love: Mat & Haylin,” which was produced and released by The Trevor Project as part of a collection of real stories of LGBTQ+ young people and their families launched in 2023 to raise community awareness.

Their story went live on YouTube Sept. 3 in observance of National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month.

Statistics compiled by The Trevor Project, a national suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ young people, show that 50% of the LGBTQ+ young people surveyed in Hawaii reported being physically threatened or harmed based on their sexual or gender orientation in the past year, and some 32% of them reported they had seriously considered suicide.

“I was willing, I think earlier than most parents, to get educated and actually find out what ‘transgender’ is,” Dennison said. “What I’ve learned is that even in the LGBT community, being trans is worse, they get the worst kind of treatment. They all have to face discrimination, but trans people face the worst discrimination.”

Some 33% of the transgender and nonbinary young people surveyed in Hawaii reported they had seriously considered suicide, and 82% reported experiencing feelings of anxiety in the past year.

The film talks about Mat’s desire to pursue gender- affirming care and his need for support and acceptance. He says in the film, “Being able to have my Mom on my side versus having her be super iffy and unknowing and questionable, it felt like I had more room to explore really what I wanted and what it all meant to me. It helps me feel being able to just trust that she understands me.”

He added, “You get to learn so much more about yourself if you are accepted by the people around you.”

The 10-minute film also shows Dennison’s commitment to filling critical gaps in care and support for vulnerable youth in Hawaii. In 2022 she opened Spill the Tea Cafe, a nonprofit mental health clinic dedicated to providing mental health support for adolescents in Honolulu.

She said the cafe was originally Mat’s idea.

“When he was younger he wanted to be a psychiatrist or a doctor, and he wanted to have a mental health clinic that didn’t feel so sterile,” she said.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I have specialized in the adolescent population (in Hawaii) for a very long time, and I never saw the suicide rate as bad as it was in the pandemic,” Dennison said. “The family treatment center and inpatient services for active suicidal kids were full for months. I could not get any kids in there; we were sending kids home from the E.R.”

The lack of available resources in the community coupled with seeing the identity-related challenges her son Mat went motivated Dennison to take a “huge financial risk” and pursue a “very significant loan” to open Spill the Tea Cafe.

“In two months we were full, the need was so high, and it still is,” she said. “We have 650 LGBT kids in this clinic. So we’ve grown very rapidly in the past three years and now we are (financially) sustainable.”

YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT

>> Spill The Tea Cafe, spilltheteacafe.org, offers personalized, inclusive mental health therapy sessions designed to support the unique needs of all youth.

>> The Trevor Project, thetrevorproject.org, offers free, confidential and 24/7 suicide and crisis counseling for LGBTQ+ young people. Call 866-488-7386 or text “START” to 678678.

How to watch

Go to YouTube at 808ne.ws/HaylinandMat to watch the short film.