[If you or someone you know is thinking of suicide, call National Suicide Prevention Lifeline:1-800-273-8255; text TALK to 741741. India: http://www.aasra.info/helpline.html]

“She created her own language with a full alphabet and rules..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” –Obituary for Haley Gabriella Feldmann

Haley was an 18-year-old transgender teenager from North Dakota, who gave love in abundance, loved the mashed potatoes and gravy from her mom’s truck shop, had humor that was dark but nature that was light, was adored by her community of about 600 Discord members, and believed that money spent on the dead could be better used elsewhere.

On November 12, six days before her 19th birthday, Haley died by suicide. In the weeks leading to Haley’s death, her parents were hopeful that their child was slowly doing better, after systemic and societal transphobia had made her retreat into herself.

“Even though it definitely wasn’t normal for her to give someone a hug, she’d been wanting more lately. You just never knew when they’d be coming,” Haley’s parent David told Daily Beast.

Haley’s family expressed that their daughter’s safety was affected by the record-breaking legislative attacks on trans youth, healthcare inaccessibility, and the anti-trans rhetoric by Donald Trump and his administration.

“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,” the obituary read.

More than half of trans and nonbinary youth were at risk of suicide this past year, and access to gender-affirming care is linked to being at lower risk of attempting suicide by nearly 40 percent, according to Trevor Project.