Heidi Ellis, 36, was taught early in life to love reading, to love her culture, and to love herself. In her home, bookshelves were filled with powerful stories about Black women and Latinx women like her. Ellis, who identifies as lesbian and came out at the age of 19, knows she was lucky — lucky to be loved for who she is.
Still, Ellis struggled with severe depression and suicidal thoughts over the years, and knows how hard it can be for others under similar circumstances. That helped convince Ellis, a senior adviser at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during former President Barack Obama’s administration, to launch an advocacy and consultancy company to help people who are LGBTQ+, especially those in communities of color. Early last year, she also joined the board of directors for Strength in Our Voices, a DC-based nonprofit dedicated to mental health advocacy and suicide prevention.
The struggles faced by LGBTQ+ youth have only intensified amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Ellis said. Some young people have lost their “safe spaces,” due to quarantine regulations; others never had help or safety in the first place but are suffering even more in isolation.
A poll released in October by The Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to decreasing suicide rates within the LGBTQ+ community, found that 75% of transgender and nonbinary youth feel even more lonely than they did at the beginning of the pandemic. More than 1 in 3 LGBTQ+ youth also can’t rely on their parents for COVID-19 updates and safety, according to the poll.
Ellis’ firm works with public school systems and local nonprofits supporting LGBTQ+ youth to help them provide safe spaces and empower program participants. The pandemic hasn’t stopped the work.
“With COVID happening, it has forced us to adapt and make changes to our process and how we reach out,” Ellis said. “I aim to reach a goal where mental health is on the same level as your physical health.”
Coming out can lead to isolation
When Ellis came out at 19, relatives in her multicultural Catholic household started to pull away, she said. The former athlete, dancer and all-around good student found that the looks of admiration and pride she had received in the community seemed to wane.
Ellis and her mother didn’t speak for three months after she came out.
Still, Ellis did not regret her decision to do so: “I wanted to walk in my own truth,” she said. Her mother eventually came around, Ellis said, because she loved her daughter regardless of tradition and the church’s teachings.
“My mother, despite being Catholic, stayed with me because she decided she wanted me in her life,” Ellis said. “I know other people who didn’t get that.” Now, she said, her mother is her biggest advocate.
Many LGBTQ+ youth have far more traumatic experiences — being shunned by parents, kicked out of the house, beaten, abused, ostracized, or even sent to so-called “conversion camps.” Ellis is grateful she was spared these.
LGBTQ+ youth between the ages of 18 and 25 are 120% more likely to experience homelessness compared to their cisgender heterosexual counterparts, according to True Colors United, an organization focused on solving LGBTQ+ youth homelessness. For the population it serves, sometimes even finding a shelter is not a guarantee of comfort and safety, despite rules implemented in both 2012 and 2016 by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development aimed at preventing discrimination and harm in shelters based on gender identity.
Former President Donald Trump’s administration proposed — but never finalized — a rule in July 2020 that would have given homeless shelters the right to turn away transgender people from single-sex facilities that correspond to their gender identity. President Joe Biden’s administration is expected to withdraw the proposed rule.
The ‘dark moments’ for LGBTQ+ youth
The challenges experienced by the LGBTQ+ community as well as the desire to uplift and empower those in her community drives Ellis in her work, she said. She’s worked or volunteered with local DC organizations including GenOUT, which is the youth chorus of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, and DC’s LGBTQ+ Leaders Coalition, which has members who work with homeless youth and others in the LGBTQ+ community to provide support services. Working with these groups, as well as LGBTQ+ youth in the DC Public Schools, allows Ellis to pass along the lessons she’s learned about advocacy, self-acceptance and the importance of mental health awareness and treatment, she said.
Studies show there are many factors that adversely affect LGBTQ+ youth. The Trevor Project’s 2020 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found 40% of LGBTQ+ respondents seriously considered attempting suicide in the prior 12 months; 48% reported engaging in self-harm in the prior 12 months, including over 60% of transgender and nonbinary youth. Unfortunately, the likelihood of self-harm is more than twice as high for every physical/verbal onslaught committed, according to the American Journal of Public Health.
Strength in Our Voices, where Ellis serves as the board member in charge of partnerships and development, helps empower students and teachers to tap their inner resources during challenging times.
“I see myself in the kids I work with — there’s a sort of kinship between us,” Ellis explained. “The youth I work with open my eyes and teach me lessons. From them, I have learned to not make assumptions, to open my mind.”
Ellis’s greatest hope is to make the world a better place for those who are unaccepted, she said.
“I’m thankful for the support and love I received from my family and friends throughout my journey,” said Ellis, smiling proudly. “It gave me the strength to overcome obstacles, and the humility to do the work and fight for others.”
Editor’s note: Vanessa Falcon is a senior at Miami Lakes Educational Center in Miami. She was a participant in the Urban Health Media Project’s fall 2020 workshop “Surviving and Thriving Despite Trauma,” which was sponsored by the National Council for Behavioral Health. Photographer Sierra Lewter, a 2018 graduate of DC’s Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, is a UHMP intern and junior at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
This article is part of a series on DC residents who have confronted challenges in inspirational and sometimes unconventional ways.
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