Hawaiian native Haylin Dennison felt quite progressive and open-minded when her son Mat came out as gay/bisexual in fifth grade. Dennison had grown up in an ultra-conservative Christian home but regularly attended Pride events. As a therapist, she knew the importance of supporting her child.

But in the following years, Mat saw the limitations of her acceptance and understanding. She once refused to let him wear an LGBTQ+-themed shirt to church. When he began socially transitioning to male, the two got into a big fight, Dennison tells LGBTQ Nation.

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She remembers her son saying, “You say you’re supportive, right? But then you tell me, ‘Don’t wear this.’ You know you’re expecting me to hide a certain part of myself? And so, like, do you really accept this? Like, are you ashamed of this?”

As a therapist, Dennison had been professionally trained to view her clients’ LGBTQ+ identities objectively, but this was her own child. At the time, Dennison equated her child’s trans identity with mental health issues. When Mat later asked to receive gender-affirming care, Dennison firmly opposed it.

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As her son began withdrawing into a dark depression, Dennison wondered where she had gone wrong as a parent and whether she could somehow “fix” him. She worried Mat would suffer more in life as a trans boy than as a gay or bi girl. She worried for her and her son’s safety, and wondered how they’d navigate unaccepting reactions from relatives, friends, and other community members.

Most of all, she worried that Mat’s poor mental health would harm his chances for a successful life. She felt it was her duty to help him thrive no matter what.

Dennison began educating herself by travelling with her son to gender-affirming clinics in Stanford, California, and Chicago, where they had medical consultations with trans healthcare experts.

But she still felt nervous about Mat transitioning. When she began looking around for therapists to help counsel them during this difficult period, she couldn’t find anyone in her home state to help.

Hawaii suffers from a lack of mental healthcare providers, with only one licensed therapist for every 360 kids, Dennison says. Its remote location doesn’t make it an attractive place for some in the profession. Many island natives pursue their education and professional lives elsewhere, especially since the island lacks widespread infrastructure to help upcoming therapists secure the clinically supervised hours they need to get their professional licenses.

Dennison knew hers wasn’t the only family on the islands struggling to find mental health support. So, using her skills as a licensed clinical therapist and social worker, she began organizing a help center where Mat, other teens, and their families could get the support they needed.

Dennison found a space and worked day and night for two months with her four kids to build and paint its walls and offices. In 2022, she opened Spill the Tea Cafe.

Spill the Tea Cafe is a youth drop-in center in Honolulu with a cafe-like environment. It has six therapy rooms, including one for group therapy and three for individual sessions, as well as a gaming and hangout space.

The cafe regularly provides empowering, open-door social events — like karaoke nights, Boba Tea hangouts, poetry nights, gaming nights, art nights, discussion groups, and even a queer prom. During these events, young people and their families can explore the cafe, learn more about its services, and connect with other young islanders to help alleviate the depression, isolation, and other poor mental health symptoms they might feel.

The cafe also provides counseling to LGBTQ+ kids 100% free of charge and also works to find affordable counseling for non-LGBTQ+ children. Dennison works with local psychiatric and pediatric offices to provide streamlined medical care; partners with other youth organizations; and assigns “care mentors” to children with moderate- to high-risk needs. Those mentors work with families and schools to provide “wraparound” care aimed at improving a kid’s academic and home life.

The cafe also has partnerships with three Hawaiian universities to bring in master-level interns and provide free clinical supervision hours to pre-licensed therapists who counsel cafe kids. The mental health staff receives training from the Stanford Gender Clinic to stay up to date on emerging developments in gender-affirming care. The cafe encourages its counselors to establish private practices, with the hopes of drastically increasing the island’s mental healthcare providers within 30 years, Dennison told Island Scene.

Eventually, Dennison began attending individual counseling sessions to better understand her own hopes, fears, and abilities in supporting her son. As Mat began receiving medical care, he gradually began to sound, look, feel, and act more like himself. He transformed from a closed-off, isolated teenager into a bright, caring boy who pursued hobbies, like creating theatrical video projects with his friends.

Dennison enjoyed seeing her son blossom under gender-affirming care. “He was comfortable in his voice… in who he was,” Dennison says. “It’s been more amazing than I thought it was gonna be.” She now sees gender-affirming care as life-saving and crucial to her son’s well-being.

But the medical and mental healthcare didn’t solve all their problems, of course. Dennison didn’t anticipate how much backlash she would get as a mother for allowing him to transition. Even her closest family and long-term friends felt entitled to give unsolicited opinions about raising her child.

During its first year, the cafe financially struggled. It would’ve closed down if it weren’t for multiple local gay bars and drag queens holding monthly charity fundraisers. The fundraisers individually raised between $800 and $3,000 each, helping the cafe pay its workers and purchase snacks for the kids. Dennison and some of the cafe’s children even made and sold candles and Boba Tea drinks at local farmers’ markets to help raise funds.

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“I’m happy to say we’re thriving,” Dennison says. “We’re doing better than we ever have, and it’s because right now, we’re not only finding our solutions in federal grants or even state grants.” The cafe is working on self-sustaining income-generating ideas, such as youth entrepreneurship programming and longer tea service for drop-in customers.

Spill the Tea Cafe has since helped about 700 kids over its three-year existence. It has also outgrown its original space and, in January, will move to a nearby location three times its current size.

Reflecting on her experience with Mat, Dennison now tells parents that they can make a huge difference in their kids’ lives by accepting them as soon as possible. She also tells kids that, if they can come to accept themselves, they can focus on bigger dreams and personal accomplishments.

“If you want an authentic relationship with your child, then it does require a level of sacrifice,” Dennison says, “and I think that that’s the most rewarding type of love that you can ever experience in your life.”

“The best gift that you can give your child is the gift of self-reflection, and I think the most important gift you can give your child is an authentic relationship with them,” she adds. “So I really want the parents to understand that, if your kid is persistent and consistent [in their identity], do not leave this Earth, do not die without fighting for that authentic relationship with your child.”

“It will be worth it in the end.”

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