She wasn’t a tomboy. It was YouTube.

By Landon Nayoan –

Unlike a lot of transitioners, Haley Furst didn’t want to look like boys or play with boys as a little girl. The idea lodged in her head much later in life as a youth. She was just a curious Christian.

“At the ages of 13 or 14, I started to really watch a lot of YouTube videos in the pocket of LGBTQ,” Haley says. “A lot of these videos just kind of tumbled into my feed were videos about people talking about why they transitioned from being cisgender to transgender.”

But after Haley got sexually assaulted, she started dressing like a mam because it made her feel safer. School personnel picked up on the change of style and pushed her into the LGBTQ group.

Eventually, the love-bombing turned into pushback when she started posting videos about the negatives of transitioning.

Haley Furst attended Christian school in Canada until for various reasons she moved to public school. She was going to evangelize the worldly kids.

The project was doing well until her friend got drunk when she was over at her house and couldn’t drive her home. She took a ride from a man who was there.

“He ended up not taking me home but sexually assaulting me that night,” Haley says. “Because of that, I really sank into myself. I told no one.”

It’s sadly common for victims to either blame themselves or want to suppress the horrifying truth by not talking about it.

In order to feel safe, she cut her hair and started dressing like a man.

Her teachers noticed the change and started encouraging her to transition, asking what pronouns she wanted them to use and recommending that she joins the LGBTQ club.

“I kind of saw in it almost like a gateway to end up at a place that would make me feel better, a place that would soothe this hurt, this trauma that had happened to me,” recalls Haley.

Social media influenced her as well. A lot of people online said the LGBTQ community helped them through their childhood traumas. It sounded reasonable.

“I’ll dip my toes in,” she thought. “Maybe I’ll tell people that I’m non-binary it will make me feel more comfortable.”

She gained friends.

“For the first time in my life, I started to feel like I had an identity that would open doors,” says Haley, “an identity that would open doors to friendship, open doors to making me feel like I had community.”

Her high school friends pushed her to go all-in, to say she was a man.

When she graduated high school, she needed to find a job.

“I think that I really struggled to get a job because I held fast to the beliefs that there were a large list of companies that I could not work for because they were not outwardly supportive of LGBTQ,” says Haley. “So I decided to get a job at Starbucks.”

At this point in her life, Haley would spend her mornings working at Starbucks as a barista, go home and sleep then in the afternoons to heavy metal punk shows about trans liberation. Her coworkers had a similar schedule so, naturally, they got along.

One day, Haley’s friend started asking her about Christianity. Haley told her that Christians were dangerous and hateful.

A week later, her friend became a Christian.

Haley was furious.

If she were honest, she was also jealous.

How could her friend find peace so easily?

“I could no longer try to find happiness in followers or in even a political movement or a community. I knew that it was deeper than that. It wasn’t just about community; it was actually about the state of my soul,” says Haley. “And so I knew at that point that Jesus was the answer.”

Haley saw the peace in her friends’ faces after converted and she envied it.

She wished she could give her life to Jesus as easily as they did, but she convinced herself she couldn’t because she was transgender and she wasn’t ready to give up that lifestyle.

Haley wondered what it would look like for her to accept Christ again and remembered that all she needed to do was pray to Jesus.

“I don’t know if this will do anything.” Haley thought. “I bet Jesus wouldn’t even really like me.”

After she prayed, she felt the presence of God heavily in the room. It was so strong, every time she tried to stand up, she fell back down.

Haley cried.

She didn’t know what else to do. So she cried, mourning the life she had spent away from Jesus and his presence.

“I knew at that moment that I could never spend one day of my life apart from that presence ever again.”