When Maree McRae’s transgender daughter was experiencing a mental health crisis, she had nowhere to go. So McRae created a place.
LITTLETON, Colo. — When Maree McRae County Music had to watch the person she loves most battle mental illness, her mission changed to creating a space that helps people like her daughter.
Newspaper clippings and entertainment posters dot the basement walls of McRae’s Littleton home.
She is a professional singer and songwriter, but these days the message in their lyrics is consistent.
“Tell me there’s a reason for this suffering I’m seeing,” McRae sings as she plays her keyboard.
She wrote ‘Reason’ in the parking lot of an emergency room where her transgender daughter was being held after going through a mental health crisis.
However, after five days, McRae said hospital staff told her there were no open mental health beds and no place for her daughter to go.
“From that moment on, I knew my calling was to use my music to speak,” said McRae, who became an ambassador for music for mental health.
But she didn’t stop there.
“If we’re not here to make it better and easier for someone else, what are we here for?” McRae asked.
Last year, McRae bought a house that he initially planned to trade. But as he walked the halls, McRae realized that he could create the safe space to heal that his daughter didn’t have.
“So this is Heart Mind Shelter“McRae said walking into the house. “This is a reprieve. It is a center for healing, recovery and wellness.”
Heart Mind Haven hopes to be the place where people can go after a crisis and get back on their feet. The home has room for eight residents, and they currently have bed grants for those who are at the poverty level, homeless, or unemployed due to mental health or substance use disorders.
In the past six months, McRae said Heart Mind Haven has housed about 30 people.
“A lot of our transgender residents are new to transition or have been there for a while but have just had very, very bad experiences, which unfortunately exists for many of us,” said Camryn Byrne, director of Transgender. and recovery services.
Byrne is a certified addiction specialist who also helps coordinate substance abuse services for out-of-home residents.
She believes this home is part of building a continuum of care for a community that lives much of its life in crisis.
“Transgender people generally don’t seek out their own therapists,” Byrne said. “They don’t because we don’t think we’re going to find anyone who understands us, knows us, where we feel comfortable. in explaining to them who we are”.
Heart Mind Haven is currently funded through the Centura Health Equity Grant and a scholarship from Signal Behavioral Health.
Music will always be a way for McRae to share what he has seen, but he said he was able to find his own reason and a new mission.
“I think we have a choice to be a messenger to where we come from,” McRae said. “And how do you walk through a war? And how do you feel those bullets? And how do you see people dying from those bullets and how do you do something different with your life?”
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