Maria Voorhees

Our daughter Maria Voorhees was an amazing person. She died on February 5, 2017, at the age of 20. This site is a memorial for her.

Maria was a person who defied categories and easy definition. Shortly before she died, on tumblr she described herself as an autistic, mentally ill, trans lesbian. All of that is true.

But she was much more than that. Maria wrote anarchist magazines (by hand), taught herself book binding and coding, built and repaired too many computers to list, took things apart and sometimes put them back together, and enjoyed trying to fix cars. She never let falling short of a perfect outcome discourage her. She was a devoted antifascist and vocal trans lesbian activist. She loved coffee. She was a somewhat agnostic Episcopalian. Her relationship with her girlfriend Meryl brought her (and us) much joy. She was witty and smart and talented and passionate and sarcastic.

From the beginning, Maria was a fighter. She was born six weeks early and spent her first three weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. When she was five and in kindergarten, she was diagnosed with autism, most likely Asperger's. We were told by the Intermediate School District personnel that we should grieve the loss of our hopes and dreams for her, as she would probably never accomplish anything or be able to go to college. We didn't agree, and Maria certainly proved them wrong! Maria played soccer and Little League baseball, where she was never a star, but was always persistent. I can remember her running laps of the field long after her peers were done, with a fierce determination that just defined her life.

Maria not only graduated from high school in the top quarter of her class, she went on to Wayne State University, where she received scholarships, worked at the Office of Financial Aid, and served as treasurer of the GLBTA club. Despite feeling that math was not her strong suit, she persevered in her desire to be an engineer, even though it meant working to overcome some difficulties with calculus.

Maria came out to us as trans in August of 2014. We're glad that we had a few years with her living as the person she knew she was. She had the support of her extended family, her church communities, and many friends, new and old.

Maria was also mentally ill. She did not shy away from telling people that, and we want to honor her memory by speaking the truth about a subject people often want to avoid. She saw a therapist and a psychiatrist. She took medication. She re-posted comics and memes about depression. In the end, mental illness claimed her life, but it will never define her. It is just one part of a complex identify that was still growing and changing.

Maria painted the picture at the bottom of this page as her senior art project in high school. It's called Phoenix Rising Over Detroit. At the time, we loved it, and we understood it to mean that she was happy to be starting a new chapter of her life at Wayne State, in the city that she loved. It wasn't until a few days after we dropped her off at her dorm at Wayne State that we received a letter introducing herself to us as Maria Voorhees, a trans woman. Suddenly the painting took on new and deeper meaning. We treasure it now as a symbol of her spirit and her optimism for a future where everyone is loved and accepted, not in spite of who they are, but because of who they are.