2022 has seen more anti-LGBTQ legislation proposed so far than any other year. According to LGBTQ advocacy group Freedom for All Americans, 39 states introduced more than 200 such bills since April. The legislation mainly targets trans youth, running the gamut from healthcare restrictions, exclusion from sports and even equating gender affirming parenting to child abuse. 

For Carolyn Hays, that policy threatened her family when an investigator from the Department of Children and Families knocked on her door. In her new memoir, A Girlhood: Letter to My Transgender Daughter, Hays writes: “...we quickly learned that in this southern state with Republican-appointed judges, we could lose custody. We could lose you.”

We hear from Carolyn on how raising her daughter expanded her understanding of parenting, faith, science and gender.