Pink Shoes

Stream this episode here. 

 

About the Guest

 

Abi Maxwell is author of the novels Lake People and The Den. After graduating from the writing program at the University of Montana, she spent many years working in public libraries. She is a dedicated advocate for the rights of transgender youth. Her latest book is called One Day I'll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman: A Mother's Story.

 

Transcript

 

Intro – 01:09

 

BLAIR HODGES: This episode includes brief discussion of sexual abuse and suicidal ideation. Listener discretion is advised. 

ABI MAXWELL: It's really hard when your child is telling you who they are, and you have no familiarity with it, you have no examples of what that looks like, and your entire culture around you is telling you that's not real.

BLAIR HODGES: Abi Maxwell's little daughter wanted the pink shoes. She wanted to dress as a witch on Halloween in kindergarten. In first grade, she wore her hair long and envied the dance costumes other girls got to wear for the recital. The problem was that Abi's daughter was known to her and to their rural, conservative New Hampshire town as a boy. Suddenly, the little town Abi loved with all her heart became engulfed in a hurricane of controversy with her daughter right in the eye of the storm.

In this episode, Abi tells the story of how her doubts about trans people turned into understanding about her own daughter and then fear for her family's safety. We're talking about her new memoir One Day I'll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman: A Mother's Story.

If you've got questions about transgender kids, like I did, this is a good place to start. I'm Blair Hodges, and this is Family Proclamations.

 

A Child's Right to Privacy – 01:38

 

BLAIR HODGES: Abi Maxwell, welcome to Family Proclamations.

ABI MAXWELL: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

BLAIR HODGES: You've written this book as a mother about you, your child, and your family, and I wondered how your child now feels about the book, if they've read it, what kind of input they had. Just exploring the idea of privacy versus the need for stories to be told. It's especially tricky with kids. Because we need these stories to be out there so people can understand trans experiences, but they also deserve private lives as well. 

ABI MAXWELL: My daughter is very excited about the book coming out, and she is furious I changed her name for the book. My name, of course, is the same, but everyone else's name changed in the book.

When I was a few drafts into the book and knew I was going to publish it, I sat down with her and went over every section she is in—not including sections where school boards were talking about her, that sort of thing, but the times when she and I were having conversations, all of that, to check in on her comfort level.

She has been very clear the entire way she wants this book out there. I do say in the Acknowledgements it's not ideal for these trans kids across the whole country to have to have their private lives out there, but she and many kids also are doing it so they can have rights, really.

 

Abi's New Hampshire Roots – 03:09

 

BLAIR HODGES: I feel indebted to people who will share their stories, and also supportive of people who aren't in a position where they can. I think it does require a certain level of privilege to be able to share this stuff. So the people that can, I'm so glad they do.

ABI MAXWELL: I agree. Totally.

BLAIR HODGES: Your book starts out with something unusual about your own family. Your father, you came to understand, never actually wanted children, but between his two marriages he ended up having eight, including you. What do you think about that? Why did he wind up with so many, having not really wanted kids?

ABI MAXWELL: I'm not sure if he really didn't want kids or not, that was just what I was told from my mother. When you grow up with divorced parents, it's really hard to make sense of what's real and what's not. There are all kinds of stories. People have very different realities and different memories of the same thing. I'm not sure if he really wanted them or what he would say to that.

BLAIR HODGES: You've never been like, "Hey, Dad, did you want me?" That'd be kind of a difficult conversation.

ABI MAXWELL: I haven't bothered. I'm not sure about this, but it seems to me that at the time when I was growing up—I was born in 1980, and I felt like it was rare for people to have married parents and to not have divorced and blended families. Mine was very big because of divorce and then more kids through a second marriage, that sort of thing.

BLAIR HODGES: He had three kids with your mom, and then three step kids with a new wife, and then he also had two more kids with that. As you said, it's a big family, and that's going to matter. We're going to bring up some of these family members that play an important part in the story.

But I want to talk about place, here. I want to talk about Guilford, New Hampshire, because Guilford is an important character in the book. Your family's roots go deep there. You felt a deep connection to that place, which I think made it all the more tragic that it harmed your family so badly. So talk about your roots in New Hampshire.

ABI MAXWELL: I grew up in rural New Hampshire, and my family had been there for hundreds of years. I always felt really connected to the land. I had a difficult childhood because of many factors, largely because of divorce, but I always had this pride in where I was from, and I felt I really understood the place I was from. I felt I belonged there.

Guilford is where my husband and I lived, and it's the town my father grew up in, and it's this beautiful lake and mountain town. My grandparents had bought property on an island there in the 1950s. They lived in the town, but then they bought vacation island property in the 1950s, and that became a family sanctuary. My grandfather moved an old boy's summer camp cabin out to this property he had bought, and I think he bought the property for like $5,000—it was just a summer camp sanctuary for us.

I grew up going out on the lake in this family boat there, it's a clunker boat, and we would go out there, and we were really wild and unsupervised, but it was this magical spot that felt like an escape from all the drama and, frankly, trauma of our lives, of going back and forth between parents, having parents embroiled in constant court battles. We would just swim in the lake and just look at the mountains, and it was such a place of peace for all of us.

Also in Guilford was the ski area, and my grandparents would buy us all season passes there every year, not including my youngest siblings. They were too young. I would have been the youngest, and my father would drop us off there. I was young.

BLAIR HODGES: I remember one scene where he didn't even send you with food or anything. You're sitting in this cabin and all these kids are eating food around you, and you're starving, but you also love to be on the mountain, so it's okay. But you also wonder, there were other parents around. How did they not see these scrounging little kids that weren't eating?

ABI MAXWELL: I think he started dropping us off there when I was six, and he drove this big blue van, and we would just all pile out, and my stepsister and I were put on the ski team. All the other kids were just skiing all day, free skiing, but my stepsister and I were on the team. I loved it. I absolutely loved ski racing.

It was the mountain where my father had learned to ski. My grandfather had taught him. My family had been involved in that ski mountain for so long that I really felt even though we were freezing and ill cared for and we had no food, I felt like I belonged there.

BLAIR HODGES: You say it even helped you heal from, you talk about in the book some childhood sexual abuse or some sexual trauma that you experienced, that the outdoors, the mountain, could be healing for you.

ABI MAXWELL: I wasn't aware of it as a child. I wasn't aware of what dissociation was as a child, but I spent hours upon hours, truly most of my life somewhere on the ceiling, like floating above my body, but on this ski hill, I was in my body, and I felt such power because of that.

BLAIR HODGES: Makes me wonder why you did end up going away. You went away for school. Did you think you would be coming back home? What was your thinking as you were getting to that stage of life where you have to start thinking about where home is going to be?

ABI MAXWELL: I don't think I thought about it consciously. I don't think I had a plan that I was going to go back to New Hampshire and build this life, but I think I knew deep inside me that I would. I was recently talking to a college friend, and she was like, "Abi, we all always knew that is where you would be." I carried with me such a deep connection to the place I was from. I lived in Wisconsin for college, and then I went to Montana and random other places in the west for a while, just exploring things. I always had this sense that nothing was real, that I wasn't living my life until I was really back in New Hampshire—and not just in New Hampshire, but back in that specific place of the mountains and the lake.

 

Abi and Paul Start a Family – 10:08

 

BLAIR HODGES: While you're away, you meet Paul, who becomes your husband. You met in Montana. You're going to school there, and it was kind of this nice liberal town in Montana. You have great memories of that place, even though it's a very conservative state. You lived in a liberal area where you felt free to explore and learn.

That time of life is great, but you did end up back in New Hampshire, and that's where you discovered you were pregnant, and your first reaction to that was to feel sick with anxiety because you told a close friend you thought a baby would ruin you. What was going through your head when you found out you were pregnant?

ABI MAXWELL: I had just sold my first novel. I had always wanted to be a writer, and I felt like I finally had the chance to do that. I remember my dog at that time, he was this old dog who I would just care take so much. I would give every bit of myself to make sure that dog was okay. I would have to carry him home on walks and hand feed him, and I would just give so much of myself. I was afraid when I became pregnant that I was going to entirely lose myself. I didn't know how I was going to still be a writer or live my life. I had a really hard childhood and did not have a clear example of what it could look like to be a healthy adult parent.

BLAIR HODGES: It doesn't sound like it's setting you up for much success just yet, but you were in New Hampshire. You were in a familiar place. You felt you were at home. You talk about in the book the ultrasound where the ultrasound tech "reveals" the gender. This big moment that people still have today.

All along, up to that point, you'd been picturing a girl. The ultrasound tech proclaimed it was a boy. At this point in your life, you weren't very aware of transgender folks. You say you probably couldn't even define the word at that point.

ABI MAXWELL: I remember somebody saying they had a transgender daughter, and I remember thinking, I don't know if that means the person is male or female, or what their pronouns would be. I really, really didn't know. I was totally unfamiliar.

I will say, I also didn't know I was unfamiliar with it. I thought I was very progressive. I volunteered to get out the vote and that sort of thing, but I had no real understanding.

BLAIR HODGES: For people who are still wondering or are in that place themselves, if someone says they have a transgender daughter, that usually means they have a child that was assigned male at birth who is transgender and identifies usually with she/her pronouns. A transgender son would be someone who was assigned female at birth who is transitioning and now uses he/him pronouns. If they say have a transgender daughter, that means this is a daughter they have right now.

As you said, you were a progressive person. You got a job at this idyllic library there. You were living this idyllic life, this beautiful small town library. It seems so cool. As you were looking through catalogs for books one day that the library might purchase, there's another librarian who said, "Oh, I don't buy any of this gay stuff. If it says LGB, whatever, you can just skip it. People here don't read that."

In that moment, you thought about your gay half-brother, Noah. He came to mind, but you also decided not to say anything in that moment. Why?

ABI MAXWELL: I still didn't understand what it really meant, I didn't understand the human cost of essentially banning books. If you aren't buying books by a certain type of population, you're essentially banning them from the library, and I didn't understand.

I did not understand what my brother had been through, what other LGBTQ people had been through. I just thought, "Oh, she's from another time. She doesn't mean any harm." I didn't know what it looks like to truly be an ally.

 

Neurodivergence and Gender Variance – 14:29

 

BLAIR HODGES: Your personal experience would really bring it home—what it meant to be an ally. As your daughter began to grow up, in the first few years of your daughter's life, you came to understand she was different from a lot of kids. Not even necessarily related to gender identity, and not just because she preferred to get dresses out of the dress up box at the library. She seemed neurodivergent.

What were you and your husband experiencing with your kid that seemed against the grain or unexpected as a parent that led you to suspect they might be neurodivergent?

ABI MAXWELL: It started when she was really quite young, and I think if we were in a different area with better medical care, we would have understood much earlier. Honestly, I think it started the day she was born and she was put in that crib thing where they do a hearing test in the hospital.

BLAIR HODGES: The plastic bin thing or whatever.

ABI MAXWELL: She wasn't responding and wasn't responding. They kept having to redo the test, and eventually she did respond, and they knew she could hear, but that hearing test thing continued when she was two, three, four. We kept having to take her in for a hearing test because she just wouldn't respond to us. She would do fine on the tests every time. She was a late talker. She didn't speak until she was two, which was not very late, but it was late.

Then she would have very specific interests. My father gave her a garbage truck when she was probably three, and she played with that toy and nothing else for years. I think it was her fourth birthday party that she asked her friends to bring trash. My brother gave us this pipe and we hooked it up on the porch, down to the ground, and she would put the trash her friends brought through the chute down into these little cans.

It was that kind of thing, but it was also not such fun things. Just behaviorally, she was very, very aggressive. She would hit and scream and melt down, and she didn't sleep until she was well into kindergarten, at least halfway through the year, if not more. She would sleep the longest maybe in three to four hours stints.

BLAIR HODGES: I imagine it can feel isolating for you and your partner to know your kid very well, know what it's like to experience and probably experiencing judgment from other parents, like what the heck is wrong with this kid? And wondering yourself, like, is it something we did? What did I do? Or what's going on here? It can be isolating.

ABI MAXWELL: It was very isolating. A part of the isolation is knowing how wonderful she is in her own home and seeing how engaged and kind and brilliant she is, and then going out into the world and trying to have these social interactions and feeling like it's so hard for her and people are just not getting it and not getting to see her true self.

BLAIR HODGES: How did gender issues start popping up? How did you start to notice that there might be something different for her when it came to her gender identity?

ABI MAXWELL: The first thing I remember very clearly was when she was four and we went into the shoe store to buy her a new pair of shoes. Before this she always got the hand-me-downs from my friends, who were all boys, and she didn't really complain about it, although she never wanted to get dressed, and it was always a battle. But she didn't communicate why, and probably wasn't able to.

But we went into the shoe store and she just said, very matter of fact, "Where's the girl section?" This was the first time I had taken her shopping, to be clear.

BLAIR HODGES: It would be difficult, right? Because it's so difficult sometimes to be doing that. She immediately wanted the girl section. Let's go.

ABI MAXWELL: I said, "Why do you want the girl section?" She said, "I want pink shoes."

Now, my daughter is somebody who comes to the world without an innate understanding or respect for social structures, so I thought she just doesn't care about these stupid rules we have about colors. We got her the pink shoes, and after that, she said, "I want to grow my hair out. I want hair like a girl's." "I want to wear dresses."

Then it just kept amping up. She would say, "Why do you make me be a boy? Can people change? I'm a girl. I want to be a girl." To the point where by the time she was in first grade she just started telling kids on the playground she was a girl, and this was before we had allowed her to socially transition, so she still had her old name, her old pronouns, but she started telling kids she was a girl.

Her first-grade teacher called me into the school pretty early, I believe, in the year, and was showing me all this artwork our daughter had done that was all self-portraits of her as a girl. I realized then that every time she chose a little avatar for school programs, or in a video game at home, it was always female. Again, I wrote it off as she sees the world differently than we do.

But she made it clearer and clearer, and then eventually, as she was making it clearer and clearer, she was also getting more and more miserable that we weren't recognizing her as a girl, and eventually we learned and got professional help, and allowed her to socially transition.

 

Fearing the Wrong Things – 20:39

 

BLAIR HODGES: In the book, you don't come across as the Superhero Mom that was ready to jump on board. You're vulnerable in disclosing things you're ashamed of now. The fears and the resistance you put up. Talk about what it's like to disclose that, and for parents that might be going through it, what kind of feelings did you experience as you started to really reckon with this kid being transgender?

ABI MAXWELL: There's so many elements to that. I think one part of it is the culture I lived in. I don't think I realized how oppressive a small New England town culture can be and how much of an effect it had on me, and particularly one that was so manicured as the town I lived in. Very white, straight, conservative, perfectly done lawns, that sort of thing. It's a very oppressive culture.

A lot of my fear about my daughter was fear of what other people would think. Fear that she would be bullied. A lot of it was internalized transphobia from years of being in our culture. I didn't understand, I didn't believe that she was a girl, because I didn't understand what that was. I just did not have any familiarity with it.

BLAIR HODGES: Did you ever wonder, like a kid's too young to even be thinking about this? Your kid was neurodivergent. So there's two reasons why a parent might say, oh, you know what? They're just a little kid. They don't know what's going on. Maybe the neurodivergent part.

ABI MAXWELL: The neurodivergent part for sure. I thought that at first. I thought, "Oh, she just doesn't get these codes."

But I also was reminded of when I was a kid and went through a phase of wanting to be a boy and that sort of thing. I think the big thing is there was no representation around me. I didn't know trans people. I didn't know trans kids. I had no familiarity with it.

Frankly, I was afraid of all the wrong things. I was afraid to support her, afraid to let her be herself, when really the terrifying thing is if I hadn't—and now I am so sad we made her be miserable for a couple of years when she was very clear about who she was.

BLAIR HODGES: How did her transition start to pick up steam? You did feel those fears, that resistance. What steps happened to actually move it along, and what kind of changes did you notice for her?

ABI MAXWELL: She started asking more and more for dresses and to grow her hair. I put her in a dance class, and that was a very gendered situation. They would line the boys up in one spot and the girls in the other. My daughter would have a meltdown every time because she was put with the boys instead of the girls. She wanted the girl shoes, and I didn't buy them for her, which looking back on it, I just think how in the world did I let my fear of judgment have that much power? But I didn't buy her the girl's shoes.

Being in that gendered space really gave her an occasion to speak up about her gender. The dance class really brought some things to light. When it came time for her dance recital they handed out the costumes, and the girls got some big hair bow thing and their fancy dress costumes, and they gave the boys this boring t-shirt and a vest, and my daughter just threw the costume and yelled, "Why do the girls get all the good stuff?"

Then she was refusing to do the dance recital, and I kept asking her about it. Finally she said she wouldn't do it because of the dumb boy costume. I said, "Wait, it would be less embarrassing for you to wear the girl's costume?" She said, “Duh, that's the costume I'm supposed to have.”

That really woke something up in me where I thought, oh my goodness, how have I blinded myself so much to what this child is saying to me? Especially for a child for whom communication is hard, and she was trying so hard.

We went to see her therapist, and she learned the word transgender, my daughter did, and she was like, "Great, that's what I am." But I was still really afraid, and still didn't let her change her name and pronouns, but around this time, that's when she started just doing it herself at school.

BLAIR HODGES: I wanted to ask you about that meeting with the therapist, because it seemed similar to the autism diagnosis. You were happy to have a framework and a description. Obviously your child was—I don't know if we'd mentioned Greta is the name used to book here—Greta, as you said, seemed like, "oh, yeah, okay, cool. Had a category now."

You were happy to have a framework, but you were also really worried about the struggle it would be. With autism it's the same like, this gives me an understanding of what's going on here, but also it means life's going to be different than I thought it would be, or we're going to have to do these other things, and there's going to be oppression we'll face.

Your immediate reaction was so divided. This really stayed with me. On the one hand, you immediately went and asked your mother and brother to accept it. You went to them, and you just said, "Listen, this is what it is, and I just need you to support it. I'm not here to defend it. I just need you to believe this and be with me." They couldn't do it right away.

But then at the same time, on the other hand, you were angry at your husband for being so immediately affirming. He came out of her bedroom that night and said, "Hey, I just had this amazing conversation with her and told her she was a great daughter." You said, "Can we please just slow down?"

So to your mom and brother, you're like, get on board today. Then to Paul, you're like, can we please just put the brakes on?

ABI MAXWELL: I was afraid of all the wrong things. In that moment, I wasn't afraid of the oppression she would face. I wasn't aware of it even. At that time, her rights were not on the national stage, and so it wasn't something and not the way that we see them today. These bills against her rights are just multiplying every year.

BLAIR HODGES: There was one in North Carolina, the bathroom thing, and it got squashed a little bit at that time. Then it's really come back with a vengeance nationally.

ABI MAXWELL: It wasn't all of that stuff that I was afraid of. That's what I should have been afraid of—this straight culture that would destroy her. I was just afraid of—It's hard to even say what. It's hard to know what exactly I was afraid of.

I was ignorant. I didn't want to mess her up. I wanted to do the right thing, and it's hard when your child is telling you who they are, and you have no familiarity with it. You have no examples of what that looks like, and your entire culture around you is telling you that's not real. That is self-doubt, because everyone's telling me that this is wrong, this is not real. This doesn't exist, that sort of thing.

BLAIR HODGES: There's also a moment where you meet with another specialist who starts to talk to you a little bit about possible medical transition things for the future. Greta was young at this point, so there aren't surgical things, you don't have to worry about puberty blockers or hormone therapy until puberty is coming on. There were some years to go, but that conversation really scared you. You say, "I just wanted Greta to stay six years old forever."

I could relate to that so much, even aside from trans issues, of thinking of the difficulties our kids are going to face and wanting to lock them in in this moment of their lives when they seem so innocent and so full of life. The fear was real for you when you had to think about not just social transition, but possible future medical transition things.

ABI MAXWELL: Again, I can't say it enough times, I was afraid of all the wrong things. Truly what's terrifying is a lack of access to medicine. Why on earth would I be afraid of medicine that will help my daughter live her life and be a happy and whole person in the world? Why would I be afraid of that?

BLAIR HODGES: This was part of your fears too because you were online. You were reading what you could, you were looking at message boards, you were trying to figure it out. What you were learning also scared you, like the high rate of suicide attempts and the high rate of suicidal ideation that trans kids face.

Now you're thinking, "Oh, this is also really scary."

ABI MAXWELL: Absolutely. But what I didn't know was the real fear, which is what culture is doing right now, what these state legislatures across the country are doing right now to these kids.

 

Community Resistance – 30:31

 

BLAIR HODGES: It came to the fore really quick after you went to visit this specialist that really confirmed transgender identity and was talking to you about possible medical things.

That same day, your phone blew up because there was a school board meeting. Greta is preparing to enter the second grade, and now you have to start thinking about practical things like the bathrooms Greta is going to use. She'd been at a summer camp and ended up wetting her pants because of difficult bathroom logistics and problems.

New Hampshire had signed a law protecting trans people's access to bathrooms, which might have seemed like the end of it. In fact, the school sent out a message from the superintendent saying the schools are going to comply with the law. We're going to make bathrooms gender inclusive, but you found out they were not going to stick to that original plan. What happened?

ABI MAXWELL: The law that was signed was a non-discrimination law that included transgender people. It was a non-discrimination law that applied to public schools the year before. There had been a law signed in that applied to just public spaces.

Once I learned about that law through a PFLAG group, I went to the school and said my daughter wants to use the girl's bathroom, and to comply with the law you have to let her. So once she entered second grade, school board meetings about her erupted in my town. They were about her bathroom access, locker room access, whether or not she could play on sports teams, but also her right to be called by her name, to be called by her pronouns.

The school board meetings started immediately when she entered the second grade, and parents were coming out of the woodwork saying she was a threat to the community, that she didn't have the right to be called by her pronouns because they didn't necessarily believe her pronouns, or that it was against their religion, that she was a danger in the bathrooms, that she was a danger on the sports field—all of this stuff.

It was endless. Month after month after month because the school board was trying to pass a policy that would protect her and comply with the law, but people were coming out to fight against that policy.

BLAIR HODGES: One of the couples who worked the hardest against your daughter's rights also tried to play it both ways. It seemed like they tried to send signals of support to you. I'm thinking of Katie, is what she's called in the book, this mother who sent you an email her at one point saying she was really concerned because she found out that maybe Greta was getting bullied at school, and that was not okay with her and her husband. "So what can we do?"

They didn't bring up the fact that they were a huge part of the opposition to your daughter accessing the bathroom that she needed to use, even going so far as to hiring a lawyer to help their case. It's like she's reaching out to you to signal some kind of weird support, while she's also opposing the rights of your daughter.

Here's a part I'll actually have you read. You wrote a letter to her that you didn't end up sending her, and this gets to your feelings at that point in time, and the really strong feelings you had. Maybe we can have you read that from the book here.

ABI MAXWELL: Sure. I just want to add that while these school board meetings were going on, they of course were trickling down. My daughter was being bullied so badly at school, and it was like a perfect storm. She was being bullied and she would explode, and I was getting called into the school day after day, and she was just not getting the help she needed at school.

BLAIR HODGES: But Katie's going to help, remember! She's going to solve the bullying for you.

ABI MAXWELL: This was a woman who I had known, not well, but had known because I worked at the library. I saw her all the time. We always had nice conversations. I knew her husband. So she sends me this letter saying she wanted to sit down with me to help learn how to teach her children to be allies.

I'll read the letter I wrote back to her, although did not send.

BLAIR HODGES: It's sent now if she's going to read, but yes, please. [laughter]

ABI MAXWELL: Katie, I am truly unclear about what you want from me. I cannot be the person to teach you that what you are doing is actively bullying children. But until you see that, you will not be able to teach your children how to be allies.

I am not sorry that you cried today. You should cry. You should also know that my husband and I have spent every day since the first school board meeting at which you spoke out in a state of inability to function because we are either crying or so angry that we cannot see straight.

You should know that you and your husband are a part of the reason we are figuring out how to leave this town and get our daughter to a place that is safe for her. You need to know that you speaking out is a part of the reason that the school will not teach our children the word "transgender." Will not even allow it in the classroom, which leaves my child in constant fear, leaves her coming home and telling me that she understands that most of the world hates transgender people like her.

You and your husband are a part of the reason that I am afraid all day while my child is at school, and I am one hundred percent sure that my child is the only one in that whole entire school who is afraid to use the bathroom. You need to understand that what you and your husband are doing is essentially saying to a seven-year-old child that her basic needs are not justified and that you do not accept who she is, and the impact of that is long term.

It is not a game to have a transgender child, Katie. It is not some fun thing for you to speak up in your town about. Imagine if you had a child who had a fifty percent chance of suicide. Imagine if you had a child who was already bullied every single day for her identity, yet that identity was easier for her than showing up as a boy, because being a boy was so painful and untrue to her core being.

Can you imagine what you were doing when you tell that child that she alone, and no other child in the school, needs to walk all the way to the nurse to use the bathroom because adults in her town think there is something strange or sick or scary about her, something dangerous about her? How do you tell your child that? Tell me how that is ever anything other than bullying a child.

If you want to learn, do some research. Read a fucking book. I know you are in touch with Christopher, and he is a model of how to confront a topic and educate yourself and learn how to be an ally. It is not hard. You do not have to read much. There is so much research out there. Every bit of reliable research ever done on this all says the same thing, Katie. What you and your husband are standing up for is dangerous and destructive and life-threatening to children. Do not ever talk to me again unless you first make a public apology for your actions on behalf of all the students in our district. Abi.

BLAIR HODGES: That's Abi Maxwell, reading from her memoir, One Day I'll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman. Abi's the author of novels like Lake People and The Den, and after graduating from the writing program at the University of Montana, she spent many years working in libraries and is a dedicated advocate to the rights of transgender youth.

 

Family and School Struggles – 38:16

 

BLAIR HODGES: There's a number of things in this letter, Abi, that I wanted to touch on.

First that you say you and your husband have spent every day since that first school board meeting in a state of inability to function. This was really hard on your marriage. Paul, your husband was so supportive, but it also sent him spiraling. He experienced anger and thoughts of violence or just things that didn't seem like him, that completely caught him off guard and divided him from you. This was hard on your relationship. That's the first thing I want to point out.

ABI MAXWELL: It was so hard to be unable to protect your child because your neighbors, your community, is standing up against her. It's terrifying to have to feel like you have to keep your blinds drawn. I remember that we would hear a noise outside and think it was a gunshot. We were really going through PTSD.

BLAIR HODGES: Remember that guy that made that weird comment, like, "I wish I could go pick that child up and take..." he made this wacky comment that made you think that someone could actually try to take your child.

ABI MAXWELL: It was just all of the sudden. In the summer, my daughter transitions. We learned a lot. She's suddenly happy and free.

BLAIR HODGES: A lot of the anger is gone.

ABI MAXWELL: Truly transformed overnight. She was so excited to go back into school and tell children who she was, to tell them her new name. She was so proud. And then all of a sudden, our town just erupted in these vicious battles.

And it wasn't just battles about whether or not trans people should be allowed to use the bathrooms and locker rooms, that sort of thing, which would have been horrific as is, but it was about her specifically. People were talking about her specifically at these public school board meetings, and they were writing about her in the newspapers, and it was terrifying.

This was also right after my husband had had a major hip surgery, and so he was in a wheelchair during this time, and he just descended into this dark, dark hole, this corner, and I went into my own version of that, which is just survival mode.

And just constant, research and my brain constantly spinning, constantly trying to take care of everything, always on guard. My daughter also, and we're still all dealing with the ramifications of it.

BLAIR HODGES: By the end of the book, things improve with Paul but it's clear that damage is done that will be reckoned with for a really long time.

Another point from the letter is where you talk about how the school won't teach children the word "transgender." You found out there was this secret policy they came up with that they weren't even supposed to say the word transgender. They banned that word. The school ultimately overturned that, but that wasn't a moment of celebration for you. Why not?

ABI MAXWELL: My daughter was having a horrible time at school. I mean, she was being bullied every single day.

BLAIR HODGES: By the way, the bullying was basically people insisting she was a boy and using the dead name and that kind of stuff?

ABI MAXWELL: Yes. And she said, "Mom, why won't the teachers help? Why won't they just read a book?" I kept reaching out to the school and saying what books are being read, what language is being used to help her? And then one day, she said, "Mom, they can't help because they don't know the word transgender."

I was like what are you talking about? I had had many meetings with them before she went into the school with her new name and pronouns. I contacted them and said, “She says you're not using the word transgender. Is that true?” I kept asking and not getting an answer.

Finally, finally, I got the answer that the word transgender couldn't be used in the school setting because the superintendent had made this rule based on a private school board meeting.

BLAIR HODGES: Basically to appease the parents that were complaining. The parents would say, "You can't do this," and they caved to that and tried to hide it from you.

ABI MAXWELL: At that point, the ACLU of New Hampshire, and also GLAAD—which is an LGBTQ rights organization out of Massachusetts—got involved, and they got to the bottom of that. The ACLU and GLAAD held the superintendent to account for that, and he said, "Oh, that never happened. Of course this word can be used," that sort of thing. His letter is in my book, exactly what he said. That's not a direct quote.

I thought, what garbage, but also, yes, that's what we need him to say. That did help because right after that when my daughter was bullied, the guidance counselor taught the boy who was bullying her what transgender was, taught him the word and that there were kids like my daughter in the world, and she wasn't bullied by him again.

However, that was right before the shutdown, the COVID shutdown, and also I think I just realized yes, we need the laws and the policies, but that's not enough. We also need a culture that will stand up for those laws and policies. I think it's really important to think about if we're saying that this information is inappropriate, then we're saying my child is inappropriate and no, she's a child just like any other.

 

The Need for More Advocates – 44:08

 

BLAIR HODGES: That's the next point I wanted to draw out of this letter is how you point out, imagine if you had a child who was already bullied every single day for her identity, yet still that identity was easier for her than showing up as a boy. This is a persistent and deep identity for these kids and living with the bullying is so much weight on them, but they still want to try in the face of that. You also point out, the last thing I'll say from the letter, and there's so many different things we could talk about, is you say if you want to learn, do some research.

Don't put it all on the parents of these kids, or on the kids themselves. There is a lot of resources people can check out. They can read your memoir. They can read other memoirs by trans folks. I really recommend reading the experience of trans people themselves. Your book is important because you're coming from a parent's perspective, and we need to hear that.

We also really need to pay attention to the voices of trans folks. My disappointment in the New York Times, for example, is so deep because a lot of their terrible reporting, I think, is the outcome of not having trans reporters, not having trans columnists, not actually involving any of the people their reporting is supposedly talking about. We need to hear from people themselves to really get their stories.

ABI MAXWELL: I kept having to be put in situations where I had five minutes or less, or two minutes or less, to defend my daughter's humanity. I explained to these people why she required rights just like anybody else, and why she was a full human. You can't do that in the space of five minutes or two minutes.

It started with school board fights, and then it turned into legislative battles on the state level. I just thought, I know you people. I know who you are. I know how you grew up. New Hampshire is a very insular community, very insular state. I didn't get it either, but I know you can get it if you just listen, if you just look at what this is like. Look into my home, get to know me and my daughter's story, then you will get it and you will stop doing what you're doing. You don't understand the harm you're causing.

BLAIR HODGES: You saw this happen firsthand. You saw this with your own mother, who was very resistant to the idea and then started to actually understand and come around and become a really fierce advocate for your child.

ABI MAXWELL: Same of most people in my life, and I will say that none of the people in my life are ever people who would have spoken out against anyone's rights, but they were uncomfortable.

BLAIR HODGES: This is the problem, Abi, the silent majority. I think the vocal, transphobic people that we hear—I could be wrong—but I get the impression that they are in the minority that are so upset about this.

I think we have a lot of people in the middle who are just maybe uncomfortable with it, don't know what to do with it, maybe want to avoid it, are not going to learn about it, and are also then not going to be there for the people who need them to be there for them as supports. Even people that would pull you aside you mentioned that would just say, like, "Hey, we're thinking of you."

Sure, that's nice to hear, but say something! Go to the school board meeting. Why am I the one that has to be up there talking all the time? Don't just tell me behind everyone's back that you think what I'm doing is great. Be here with me.

ABI MAXWELL: Absolutely. We were fighting these school board meetings in 2019. Then in 2020 we realized we had to fight the same thing on the state level. Then 2021 it was more bills. Every year after that it's been more and more and more.

This book is really my plea for somebody else to come out because it was taking years off my life and my husband's life to always be fighting this, just this constant terrorization.

BLAIR HODGES: We desperately need other people to learn and to speak.

ABI MAXWELL: People who don't have a personal stake in the game, really, because we wore out. This past year, I wore out, and I said no to all requests for advocacy at the state level because I truly did not think I could survive another year.

I thought, "Okay, we can stay in New Hampshire in our home if I just block it out." But of course, the math of that is wrong. I can't block it out. These are actual laws that affect my daughter, and they passed, and we had to leave the state.

 

The Thanksgiving Dinner – 48:41

 

BLAIR HODGES: Exactly. We'll talk a little bit more about what happened there, but first I want to take you to a Thanksgiving dinner that you write about. This is where you went to your father's house, and there's cousins and stuff there, and there's a distant cousin that starts asking questions about it.

These are the kind of questions that parents of trans kids are probably just sick of hearing. Like, "Have you thought about maybe they just like girls’ clothes?" Or, "Don't you think this is kind of a fad?" Or, "They could grow out of this." Or the one that's like, "I just think people should learn to love their bodies as they are." It's this body positivity turned into transphobia.

And you felt trapped. What other questions come to mind to you? The offensive questions that you're like if they're asking it, it means they haven't engaged in the subject.

ABI MAXWELL: There are just so many. I don't want people to feel nervous and like they can't ask questions, I suppose. I want people to learn and so I don't know how exactly to put this, but I guess it's like, well, as I put in the letter, just read a book if you're nervous, just start there.

BLAIR HODGES: Also, I think, ask yourself why you're asking the question. Because if you're asking the question to suggest the true way and the right way to be, "Don't you think they might just like girls’ clothes?" But what you're really thinking is, this is a kid that doesn't know what they're doing, and they probably just like girls’ clothes. Or maybe you as a parent have been fooled. Why are they asking that?

ABI MAXWELL: That's such a good point, because that's exactly it. Why are you asking that? If you dig deep enough, you see the reason you're asking it is A, you think you know something more than this person does about themselves, and B, you don't believe this person is who they say they are.

Also why do you care? What's it to you? Can we just trust that people know themselves?

BLAIR HODGES: I think some people are afraid that they don't want their own kids to be trans, and there's this contagion idea that goes around, that transgender "ideology" will catch on. People have those kind of fears. If they would look at the research, they would find out that that's just not the case. Plenty of kids are trans without even knowing any trends.

So let's go back to this Thanksgiving dinner, because you're getting these questions, and you're already just feeling like "I don't want to be here now." It ruined the dinner for you. But there's a sister-in-law there, ironically one you never even really got along with very well, who jumped to your defense, and you were so grateful of her jumping to your defense, but you also decided you'd never go back. You felt like I'm never going back to another Thanksgiving dinner.

So why wasn't that ally's presence enough to keep you going back?

ABI MAXWELL: There comes a time when you get tired of defending your child's humanity, your child's full humanity. You get tired of trying to convince people that she's a girl, she's just a full girl like any other and she's also a transgender girl.

BLAIR HODGES: She's more than that too, which they're overlooking.

ABI MAXWELL: It's really not the most interesting thing about her! It's way more interesting to talk to her about like her Lego builds. I just get tired of constantly defending who she is, how we parent.

BLAIR HODGES: It's good to have that ally, but it also still feels like an environment where there's not a true welcome. I also tend to think parents have talked about feeling a certain danger. Their kids are already in transphobic situations enough. Why would you actively choose to keep putting them in more transphobic situations if you didn't have to?

ABI MAXWELL: My family is full of liberal people. They are very proud of their liberal values, but I think there are people in my family, a lot of members of my family—maybe all of them, other than those who are closest to me—who don't have a lot of familiarity, just like I didn't have familiarity with it. They have a lot of transphobia they have gotten from the culture they grew up in, and they haven't done the work to try not to be transphobic. They haven't done the work to learn and to see my daughter for who she is. They have a lot of questions, and that's not something I want to field on Thanksgiving.

It's part of why I wrote the book. I know people will understand, and they'll speak up if they understand.

 

Noah, Abi’s Gay Half-Brother – 53:41

 

BLAIR HODGES: Again, the book is called, One Day I'll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman: A Mother's Story by Abi Maxwell.

Abi, this talk about your family reminds me of Noah, who we spoke of earlier. This is your gay half-brother, and you included his story side by side with your daughter's story. You two had drifted apart over the years, but you reached out to him for guidance when your daughter was beginning to wear dresses.

I wondered if you would read this part from the book, because it speaks a lot to this dynamic you said of being like a liberal, progressive person, but trans stuff isn't necessarily landing with you yet. Let's hear about Noah a little.

ABI MAXWELL: Sure.

I was twenty-eight years old, four years away from parenthood when I first watched Milk, the film about LGBTQ+ rights activist Harvey Milk. It was 2008. It would be another seven years before marriage equality even became law in the United States. Paul and I had been in our upstairs apartment in Missoula, lounging on the futon after a long day cross-country skiing on the other side of the mountain pass. We'd rented the movie on a whim without thinking about how heavy it would be.

We sat there stoned, eating heaping bowls of ice cream while I cried soundlessly, tears soaking my face as I thought of my brother. The movie had an afterword that flashed statistics. The extremely high percentage of gay men who struggled with addiction. The extremely high percentage who had attempted suicide.

I paused the movie to back up and read them all again. The statistics astounded me. How had I never put it together before that Noah lived in a completely different world from the rest of our family, that the doors that had always been open to us had never been open to him?

It wasn't something our family had ever discussed. Noah was gay. Of course we loved and accepted him, and that was the end of the conversation. But I read those statistics, and finally, I realized that my little brother, whose laugh I still miss, had not been born with a troubled brain, that his struggles were actually society struggles. Why hadn't I learned this earlier? Why hadn't we all?

And what about him? Had he learned this? Has he now, or has he spent his entire life believing the problem is within him?

BLAIR HODGES: So this is a supportive family, in a sense. Knew Noah was gay, expressed love and expressed acceptance, but it stopped there. This is a really important point that your book brings out, that loving someone is not the same as fully being there for them.

He even internalized some homophobia. There's a part where he says, "I'm not one of these flag waving f-words." F-A-G word. What if your family had flown a flag? What if they even had a flag somewhere in the house? They didn't even have to be public, but a way to signal more support than just hey, you're gay, it doesn't really matter—because homophobia did matter.

This is when Matthew Shepard was murdered, long before gay marriage was legal. I used the F word as in high school all the time. I didn't even really know what it was. There's a difference between loving and accepting your kid and being there for them and advocating for a better society for them.

ABI MAXWELL: When my daughter transitioned, I thought of my little brother so much and how I could have been there for him, how he was facing struggles the rest of us weren't facing. We all had a difficult childhood. Everyone in my family did, but his struggles were a different level, and I really didn't get it. I didn't get it until I was late in my twenties honestly.

 

Supportive Friends – 57:39

 

BLAIR HODGES: You mentioned in the letter I had you read earlier Christopher—was he a pastor? This is a pastor who became an advocate, and he had a son who was gay who died by suicide. He became an important ally to you, maybe an unexpected one. When people think of religious folks, especially a religious person in such a conservative town, for him to be an advocate and ally must have been pretty special for you.

ABI MAXWELL: I wasn't connected to the church at all, but my grandparents had been members of that church since 1940, the year they got married. It was very important to her, so I'd been over the years with my grandparents. My grandmother was an organ player there, and she had loved this new pastor. He was new when I was a teenager. She had loved him, and so I reached out to him when the town was really exploding with school board fights, because we lived in my grandparent's house at that point. My grandmother had passed away, and so had my grandfather, and my husband and I bought her house. I just thought of her and what she would do if she were there. She was a really special person to me.

I reached out to him because I knew that's what she would tell me to do. He supported us immediately and truly did everything he could. He hosted book discussions. He hosted panels with transgender people on them. He brought a doctor, an endocrinologist from Dartmouth hospital, who worked with trans patients. He brought her to the church for a public forum. He truly did everything he could.

BLAIR HODGES: It was really heartening to see you weren't completely alone. I know the overall culture was so oppressive you ended up having to leave, but it was nice to see a few people that understood and were there with you.

ABI MAXWELL: We had a couple of friends who really supported us every step of the way, and then the pastor.

 

Legal Discrimination – 59:53

 

BLAIR HODGES: As things are coming to a head, you're starting to feel like you can't stay. You've decided maybe you go back to Montana, and this is the plan for a while. You set a date. You talk to Greta about it. This was the plan. But as it was approaching, you decided to look some things up online and discovered it was not going to be possible.

I want to run down the list with people so they get a sense of all the different legal implications families like yours face when they have a trans child. You looked it up.

Housing: the state doesn't prohibit housing discrimination based on sexual identity or gender orientation.

Employment: the state doesn't prohibit employment discrimination.

Hate crimes: there's no laws that address hate or bias crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Public accommodations: the state doesn't prohibit discrimination in public accommodations and things like bathrooms.

School anti-bullying: there's no laws that address harassment or bullying of students based on gender identity.

Education: there's no law that addresses discrimination against students based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Anti-conversion therapy: the state doesn't protect youth from discredited modes of conversion therapy that lead to high suicide rates and deep psychological damage trying to convert people away from being gay or being trans.

That's just a snapshot of the type of considerations, and Montana didn't have any of that. New Hampshire's gotten worse. Where I live here in Utah it's getting worse, and we're seeing a huge increase. You say that by 2022 there was an 800% increase over four years of bills across the country, and it seems like these families are literally under attack.

Fortunately, you've had the ability to move. You're now joining us from California, but there are also families who can't, and they're trapped.

ABI MAXWELL: I want to add to that list you just read. That was a list I pulled up online in 2019. In 2019 there was a sports ban in Idaho, I believe, that had not gone into effect yet but had passed. That's all I know of. I'm pretty sure that was all there was. This wasn't something that was widespread across the country.

Now there is a sports ban in well over half the country, and there's a ban on medical care for my daughter in over half the country, and in Montana specifically there's a sports ban and a medical care ban. When that list was written, it didn't even include the bans against her rights. It was just the rights she did not have.

BLAIR HODGES: So it's even gotten worse.

ABI MAXWELL: It's just being constantly, constantly traumatized. We recently moved to California to get out of it, and I cannot express what it is like to feel like we can live our lives again, to feel like we want to go out into the world, and go for a swim or go to a cafe or anything. To, frankly, to be alive, because we do not have to constantly fight for our daughter's basic rights and constantly be on guard about whether or not she's safe.

 

Sports Bans – 1:03:22

 

BLAIR HODGES: You had a new liturgical calendar, and it was the legislative session. Every time it came around it was like this ritual you had to go through again of all of the things you had to worry about. You'd say you had an immense privilege of never having to really pay that much attention to it before.

But now you do, and as we're facing possible federal implications with a Supreme Court that often sides on conservative issues with the six-three majority, as we're recording this we're heading up to the presidential election that could have huge implications for trans rights, and so even in California there are still things parents are having to worry about.

I wanted to say one quick word about sports and why they matter. Greta fell in love with downhill skiing and wanted to be a competitive racer and really loved that. The sports bans have been troubling to you. I just wanted to read this part. You say it shocks you to think of these sports bans.

"Such a simple thing, an activity with a group where you have to try together and learn and fail and try again and what it did for her confidence, her frustration tolerance, her general life skill of being able to show up and try was fast and extreme."

You saw it as such a benefit for Greta as a person, and that makes you a strong advocate against these sports bans. I will have future episodes that'll go more in depth on that question, but I did want to put a word in that your book does a nice job of showing how it plays out in one particular kid's life, and what skiing did for your daughter in helping her learn more resilience and just what sports can do.

ABI MAXWELL: She was a skier in New Hampshire, and that was one of the hardest parts for her to leave New Hampshire, and now she lives in a place where she can't ski. Our whole family knows that it's a lot better to not be able to do it because it doesn't exist here than to be banned from it.

With these sports bans, nobody knows my daughter is transgender. There's no way to tell she's transgender. It's so random to ban her from a group at school. You might as well ban her from playing the flute. How can you send a child into school and feel like they will feel like a welcome and whole person and then be like but you're not allowed to join this thing that everyone else can join?

 

Staying Afloat – 1:05:58

 

BLAIR HODGES: That's Abi Maxwell. We're talking about her book One Day I'll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman: A Mother's Story. She's also an author of novels like Lake People and The Den. Got her degree at the University of Montana, and now is dedicated to advocacy for the rights of transgender youth, especially through this new memoir.

Abi, what keeps you afloat right now? How are you surviving? You've moved. We've talked about some really difficult things in the interview, and I would like you to spend a second talking to parents of trans kids or people who don't know enough about it. Give us a sense of what's keeping you afloat.

ABI MAXWELL: When we were still in New Hampshire and constantly fighting the legislative battles, I don't know what kept us afloat. We were getting darker and darker. There were things we would do that kept us somewhat okay, like going out into the natural world and being with friends, or that sort of thing.

But I don't know. I didn't know how to survive that anymore, which is why we left. Of course, we had immense privilege to be able to leave, but it also meant we left our jobs. We left the home we thought we would be in forever. It's the second time in four years we've had to move to protect our child from these bans, or just from the hate. My whole family's in New Hampshire. We had to leave the home we all loved, and I didn't think we would be able to make it. I remember standing there one day in my old home thinking, "I need someone to come over and physically move my body through these steps, because I do not think I can do it."

But the thing that kept me going was that I had this vision in my mind that in New Hampshire I was climbing up a mountain, and I would forever be climbing it. I knew the bills would not stop. Even if they didn't pass this year, they would come back the next year. Or if they did pass this year, they would come back. No matter what, they would keep coming back and coming back. It was going to be an uphill battle forever.

I knew if I could get my daughter to this more diverse and accepting place where she had laws to protect her—it was like we were climbing this huge mountain, but there was another side, and just envisioning that, that we would get to a summit and go down the other side, that is what kept me going.

Now we're here. Thank God we have savings to live off of while we figure out a new life, build a new life, but I can feel my nervous system, and I can see in my family our nervous systems relaxing and we're free to live our lives again.

BLAIR HODGES: I'm really glad your answer doesn't let any of us off the hook. You don't have any special solution that people that are experiencing what your family is experiencing can turn to because it's an active and ongoing issue across this country. What that says to me is every single one of us needs to step up, become informed, become advocates, and become more vocal than the people who are oppressing our trans friends, neighbors, children, and relatives, and you're not letting us off the hook.

What you're describing is really difficult, and we need to grapple with that, and that's a call for us to step up. Thank you for sharing that with us, Abi, I really appreciate it.

 

Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises – 1:09:23

 

BLAIR HODGES: Let's close with regrets, challenges and surprises. Now your book is fresh. There's a time between when you finish writing it and when it's going through the publication process, so is there anything you wish you could change about it now that it's ready to come out, or are you pretty satisfied with how it turned out?

ABI MAXWELL: No, thankfully, I don't have regrets. A lot of that is because of my brilliant editor who kept saying to me this book is too important to not get every bit of it right. I would send her my revisions and she would say, "Great job, and we're going back into it." She really pushed me, and I'm so thankful. Jenny Jackson.

BLAIR HODGES: Shout out, Jenny.

ABI MAXWELL: I'm so thankful to her.

BLAIR HODGES: Was there anything that was most difficult about putting this book together, or was there anything that really surprised you as you were writing?

ABI MAXWELL: This book was so challenging to write. Fiction, I have struggled with structure, but this book was emotionally so challenging to write. I would wake up every day and slather my neck and my shoulders in marijuana, CBD, whatever cream to try to get rid of the tension headache. I would sit down at my computer and I felt like I was attaching my veins to needles or whatever that went straight into my computer and feeding my life force out. That is what I thought every single day.

BLAIR HODGES: Sounds a little bit different than writing Lake People.

ABI MAXWELL: It was so, so emotionally draining. But I felt that I had to write it because I needed people to understand what was happening.

BLAIR HODGES: It sounds like it could give you a little bit of a break too. Your voice is out there now. Maybe you don't have to go to every single meeting and do all these other things. You've got something to send. You've got something that can reach more people.

ABI MAXWELL: I hope so. It's such a personal book, and in order to write it, I sort of had to hold two things in my mind. I had to write it because I needed people to understand, but I was also telling myself when I was writing it, that nobody had to ever read it, or if I published it I could do it under a fake name, that sort of thing, because I was so afraid on a number of levels. I think the surprise now is I'm not afraid anymore. A huge part of that is because I'm not in New Hampshire anymore.

BLAIR HODGES: Were you afraid of repercussions of on your other books? What were those concrete fears?

ABI MAXWELL: I'm afraid for all the hate that can come out because of the book, for people attacking us. The book names Guilford, and it names Concord, where we moved to, and when we were still in Concord, I was physically afraid of people could find us if they wanted to, and I didn't know what lengths people will go to. People have a lot of pride in their hometowns, and I talk about what Guilford did to us.

Afraid to just be out there in the public in that way, afraid to have my daughter's story out there, but now I cannot wait for this book to be out in the world, because I know all of that will come, but I think I can block it out enough, and I think it's not a big price to pay for having people read the story. It is a book I really believe in. I believe if people will take the time to read it, then they'll learn, and I truly believe they'll start doing something or speaking up.

BLAIR HODGES: These first-person accounts, these personal stories, are so important to help people understand, and so I'm grateful for you, not only writing it, but being willing to come and talk to us about it. Thank you so much. Again, the book's called, One Day I'll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman: A Mother's Story.

 

Outro – 1:13:51

 

BLAIR HODGES: Thanks for listening to Family Proclamations. If this is your first episode, welcome. I hope you'll check out some of our other ones. I also hope you'll recommend the show to a friend. That's the number one way people find out about podcasts is through friends, family, people that they care about. Thanks to Camille Messick, who edited this episode's transcript. You can find transcripts of every episode at familyproclamations.org.

There's a lot more to come on Family Proclamations, so why not take a second to review the show? Go to Apple Podcasts and write up your thoughts. Don't overthink it. Just go write up some thoughts about the show. Mates of State provided our theme song. Family Proclamations is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I'm Blair Hodges and I'll see you next time.