Grief mixed with sunshine: A trans kid & her family fled the U.S. to find hope & home in Uruguayhttps://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/11/grief-mixed-with-sunshine-a-trans-kid-her-family-fled-the-u-s-to-find-hope-home-in-uruguay/ 🔗Faefyx Collington (19 Nov 2025)
When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) began threatening to take trans children away from their parents, Sarah began coaching her daughter on how to advocate for herself.
Since she and her husband had never used the word transgender with their daughter, Sarah had a lot to explain about what was happening. "I didn't go into a lot of detail, but I was like, some people think this."
Then her daughter turned to her and said, "Mom, I can try not to be transgender."
"I've just never been more angry in my whole life," says Sarah. "At that moment, if Ken Paxton had been in the room, I might've caught a charge because I was so mad. And I told her (this is not very sweet mom of me), I'll fight every motherf**ker in this state. You will be you."
When their daughter first came out, Sarah and her husband weren't familiar with trans identities. But they knew early on they did not have a son.
"From the time she could talk, she was telling us who she was," Sarah told LGBTQ Nation. They took their daughter to a psychologist who encouraged them to follow her lead. "We love you, and you tell us what's right," they told their daughter. "And that was our life for a long time."
But that wasn't to last. In 2022, Paxton announced a policy that labeled gender-affirming care as child abuse and threatened to remove children from their homes. That was when they knew they had to leave Texas.
It took them over a year to get out.
