My daughter is trans. She was nearly taken away from me because I let her transition | Carolyn Hays

A child welfare investigation drove us from our conservative state. Little did we know that rightwing governors across America would soon be embracing this kind of persecution

One autumn day in 2011, an investigator from our state's department of children and families knocked on our door. At the time we lived in a conservative state in the American south. Someone had made an anonymous complaint accusing us of child abuse for allowing our child to have a girlhood. A lawyer told us that, in this state with decades of Republican-appointed judges, we were at risk of losing custody of our transgender daughter.

The investigator's visit felt like a bizarre clerical error; our four kids were thriving and we were well-liked in our community. The investigator ultimately found us to be good parents doing what was best for our child. However, it had become urgently clear that we would have to leave the deep south and move to a place where our youngest daughter, who had recently transitioned to she/her pronouns and a nickname, would have basic rights to equal education, housing, healthcare and, as she grew up, employment.

Carolyn Hays is an award-winning, critically acclaimed, bestselling author. She is the author of A Girlhood: Letter to My Transgender Daughter, which she has written under a pseudonym