‘I was an abomination’: Trans lawyer shares difficult coming out experience in new memoir

Sheryl Weikal’s parents were deeply conservative, and for many years she and her sisters were homeschooled. At eight years old, she had never heard the word “transgender,” but she understood that there was a disconnect between who she was and what she saw in the mirror. She tried to come out to her family as a child. In the years that followed, her parents reacted negatively … often, violently.
 
Finally, Weikal moved out on her own when she started law school. Eventually, in the mid-2010's, she started transitioning. Even after that, life still had many more challenges for her especially when being trans in America still means dealing with barriers to accessing healthcare, proper documentation, and more. Those challenges have grown under the second Trump administration.
 
Nowadays, Weikal is an attorney based in McHenry, in the Chicago collar counties. Weikal discusses her upcoming memoir, “I Was An Abomination: A Story of Trans Survival in Conservative America" on today's program.

GUEST

Sheryl Weikal 
Lawyer
Author, “I Was An Abomination”

CORRECTION

October 8, 2025 — An earlier version of this story incorrectly asserted Sheryl Weikal was the first openly transgender lawyer to argue a case before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. She says so in her memoir, but in fact another lawyer, Joanie Rae Wimmer, has argued multiple cases at the Seventh Circuit. Wimmer came out as trans in 2008, and her appellate cases include several that predate Weikal's licensure as an attorney in Illinois.