Illinois Public Media News

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. She talks about that experience and more in her upcoming memoir, “I Was An Abomination: A Story of Trans Survival in Conservative America".