If she couldn’t continue taking puberty blockers until then, she would begin to go through male puberty, which could mean more surgeries and other procedures later in life.Īt first, the family had hoped that the courts would declare the new law unconstitutional. Willow was determined to begin taking estrogen when she turned sixteen, in December of 2023, which would allow her to grow into adulthood with feminine characteristics. But Chapman wasn’t sure they could count on that. On paper, the law, which went into effect in early July, would allow trans teens like Willow to continue their medical care until March of 2024. In March, Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, had signed a bill that banned gender-transition treatment for minors across the state. Willow is trans, and had been on puberty blockers since 2021. Chapman and Paul’s marriage was ending, but the decision to split their family apart had happened abruptly. Paul was planning to stay in town Chapman was heading to Richmond, Virginia, with Saoirse and Willow. “We got him when we moved in here for the kids,” she said. Chapman looked down at the family’s beagle mix, Obi-Wan Kenobi, who was drinking rainwater out of a plastic bucket. Their daughters, Saoirse and Willow, who were seventeen and fifteen, were inside, still asleep. Her husband, Paul, who was wearing a T-shirt with the Guinness logo, carried boxes out to the front lawn.

She was smoking an American Spirit and swatting at the mosquitoes that kept emerging from the dense green brush behind her. Chapman, who is in her early fifties and wears her silver hair short, sat on a camp chair next to a fire pit outside the rental duplex where her family had lived for twelve years. On the last morning of July, Kristen Chapman was getting ready to leave Nashville.

Rush limbaugh net worth 2019