Until now, New Hampshire’s plan for me has worked. Last century (as I like to joke), UNH recruited me up from coastal South Shore, Massachusetts, with a scholarship. With a part-time, medical unit coordinator mom, a high school teacher dad and no generational wealth, scholarships were my golden ticket.
I never went back to my childhood home. At UNH, I picked up a B.A., a B.S., and my husband of more than 26 years. Sure, we had a stint of a couple years in the South Pacific serving as Peace Corps volunteers, and then I lived part-time in Vermont for law school, but all the while our base has been New Hampshire — even that memorable summer when we lived in my in-laws’ backyard in their pop-up camper.
Once we were ready to settle down, we bought our first home, our one and only .49-acre, 1,579 square-foot cape, into which we have steadily poured our hearts and souls into since 2006. My husband returned to UNH and earned his Master’s. We had babies. I served in state and local government. With others, I grew a local business from a one-office, two-person, one-state company into a three-office, 12-person, three-state company. We imported my mom and sister, and her family into New Hampshire. We hiked, biked, swam, skied, snowboarded and so, so much more.
All was going to plan, until New Hampshire became a place my oldest daughter can no longer live because she is transgender. Our family has had to fight for her rights for many years. But, starting in 2024, New Hampshire began to make clear that New Hampshire no longer wants her. That was when New Hampshire made it illegal for her to play sports. Yes, we had the tremendously good fortune to get temporary relief from court so she could play tennis, but to say that process has been extremely difficult for us would be a huge understatement.
Now that Governor Kelly Ayotte signed HB 377, New Hampshire is barging into our family’s decisions about our daughter’s medical care, directly impeding our ability to get her the care she needs to thrive. Though there may be a carve-out for people already receiving gender affirming care, that is way too close a call for us to risk staying. Other New Hampshire laws also seek to erase her. We have left New Hampshire to take refuge in a different state, one where her very existence will not be continually under assault.
Our hearts are broken with this decision, and all that we must leave behind. We have to wrest our daughters out of a high school they have only just begun and away from a middle school they dreamed of attending, all with the same kids and best friends they have grown up with their entire lives. We have to leave behind their grammy, nana, grampy, cousins, aunt and uncle, with whom they have gotten together many times a week for their whole lives.
The newly renovated bedroom; the blueberry patch that was my 45th birthday present; the 14,000-pound slate patio we installed by hand; our resident pileated woodpecker and bats; our almost 20-year-old asparagus patch; the ladies poker group I founded over a decade ago; our First Friday dinner parties; our office families; and so, so much more. The list of cleaved connections from our one and only family home goes on and on. We desperately don’t want to go, but as parents, we feel we have no choice.
It’s been a great run, New Hampshire. Farewell.
Amy Manzelli is an attorney with BCM Environmental & Land Law, PLLC in Concord. She resides in Pembroke.