Stephanie Francesca ("Steph")
Age 36 (born 26 Sep 1988)15 Jan 2025
Basildon, Essex (United Kingdom)
Suicide
Stephanie died by suicide.
Stephanie Francesca was the woman I loved for eight years and fourteen days whilst she lived; she's also the woman I have continued to love since she died.
On the 15th January 2025, Steph took her life in our home. She was 36 years old.
She had only been blessed with being her true self for three years before the ignorant, hateful, and nonsensical voices in the world became too much for her to carry - and she didn't deserve to feel that way. No one - cis or trans - deserves to feel that way. To feel hated, simply for breathing. To feel reviled for finally feeling whole, finally feeling joy in being oneself, finally realising who you are and wanting to live your life quietly, in gentle contentment.
She was a wonderful gardener. Our house was filled, across the year, with sprouts and flowers and colour - her basket of fire chilis, especially, were absolutely brilliant (if dangerous to those who dared use them). Her hair was the softest, curliest cascade, framing a flawless face with the deepest, darkest eyes. Her laugh was music, sometimes soft and sometimes the most raucous, filthiest thing you could imagine - but always, always contagious. Her smile could've lit cities. Her generosity was constant. She was intelligent, witty, stubborn, incredibly black and white. She was gentle, sharp, a constant curve of dualities and layers. She was human, she was flawed, but those things just made her more real, tangible, significant. And I loved her.
Steph was so very many things, to people near and far, but most of all, she was loved. I will love her until I join her, wherever she is, and I'm fairly sure that my love is such that it'll continue even once my body is no longer here to carry it.
Stephanie did not deserve to feel that the only option she could stand to live with was one where her life would have to end. She was not the first, and she won't be the last.
Stephanie was a web developer, and her GitHub account (https://github.com/GrumpyPirate) includes an automated Minecraft texture pack compiler named Sphaxify. It also (sadly) includes her suicide note - a thoughtful essay makes it very clear that the current climate of hostility and lack of care (including by the NHS) towards trans people had weighed heavily upon her.
Source: email
