When Samantha Rose opens her book I Know Who I Am: The Ballad of a Transgender Woman, she takes the reader into the raw depths of memory, pain, and transformation. The story begins when she was fourteen, at a time when her world was suddenly fractured by tragedy. Her best friend, Amanda Carson, disappeared on April 16, 2005. Amanda was later found dead in a trash barrel behind the Galesburg mall, an image so haunting that it becomes a defining shadow in Samantha’s life. Amanda had been the first person to truly see her, to understand her difference and encourage her to be herself. The loss of that friendship marked the beginning of Samantha’s awareness of the cruelty and fragility that can exist in life. In those same dark days, she also learned that her mother had cancer, a revelation that sent her spiraling into a storm of depression and uncertainty. The combination of grief, fear, and confusion pushed her inward, where she began to grapple with questions of identity and purpose that would echo through her entire life.
At home, the situation was far from comforting. Samantha’s relationship with her father was a source of constant pain. He never accepted her differences, never tolerated her sensitivity or her refusal to conform to his expectations of masculinity. He was, in her own words, a monster wrapped in human flesh, someone who abused his wife and children with a cruelty that left lasting scars. The household was a battlefield, where survival often depended on silence and endurance. For Samantha, this experience of relentless violence became both a source of trauma and a crucible of strength. It showed her how destructive intolerance could be, but it also taught her resilience, and it planted within her a determination to live authentically, even when authenticity came with a price.
