Hi, my name is Raj. I am fundraising for the memorial of my partner and fiancée Samantha Smith.

Samantha was a beautiful soul. An amazing woman with a gentle heart, full of compassion for animals, for people and our planet.

Samantha sadly passed away earlier this year, after battling the devastating impacts of mental health and trauma for a long time. She was taken too soon and so brutally from us all. This was following severe, sustained and horrific hate, transphobia, abuse, harassment and discrimination over many years.

Samantha loved ancient history and ancient languages, history, art, fashion, science, literature and spirituality. She also enjoyed an eclectic range of music, arts and cultural interests.

Always imaginative and inventive, with her 'outside the box' and 'mad scientist' way of thinking, Samantha always saw the world with interest and curiosity and was forever coming up with new and quirky inventions.

Samantha was a writer, a poet, an artist, a scholar, a singer. And also loved walking and being outdoors. In recent years she also found a new love for baking and travel.

She loved to support people who were vulnerable and marginalised like her.

She was a mentor and support for a number of transgender people locally and internationally. Always there for others no matter what she was going through privately.

She loved animals, and nature and was passionate about conservation and the environment.

Her work with the animals was hugely admired, she adopted rescue dogs for over 20 years, and she gave them love, respect and the best lives they could have.

We had hoped to be married by now, starting our new life together and setting off on the path of the plans we had made. She had felt fully part of a family and accepted for the first time in her life, with my family. She often said how happy and loved she felt for the first time in her life with me and our family. She loved being a stepmum.

I was not able to give her the funeral she wanted, or deserved, as her estranged family took over as legal next of kin and shut me and her friends out of any involvement in, or knowledge of, the plans they had to lay her to rest.

Their transphobia and disrespect continues in death. They deliberately and cruelly continue to deadname and misgender her identity. They denied her existence and lifestyle in death as they had while she was alive. And would not even acknowledge she had a partner and community after she died or have the decency to let us mark our respects or say goodbye. They took away our ability to grieve.

I still do not know what they have done with my darling Samantha, and they have made it clear that I never will. All I know is they would not have had a service in her real name, of Samantha Smith, but had a private service for the misgendered deadname they insisted on addressing her as, for her to be recognised as a viable person in their eyes. As they used to say to her in her living days too. To them she was a non-entity as a transwoman and they disagreed with her 'lifestyle'.

Sadly, this was all against Samantha's wishes, who had stated me as her next of kin. But in the eyes of the law we were not married (even though we had lived together for years) so her estranged biological family were given legal control of her body and estate, to do with her as they wished.

My beloved Samantha deserves to be seen, remembered and celebrated for the beautiful woman she was.

Not forgotten, erased and dismissed as done so by her haters and persecutors.

I want to celebrate the authentic, whole fabulousness that was Samantha. And what she meant to so many of us as her chosen family with a Creative and Celebratory Memorial in her ultimate Happy Place.

So, I would like to raise funds to contribute to this celebration of Samantha's life and impact.

With any remaining funds contributing towards a commemorative bench, plaque and tree in her Happy Place, where we were to be married. And so that in the future others can reflect, be at peace and enjoy the views that Samantha loved and found solace in.

I hope you can help us celebrate this truly remarkable woman, who left such a wonderful imprint on so many, and whose absence has left a huge void in our lives.

Let’s all give her the 'send off' she deserves and share stories of her impact, and the joy she brought to us all, with the rest of the chosen family and friends in a communal place that meant the world to her.

If you feel you would like to help in any way it would be hugely appreciated. If you cannot, that's fine too.

Please donate anything if you can to help this wish for Samantha become a beautiful reality for her.

And if you would like to share this link please do, to share Samantha's story wider.

Thank you very very much.

Raj