Living their truth: Transgender women talk about the road to acceptancehttp://timesleader.com/news/377701/living-their-truth-transgender-women-talk-about-the-road-to-acceptanceTimes Leader/By Roger DuPuis
First Posted: 4:18 pm - August 15th, 2015 Updated: 4:32 pm
"Chelsea Anaïs Nepenthe expected to be dead by now.
"I accepted that my life was going to end in suicide," Chelsea, 26, said of her teenage years.
Assigned male gender at birth, as the Plains Township native puts it, puberty brought her struggle with gender identity into painful focus. She tried to kill herself twice.
Today, Chelsea is a transgender woman, one full year into "finally living my truth."
It was not an easy journey, but in that respect Chelsea is hardly unique.
Her big leap toward self-fulfillment came at a time when trans Americans were achieving new-found visibility and acceptance, finally being represented on television, gracing magazine covers and being honored with awards for courage.
In January, the word transgender was mentioned in a State of the Union address, when President Barack Obama spoke out against persecution against trans people and other minorities."
