When he was 18, Evan Clark decided it was time to tell his mum he had important news.
Sitting next to him on the bed, she calmly asked if he was gay.
Then seeing the eyeliner, she asked if he wanted to be a woman.
He took a deep breath and told her: “No mum, I don’t want to be a woman – I AM a woman”.
Fast forward eight years and Evan has now transitioned to Ella and she is working at transgender clinics.
As a first point of contact for others who feel they were born in the wrong body, she says: “It’s like all the struggles I had to get here were for a purpose.
Have you got an incredible story to tell? Email webnews@mirror.co.uk
“When my mum gave me the biggest hug ever after I told her who I really was, it felt like I could fly, that I was finally free.”
Growing up the third of four brothers in Portishead, near Bristol, Ella endured years of bullying at school.
And the last people she wanted to risk alienating were her own family.
At first she told her mother Amanda, 54, a housewife from Bristol, who kept her secret so Ella could tell the others in person.
And she found her dad and three brothers could not have been more positive when she broke the news.
Ella says: “I felt sure mum and dad would think they’d lost a child, that they’d somehow failed, and I was robbing them of the chance of having grandchildren.
“But every single one of my family made me feel happier and more confident than I’ve ever felt before.”
A month after Ella broke the news to her mother, dad Chris spotted her out and about while he was driving his car.
Chris, 53, recalls: “She had a big, dark wig on, she was wearing a dress and had full make-up on. I had to double-take but it was definitely her.
“That evening I went up to her room and said I’d seen her earlier and it all came out.”
Ella’s eldest brother Ross had come out as gay four years before, so Chris was used to dealing with bombshells.
“I was just scared for her, as so many people out there aren’t kind or accepting,” Chris says. “I told her we’d be behind her 100 per cent.
“The moment anyone I knew said anything belittling Ella and her transition, I was the first to put them to rights.
“My daughter has every right to choose who she is and her happiness is her choice.”
Ella’s younger brother Drew, a 24-year-old electrician, says his sister’s transition helped him realise who his real friends were.
“Some school friends stopped replying to my texts and calls,” he says.
“I knew then that the problem was with them, not Ella, and found a new, better group of friends.”
Drew says he and his sister get on “like a house on fire now, constantly laughing like best mates”.
He adds: “If anything, I’m kind of jealous that she’s now landed her dream job. It’s like me becoming a professional footballer.”
Ella’s other brother Owen, 28, who lives in Southampton, says: “If they don’t like Ella, I know they’re a narrow-minded swamp person.
“It’s brilliant that people can make these changes. Ella’s an example to everyone on making your own path to happiness.”
Three years after telling her family, Ella transitioned under the NHS, after which she privately paid for breast augmentation, a surgical lip lift and facial fillers.
Next year, she is booked in for a final round of cosmetic surgery.
“I’ll have spent over £50,000 but people spend more on cars and this is will be the real me. You can’t put a price on that.”
She stresses her physical transition is nothing compared with the psychological battles she has fought.
Until she was 12, Ella just felt confused. It was when she had sex education classes at school, and heard the term “transgender” mentioned for the first time, that she finally knew who she was.
The six years leading up to coming out were unbearable, with hours spent in her bedroom researching transitioning and watching trans documentaries and YouTube videos.
Ella says: “I was in awe of how glamorous and feminine those people on TV were.
“I hated living a lie, trapped in my bedroom in Portishead. Everyone at school assumed I was gay, so I was called ‘faggot’, ‘homo’, the most horrible things. But I knew that one day I’d have the last laugh.”
One of Ella’s biggest fans is her nan Val, with whom she now lives in Bristol.
“You always imagine that the older someone is, the more conservative they are – but nan thought it was amazing,” says Ella.
“Some more distant family members didn’t want me to go near their children in case they ‘got ideas’. They’ve since changed their views but it’s taken a while. People always surprise you.”
After leaving school and studying to be cabin crew at college, Ella approached her GP for advice on how to transition.
Following psychological assessment, she had to spend two years living as a woman before gender reassignment surgery six years ago.
“I was working in make-up sales in Duty Free at Bristol Airport when I saw the ad for someone to work at Transform Hospital Group’s new transgender service, Identite, and it just seemed fate,” she says.
Ella started her new role in July, driving to any of Transform’s clinics in the UK to personally answer questions from others wanting to transition.
“I’ve helped about half a dozen people so far, one of whom has gone on to have surgery,” she says.
“Every single time I end up crying, reliving what I’ve been through with the support and love of my family. But they’re tears of pure joy.”
- See transforminglives.co.uk/identite for more info.
