Ella Snyder Moves On And Embraces Change

Beauty starts with two things: clean water and ability to embrace change. In partnership with Jolie, we asked Ella Snyder, a transgender artist, model, actress and writer, a question close to our hearts: What does change mean to you? Since Jolie changes the way we shower, and with her very recent move to New York, Ella took us behind the shower curtain, into her new apartment to reflect on transformation and growth with each step.

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You know that millisecond of confusion you experience when you wake up somewhere new for the first time? You don’t recognize your surroundings at first, and you think to yourself, “Where the hell am I?” As a single woman in her mid-twenties who also travels frequently for work, I’m somewhat accustomed to this sensation. However, after coming out of one of the most transformative eras of my life, I’m beginning to find intimacy with the unfamiliar.

Nothing ever really stays the same, does it? The same is true for humans — we don’t stay the same. We grow, we learn, we adjust. Change is not a foreign concept to me. In fact, transforming is embedded in my identity. Between being a trans woman, a model, and a performer, change has actually been the one constant of my life that I know I can rely on, and it’s something I’ve grown to find quite beautiful.

The only thing that can keep us from changing is tension. This is something I learned while taking method-acting workshops in Los Angeles this past year. Our tension holds us back from growing and evolving, because it exists as fear in our minds. Mental tension wants life to stay exactly how it is, in a state of familiarity. My own tension often presents itself through fear, and because of that, I have spent a lot of my life afraid of change. I was afraid to socially transition and start presenting as Ella at eleven years old because I feared what it meant for my future, but now I’m twenty-five and living out my wildest ambitions. I think this was my earliest example of working through my mental tension in order to grow.

More recently, I faced change in every direction. I spent five weeks of this past summer couch surfing with friends while working in New York, before ultimately deciding I needed to move back after a four-year stint in Los Angeles. Immediately into starting my move, literally on the first day of packing, my cat passed away. He was young and healthy, and it was completely unexpected, but he calcified urine-blocking crystals in his bladder that ultimately cut his life short. Out of nowhere, my whole world was changing. Between the death of a loved one and a cross-country move, it felt like every layer of my being was being shed from me, and I was losing control of my whole world.

I mourned, I grieved, but I had to keep moving. With a strict timeline set to get out of LA, change became my full time job, and as I worked through my own tension, slowly, the move transformed from being an overwhelming hellscape to something exciting. My sense of accomplishment grew with each trip to the dumpster and every donation trip to Goodwill. With each passing day, I became more grounded in the present while starting to become eager thinking about the future.

The prospect of starting a new chapter is where beauty lies. Whatever waits around the corner is unknown but promising. However, new chapters can’t begin without finishing the previous one, and this requires accepting our tension and accepting change.

This morning I woke up in my new Brooklyn apartment for the first time. I can’t help but feel like my cat should be here with me, and at the same time, I feel set free. Untethered to anything and anyone but my own will and desires, I feel ready to conquer independently. I can see, and feel the beauty in that.