“Coming Home to Venus: The Story of a Woman Transitioning to Her Real Self” is the natural, deeply intimate continuation of Ella Marques’ autobiographical journey, following her first book, “I Was Born a Boy, From Venus: It’s Time to Be Yourself.” Where the first memoir opened the door to self-recognition and the courage to step into truth, this second book invites the reader fully inside, into the lived reality of transition, healing, and arrival. It is a story not only about becoming a woman, but about becoming whole.
Ella Marques has always insisted that her life story matters for far more reasons than her transgender identity alone. She is an international woman in the fullest sense of the word, born in Portugal, educated at some of the most prestigious schools in Europe, and shaped by decades spent living and working across Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and the United States. She built a successful career at management level within international companies, navigated boardrooms and airports, spoke multiple languages, and gathered experiences that were, in her own words, wild, wonderful, and transformative. In “Coming Home to Venus,” all of these layers remain present, but they are reframed through the lens of a woman finally living in alignment with herself.
The book traces Ella’s journey from the persistent, lifelong presence of gender dysphoria to gender reassignment surgery and beyond, offering a narrative that is both personal testimony and practical guide. As she explained in her 2020 interview for The Heroines of My Life, this book is fundamentally about change, about the steps required to become fully oneself in the real world. She writes chronologically, beginning with the struggle to understand her own feelings, the decision to seek professional guidance, and the crucial role of counseling and support groups. Her reflections on working with an experienced specialist such as Dr. Carol Clark reveal how transformative it can be to finally be heard without judgment, to have space to speak freely about childhood memories, guilt, fear, and longing that had been buried for decades.
Family relationships run like a quiet, emotional current through the book. Ella’s memories of her mother are especially poignant, marked by love, misunderstanding, and a late, bittersweet moment of acceptance. These passages remind the reader that transition does not occur in isolation; it reverberates through generations, cultural expectations, and deeply ingrained beliefs. At the same time, Ella’s account of her sister’s unwavering support offers a counterbalance, illustrating how powerful simple acceptance can be.
The professional world is another arena where Ella’s experience offers both realism and hope. She writes about navigating job interviews, paperwork mismatches, and workplace dynamics as a transgender woman, ultimately asserting that professionalism, confidence, and competence remain central. In some contexts, being transgender is still a risk, but in others it can become a strength, particularly in environments that value diversity and global perspectives. Her advice is never dogmatic; instead, she encourages intuition and self-awareness, recognizing that every transition unfolds differently.
The culmination of the book is Ella’s decision to undergo gender reassignment surgery in Thailand with Dr. Chettawut, a choice she discusses with remarkable clarity and lack of sensationalism. She writes about research, trust, experience, and the importance of listening to one’s instincts when making irreversible decisions. Her account of recovery, shared sisterhood with other trans women from around the world, and the quiet ordinariness of learning to live in a new body strips the subject of taboo and replaces it with humanity. The moment after surgery is not framed as a dramatic rebirth, but as a continuation, a body finally catching up with a truth long known.
Throughout “Coming Home to Venus,” Ella’s tone remains reflective, warm, and grounded. She does not present transition as an escape from struggle, but as a shift in where that struggle lives. What emerges most clearly is her belief that transgender women are not anomalies or symbols, but women living ordinary lives, loving, working, worrying, dreaming, and aging like anyone else. This message, echoed in her interview with The Heroines of My Life, is one she returns to repeatedly: transgender women are women, full stop, and society’s refusal to see this is a learned blindness, not a natural truth.The book also reflects a period of intense creativity and community engagement in Ella’s life. Written during the pandemic, it exists alongside her work on the fiction novel “Eva’s World” and her co-founding of Trans-Gurus, a global platform supporting transgender people across continents. This broader context gives “Coming Home to Venus” an outward-looking quality. It is not only about one woman’s arrival, but about responsibility, visibility, and solidarity, especially with trans women living in countries where acceptance remains distant or dangerous.
In the end, “Coming Home to Venus” is less about transformation than about recognition. It is the story of a woman who did not change who she was, but finally allowed herself to live openly as that person. Ella Marques writes with the authority of experience and the gentleness of someone who knows how hard the path can be. Her second autobiography stands as a companion to her first, a testament to courage lived over time, and an invitation to readers, transgender or cisgender, to understand that becoming oneself is not an event, but a journey, and that coming home to oneself is one of the bravest acts a human being can perform.
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Photo via The Heroines of My Life
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