A mother’s love: April Heyman chooses advocacy for her son and community

April Heyman grew up in Queens, in a conservative family. She attended an all-girls Catholic school and would take the F train there and back. Sometimes, she’d take the F to the end, to Greenwich Village. Already a lover of theater, “hanging out in the village seemed like a very natural place,” she said. By 12 years old, she had seen her first Broadway show, and by 16, she had become a devoted fan of Rent, attending 28 performances in its first year. “I would tell my parents I was sleeping at a friend’s house, but I would actually sneak down to the Nederlander Theater and sleep out overnight for $10 tickets,” she recalled. 

Rent changed Heyman’s inner dialogue, she said, and the people who surrounded her on Broadway felt safe. “I wasn't afraid of things happening to me, being out there very late at night or very early in the morning waiting for tickets. I put myself into the LGBT community because that’s where I felt the most comfortable and loved,” she said. 

Her belief in God was deep and meaningful from a young age, but she didn’t connect with the teachings of her conservative church. “I just knew the things I was taught didn’t align with my moral compass,” she said. Heyman believed that God loved her and was “totally cool” with her choices and way of thinking – she just hadn’t found a true sense of belonging yet.

Heyman came out as bisexual at 18 years old and attended SUNY New Paltz, where she dated both men and women. She took women’s studies and LGBT courses, and met a trans person for the first time in class. That year, she also met the mother of Matthew Shepard, a gay 21-year-old college student who was brutally attacked, tied to a fence and left to die. His mother made it her mission to teach parents with children questioning their sexuality to love and accept them for who they are – not to throw them away. 

In her senior year of college, Heyman fell in love with a man she said understood and accepted her completely; they became engaged. Three weeks after graduation, he was killed in a car accident.

“I kind of shut down for a while after that,” she said. Life spiraled after her loss, but Heyman remembers one bright spot that occurred on the night before September 11, 2001. She saw Maya Angelou at an event hosted by St. John’s University. Heyman had become captivated by the poet and activist at a young age, and felt deeply connected to her. “Everyone in my family knew she was my absolute die-hard hero,” she said.

Angelou ended the night in 2001 by reciting her poem, “Try to Be a Rainbow in Someone Else’s Cloud”: 

I’ve had rainbows in my clouds

And the thing to do it seems to me
Is to prepare yourself
So that you can be a rainbow
In somebody else’s cloud

Somebody who may not look like you
May not call God the same name you call God
If they call god at all
You see

May not eat the same dishes prepared the way you do
May not dance your dances
or speak your language

But be a blessing to somebody

That’s what I think.

The poem, Heyman said, became the driving force for everything she’s done since that moment. “My whole life, when things get bad, she always pops into my head, and I hear her,” she explained. 

Years later, as she meandered through life, Heyman became pregnant with her first child, and her world gained new meaning. The lessons she learned at a young age of love, protection, resilience and empathy would inform her role as a mother, and eventually, an advocate. 

Kicked down the door 
It was winter break of 2017 when that child, now 12 years old and a seventh grader at East Northport Middle School, sat down next to his mother. He had been struggling in a lot of different ways, Heyman recalls, and had been in therapy for years. But nothing before felt like this moment. 

“One night, I just said to him, ‘Bud, I know there’s something – just tell me.’ He looked me dead in the face and it changed the trajectory. He said, ‘My name is Ethan, I’m transgender, and I tried to kill myself yesterday.”

“I was okay with everything except that last part,” Heyman said. 

Ethan told his mother that he was filled with fear – true terror – that she wouldn’t accept him. He was exposing a truth about himself that he’d been suppressing for years. “I can’t even explain the look in his eyes—it was pleading, like are you still going to love me? Are you still going to want me?” Heyman recalled. 

When Ethan returned to school after winter break, he “kicked down the door,” she said, beginning a years-long process toward becoming himself. Heyman stood by his side, often clearing the path every step of his way. 

She reached out to a trans male she knew from high school and an LGBT educator from Planned Parenthood. “I remember trying to Google how to transition and something about bugs came up. I couldn't find anything,” Heyman explained. “It became very evident, very early on, that it was going to be really hard because there was nothing out there. I didn’t know what was needed, and there was no one to really guide us. But I had the fears that I had heard in stories, because the things I did know were trans people killed themselves, and trans people got killed,” Heyman said. 

Her ultimate goal was to preserve Ethan and keep him alive. She didn’t know, at the time, that you could be trans and thrive. She only knew that you could be trans and survive. The next six months were focused on his mental health and adjusting to outside forces, like school. “I'm not gonna act like I didn't have emotions. But I wasn't mad that he was a boy because Ethan's never been a boy-boy or a girl-girl. You know, he’s just Ethan, and he’s always been so Ethan.” 

“This will be my battle”
“I've learned that trans is such a spectrum – how people come out and why, and when they come out, and what they want their body to look like, and how they present it to every person – it’s their own story of what’s right for them,” Heyman said.

She knew her son would be physically changing throughout his transition process, and she wanted to preserve his childhood. “Trans is going to be so freaking hard enough as it is. I have to figure out how to maintain his childhood while transitioning him and what that means,” she said. She told him plainly: “I've got this; this is not your battle. I’m your mom. This will be my battle. I will be the face. I will take people on. I will fight.” 

Ethan, she says, made it easy to stand up and speak out. “I've never met somebody with more courage,” she said. “He knew exactly who he was. I mean, I think I just started to figure that out at about 40.” 

Early on, Ethan’s needs were practical and specific. “When Ethan first came out, he thought he had to be a boy-boy and dress that way. That wasn’t Ethan,” she said. What didn’t waver was his clarity about medical care. He had already finished female puberty, which started early for him at nine years old. After stabilizing his mental health, Heyman searched for the right doctor. “It took me months and months, but I found an endocrinologist through Stony Brook. She was very open about all the things. I mean, it was every six weeks of blood work and seeing a therapist weekly.”

Ethan’s biggest hurdle during his transition was his chest. He was fully developed and had a very big chest for his stature, Heyman explained. Ethan would do everything he could to hide it. At the beach, he would wear two sports bras and a binder on top of it, which is a very restricting garment that can hurt your ribs and make breathing difficult over time. Although commonly used by trans people, Heyman said, a binder shouldn’t be used for more than a few hours at a time; she was constantly monitoring what Ethan was wearing and for how long. He’d also wear a baggy t-shirt and sweatshirt to the beach and would never change around anyone, Heyman said: “A lot of days were spent listening to him cry and suffer on the other side of the bathroom door, and as his mother, I knew there was nothing I could do.”

Heyman promised Ethan he’d have one normal year of high school where he didn’t have a chest. She made it her full-time job to get him the surgery needed, using leads through the community and taking on hours and hours of research, legal battles, insurance denials and surgeon interviews. “I would spend three to four hours a day between lawyers and research and everything else,” she said. Heyman and her husband Martin (they married when Ethan was seven) prepared to take money out of their retirement fund if necessary. Ultimately, they had to prove in court how much Ethan was suffering. He had to write letters about how without the surgery, he would die. The surgery was approved right before Ethan’s 17th birthday. 

Despite the victories, finding peace at school continued to be a struggle. “He was the first open trans kid at East Northport Middle School,” Heyman explained, and the harassment was blunt. “It was a lot of calling him his birth name…you know, saying ‘die, faggot, die,’ things like that.” Through much of high school, “almost daily, he was called ‘fag.’ He just got used to it and didn’t care anymore.” 

For safety, Ethan adjusted how he moved through the world. He avoided large crowds of people, especially cis men, Heyman explained. Everyday occurrences were a safety issue – between where he went to the bathroom, what bus he was riding on, his first job, lockers, what states he could visit, where he was going to college. All of that had to be thought out and planned, with safety and emergency plans for what happens if something goes wrong. Even school trips felt unsafe for Ethan.

And yet, there was also joy. Ethan kept doing the things he loves. He’s now at SUNY Oswego, about to be a junior, majoring in zoology with a minor in musical theater. He dreams about working with animals – “he’d love to travel to Africa and work with animals in the Congo,” Heyman said – but the family continues to weigh safety in every life plan. Fortunately the Bronx Zoo has breeding programs for the conservation of many species, “so that’s what he wants to do,” Heyman said. After college, Ethan hopes to come home, work, and stay close to the stage.

Community ripples
Theater has been a through line for the Heymans; April says it’s probably what saved Ethan’s life. For years, Heyman raised Ethan as a single mom in East Northport. A love for Broadway brought the pair closer. Ethan saw his first show when he was three; since then, Broadway soundtracks have always been playing in their home and car. Ethan started acting at age seven. This past year, he was cast as the male lead in SUNY Oswego’s Tuck Everlasting performance, something they never expected. Heyman said he was amazing. 

Heyman pours her love of theater, and the connection it creates for her children, into Northport’s Community Playhouse. “I do all their shows,” she said. “Community theater is all hands in – there’s not a hat that you don't wear.” She’s been (sometimes with her husband’s help) the playhouse’s kid wrangler, costume retriever, raffle ticket seller. In recent years, she’s participated with her daughter Olivia, who also caught the theater bug at a young age. 

Heyman’s advocacy for the LGBT community continued to grow as Heyman learned to navigate systems for Ethan. “After Ethan came out, I tried to put my foot in absolutely everything I could find, because I was trying to find anywhere to help him,” she said. She went to every Long Island Pride festival and talked to everyone she could about their knowledge and experience. “There were way more resources for people over 18, but I was dealing with a pediatric kid and there was just not a lot of stuff,” she explained. 

The gap in information was impossible to ignore. Out of that need, she helped create something new. In early 2021, Heyman was contacted about getting involved in the Nassau County PTA to provide more resources for the young LGBT community. Within a year, she co-founded the first LGBT (“Pride”) PTA in America. She served two years as president, helping to build the group by holding meetings throughout Long Island, and making sure parents knew they existed. The ripple kept going; New York State has since chartered a Pride PTA and several districts on Long Island have founded their own.

Heyman also lends her time to Stony Brook Medicine by serving on their LGBT committee. The work is about connection, she said – making people aware of the doctors in Stony Brook that serve the LGBT community and the Edith Windsor LGBT Center. Heyman has realized her calling: she’s supposed to do something in pediatric healthcare, she said. The skills that she’s learned through her experiences with Ethan have already helped many trans families. 

Choosing love
As policy debates swirl around the nation, Heyman focuses close to home. “For us as a family, we’re choosing not to choose despair and hatred and anger all the time. We’re going to control what we can control. And we are going to focus our energy on Northport and East Northport because that’s where we are. That’s where I can keep Ethan safe,” she said.

Travel still has boundaries. “We don’t travel to a lot of states. We can’t because if Ethan can’t use a bathroom freely… our biggest fear is, God forbid he gets hurt in a state and they deny him care or call him his wrong gender.” Even a dream trip has variables. “We’d like to go to Europe next summer, but we don’t know if Ethan's going to be able to get his passport. He was issued a passport when he was a child, but we don't know if he’ll be issued one under a different gender.”

She is blunt about risk – and privilege. “It’s a wonderful problem to have because we can, because he’s white,” Heyman said. “Honestly, if he was a person of color, his average lifespan would be 35.”

Sexual assault remains a serious concern for transgender individuals, who face a disproportionately higher risk of experiencing sexual violence compared to cisgender people. It’s a statistic Heyman’s family navigates by choosing connection over fear. 

Heyman talks about theater nights, car rides and her “freaking great kids.” Her husband Martin has raised Ethan as his son and supported his family every step of the way. After Ethan came out, their family shifted in ways both near and wide-ranging. “Six months after, my sister came out as trans,” Heyman shared. “My sister was my biological brother. She only came out because Ethan had already come out to our family.” 

For every few gains, there was a loss. “Between me and my husband, have we lost family in certain ways? Sure. We also choose to not always be around certain family, but we’ve gained the misfits. And that’s the family we choose,” she said. 

Be a rainbow
Heyman said she’s very much a dreamer. Her dream isn’t abstract. It’s practical, close and contagious. “I want to leave a little ripple on the pond and just make it a little bit better for the next person. That’s it. I don't need accolades when I go out, but if my kids grow up with good heads on their shoulders and they look back and they’re like, you know, it was pretty good, and they go on to do something that makes it a little better, then that’s cool.”

When hatred shows up, Heyman answers with patience. “We just try to come back with love and education and I’ve seen it change people. I've seen what it’s done for my father,” she said. A conservative for much of his life, Heyman’s dad George is now the one showing up. “He goes to every Pride parade or festival, he wears his shirts, he’s got his Northport Pride bumper sticker on the back of his car, and proudly says, ‘I have a trans child and grandchild,’” Heyman said.

Maya Angelou’s call to “be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud” still resonates with Heyman when things get hard. In the life she’s built – protecting Ethan’s childhood, opening doors for other families and choosing hope at home – that rainbow shows up in ways that are steady and real, exactly the kind of love and advocacy that can change a community for the better.