|
Home
> Courage Awards > Profiles
> Eva Leivas-Andino
 "Our
Voices May Be Small, But We Do Make a Difference" Mother of Gay
Son Confronts Her Own Fears, Becomes Powerful Advocate
"Ask
me my profession and I'll tell you I'm a mother," Eva Leivas-Andino
laughs. Between changing diapers for her four children and becoming
a grandmother of two, Eva has devoted a lifetime to community service
since immigrating to the U.S. from Cuba 42 years ago. Her husband,
an insurance executive, kept the family on the move through Puerto
Rico, California, and Miami. During this time, Eva worked as a volunteer
and advocate for abused women, women in prison, educational diversity,
and in HIV and AIDS prevention training.
But
12 years ago when her third child, Paolo, then 20 years old, told
her he was gay, Eva was forced to re-examine her own heart and prejudices.
"It
was quite a devastating moment for me," she recalled. "I
was very afraid, very alone. I thought I was the only Cuban mother
in Miami with a gay son."
She
feared what people would say, of being rejected, of facing accusations
that she was a bad mother. "I was not born enlightened,"
she likes to remind people.
Eight
more years would pass before she would come to terms with these
fears. The catalyst occured when she visited Paolo in New York City
where he was living the life of a struggling actor. He took her
to see a play about Oscar Wilde and the trials he endured for being
homosexual. At the end of the play, Paolo whispered in his mother's
ear, "One hundred years later and nothing has changed for gays
and lesbians." He then opened up to her about his own trials
growing up gay in Miami.
"At
that very instant, it was no longer about me," Eva recalled.
"It was about him, his pain, his loneliness, his alienation
from everybody. I had not been there for him because I wasn't educated,
because I was afraid."
Her
heart broke when her son described being ten years old in the company
of family friends when the conversation turned to gays and lesbians.
Someone suggested that all gays be put in concentration camp and
burned. By virtue of being there and not speaking up, "I was
part of the abuse," Eva says.
Soon
after, Eva began volunteering at Project YES, a Miami-based educational
organization whose mission is to prevent suicide and ensure the
healthy development of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth.
Today she is the organization's Hispanic coordinator and program
manager, conducting sensitivity trainings and sharing her own story
as a mother of a gay son with
communities of faith, schools, direct youth service agencies, hospitals
and even the Miami Beach police department.
Project
YES focuses on the community networks that surround LGBT youth to
improve their lives, Eva explained. "We figure the youth are
fine, it's the people around them who need to know what they go
through."
Initially
when Eva became more public about her activism on behalf of LGBT
youth, she met resistance within her community. "I sensed that
people felt afraid and uncomfortable. In my ministry, I was told
not to mention it that much." But she was able to guide some
family members and friends down the same path she trod and now they
support her work completely.
"I'm
a better person because I have a gay son," Eva says "He
taught me to love unconditionally."
Today
she keeps a copy of an email Paolo sent her taped to her computer:
"Every time you sit down to write a grant, every time you speak,
you are healing me. Never forget the power of your own voice."
"I'm
just an ordinary mother trying to do something for kids," Eva
says. "Our voices may be small but we do make a difference."
|
