While on a family vacation with her husband and two young sons, Ute Heggen of Brooklyn, N.Y., discovered that her husband was leading a double life. Unbeknownst to her, he had been secretly cross-dressing and visiting gay bars in Greenwich Village for months. She later learned that his cross-dressing had started sometime during her second pregnancy. Over the next few years — during which her husband socially and medically “transitioned,” abandoning their family in the process — Heggen came to believe that her husband’s “transition” was inextricably linked to a fierce jealousy of her pregnancy.
Today, Heggen calls herself a “trans widow” because the man she married has vanished forever, even though he’s still alive. Now divorced, she has dedicated her life to interviewing and platforming other trans widows and has compiled an impressive amount of research on the subject. Over the course of 52 interviews, Heggen heard her experience with “womb envy” validated again and again.
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