Confessions of a Deacon's Wife

I grew up Catholic. I went to church every Sunday and religious education classes every week - except when I went to Catholic school, then I had religion class every day and said prayers before the start of most of my classes. Sr. Holmes was the best. She was my middle school math teacher and started every math class with a prayer before spewing out an oral multi-step math problem of the day. I was lucky, I guess. The nuns at my school never once used a ruler for punishment. 

Even though I've only been to Mass twice in the last ten years (I hope Sr. Holmes understands from wherever she is now), I can still recite the prayers on demand without a missile. 

"I confess to Almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned. Through my thoughts and in my words. In what I have done and what I have failed to do . . . "

And then prior to Communion, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the words and I shall be healed."

At the end of the Hail Mary, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

So much emphasis on sin and blame. When I think about these words now, how they still reverberate in my mind and my heart, it finally makes sense why the shame I felt from my abortion almost killed me. If my thoughts and words weren't reason enough to be ashamed, how much worse was the sin I had committed by terminating a pregnancy?

I think that (straight) men must find these prayers have a different impact to them. They can actively participate in Church leadership, whereas women cannot (at least in the Catholic Church). That sets them up in a position of power that women in Catholic traditions don't have. My guess is that these prayers are humbling for them, but that they likely don't impact their psyche the way they do for me as a woman. I am not met in the same way in my religion as my male counterpart and so I am already starting at a less than place when I recite these prayers. 

The Catholic Church was thrilled with the recent decision by the Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade. I suspect that this decision and the direction our country will take as a result will take an even bigger toll on the emotional psyche of women of Christian faith. We've repeated for decades the words "I am not worthy" and it's evidenced by the lack of women in the hierarchy that we are not equal. It has taken me decades of therapy and coaching to find my worthiness again. For anyone who is struggling, believe me, I understand. And remember this, Jesus made all of us in his image and we are all made with the same essence of Love and Divinity inside of us- female and male. The words we repeat in Church as words meant to keep us in our place. We are powerful beings, perfectly made. 

So repeat after me:

"I am worthy. I am worthy. I am worthy."

Rinse and repeat until you believe it. 

Namaste. 

A Missing Link in Women's Sexuality

Do you read self-help or self-empowerment books? A lot of women do and there are some great titles and subject matter to choose from in the marketplace. Some of my favorites from the past year are Patricia Davis’ book The Diva Doctrine, wake-up call life coach Amy Ahler’s Big Fat Lies Women Tell Themselves, and Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts by Regina Thomashauer. Not only are these books incredibly useful, but each author is simultaneously entertaining and vulnerable – a necessary and winning mix.

I recently finished reading Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts. It was published in 2002 and was ahead of its time in what she had to share with the readers about how to live a rich and joy-filled life. In her chapter on Sensual Pleasure, she writes “Women are taught to have a lot of shame about their sensuality. Sensuality and pleasure are areas that most women don’t talk about, don’t feel comfortable with.”

As a former Catholic, I was taught that my female body was created for only one purpose – to procreate. I learned about how it worked in fourth grade health class and that was the extent of most of my sexual education. I love reading these types of books and discovering new insights from other women’s experience, because they are so different than my own.  

And yet there is another huge part of almost every woman’s experience that I still don’t read about – how to handle unplanned pregnancy. Statistics estimate that approximately half of all pregnancies today are unintended. In a recent conversation with a friend, I commented about this and she replied, “Christina, I don’t know a woman in my circles who hasn’t had to face this situation.” Wow. That’s a big elephant to have sitting smack dab in the middle of any room!

Have you ever had a “pregnancy scare?” A deeply rooted fear or anxiety that you might be pregnant at a time when you were not at all prepared for that possibility?

After telling my story to a group of women recently, one woman came up to me afterward and shared how sexually active she had been in high school and how she had not used birth control at all. She was blown away by the possibility of how different her life would have been if she had not been so “lucky” and had gotten pregnant during those years. There were tears in her eyes as she began to understand the different path her life could have taken.

I am grateful for the plethora of books out there today that help women know and love themselves better. These books open up topics and share stories that are intimate, vulnerable and tender for many of us. I continue to look for books that include a discussion on unplanned pregnancy, including the possibility of abortion. I am not talking about a pro-life or pro-choice book that supports a political or religious position concerning this issue, but a book that is raw, honest, and clear about the effects of facing this dilemma. If we have shame about our sensuality, imagine the shame around experiencing an unplanned pregnancy, particularly one that results with an abortion. We still have a lot of ground to cover girlfriends, and it’s time to get going!

My current project, my book How My Unborn Children Saved My Life, is an answer that I can offer to bridge this gap in today’s popular self-help literature, which challenges our beliefs around self-love and self-worth. I faced this situation three times in my life, each with different consequences, and all are a significant part of the larger tapestry of my life.

As I write, I will keep reading, trying to find a book that is not afraid to tackle this difficult, but virtually universal conversation as I evolve deeper into my own experience.

Namaste.

 

 

Breast Cancer and The Mind - Body Connection

The mind-body connection is being talked about more and more lately. We know now, for example, that stress can be a major factor in causing heart attacks. Eating disorders have emotional triggers. Anxiety can cause acid reflux, nausea, or even vomiting. In her 2013 New York Times bestseller, Mind Over Medicine, Dr. Lissa Rankin writes that “Loneliness can make you sicker than smoking cigarettes.” If loneliness can make you so sick, it is not hard to imagine that illness can be also caused by a deep, lingering shame.

Shame is often referred to as the secret emotion. It’s called a secret one because our shame from a situation compels us to hold onto it, to hide and repress it. If something so universal and prevalent as loneliness can cause illness, then the regret, guilt and shame that many of us feel or felt after an abortion must create quite a cocktail of problems in our bodies.


For years, the question of whether there is a link between abortion and breast cancer has been debated. In many ways, this question seems to be a vehicle for the pro-life and pro-choice camps to put a stake in the ground to further each of their positions. What if we set aside the positioning for a moment and take a different look at this theory?

Christel Nani describes the traits she found in women who have breast cancer in her revolutionary book, Diary of a Medical Intuitive. She observes, “Women with breast cancer almost always have a secret, something they can’t forgive themselves for. This lack of forgiveness lowers their vibration and shuts down the energy flowing to their heart chakra. And the heart chakra, of course, is located near the breasts. In addition, having a guilty secret makes them feel ashamed and gives them a vague sense of owing a debt. It makes them think that they don’t deserve to be happy, to have a good marriage or an easy path in life. The fallout from their guilty secret pervades their entire lives.” 

Christel’s observations in Diary, published in 2004, were ahead of their time. She does not tie breast cancer to abortion per se, but does point out her findings that holding onto a secret is one of the several elements present in causing this disease. Now, ten years later, as we find more and deeper mind-body connections, I wonder if we can start to see the truth in her work. 

One way to get rid of the secrecy is to make our world a safer and more supportive place for women who have had abortions. The organization, Abortion Changes U, began a campaign on March 25 called U R Not Alone. This campaign is being done to show women that they have support in their ability to heal from all over our country. 

It is time for a radical change in thinking.


What if the pro-life movement really was pro-life? What if instead of saying “I told you so” when the aftermath of abortion is identified, we stopped the judgment process long enough for to allow women to grieve, to heal, and to find wholeness - to support the life already here? What if the pro-choice movement stopped denying that there are aftereffects to abortion? What if we were privy to the stories of other women in a way that opens us up to support and community? 

One in every three women in the United States will have had an abortion by the age of 45. Despite this common occurrence, it remains so stigmatized that the mere use of the word in conversation triggers many women. For the sake of our grandmothers, mothers, daughters, sisters, girlfriends, aunts and cousins – for the sake of any woman who has ever had an abortion – won’t you please consider signing your name to the U R Not Alone Campaign? Please let our sisters know that they have support in their healing journey. I believe this can be a powerful first step to bridging the divide and bringing peace to the abortion debates. 

A dear friend of mine once shared with me his fear of not taking the opportunity to help someone in need when it was offered to him. This is a chance to be of service - maybe to one woman, potentially to many of us. Signing this statement of support is an easy way to make a big difference.

Thank you, from my heart, for your support.



Namaste.

It's Not Your Fault

We have a situation in my family. It’s not an entirely new situation, but the way it’s manifesting recently pushed me to the edge.

My youngest son is nine years old. And he is missing antidiuretic hormone (ADH), which tells the brain it needs to slow down urine production at night. The medical term is enuresis. And it creates a lot of laundry!

 

Raising the bar on the laundry situation, a recent house guest necessitated him sharing my bed for three and a half months. One recent night he went to the bathroom at 9:30 p.m., was up again for the bathroom at 11:30 p.m., had a bad dream and was up at 2:30 a.m. (so why not make another trip to the bathroom?).

 

Despite all of these trips to the bathroom, my bed was drenched in the morning. My comforter, my sheets, my mattress pad, right to the water-resistant zipped mattress cover. Really?

With all the laundry and the frustration of years of this situation mounting, I called the doctor. I had heard it all before – it’s a genetic condition (beware to future misses reading this!) - that is not known to last beyond age ten or so. But with sleep deprivation combined with laundry overload, a trip to the doctor seemed worth another try. Maybe there were new treatments in the last year that could help?

In many ways, it seemed like a waste of a visit to the doctor’s. I heard nothing new about the condition or the different options for dealing with it, but my little guy heard something HE had never heard before. More than once, the doctor said, “It’s not your fault.”

How had I missed that? I should have told him that myself. I had explained it was a genetic condition, but I never said, “It’s not your fault.” Steeped in my frustration, I suspect I was unable to see past the end of my own irritation to actually say those words.


But to hear those words — “It’s not your fault” — was like a revelation from the most high! The message that he had done nothing wrong delivered in very clear and direct language was the most important news anyone could have given him. And I saw the effect very quickly. Later that evening when his siblings asked about the doctor visit, my son proclaimed loudly, “It’s not my fault,” with a big smile on his face. Ahhhhh, sweet relief!

The next morning, he called to me. “Hey Mom, guess what I just did?” Still hoping for that magical dry morning, I crossed my fingers. “What did you do, honey?” I called back. His proud reply? “I took the sheets off the bed by myself!”

It occurred to me later that day that I had not wasted our time by going back to the doctor. What the doctor gave my son that day was something far more important than a dry night. He gave him his pride and freedom from shame.


And what an important lesson for us all! Our experiences, both personal and worldly, inform our conscience about the choices we make. Maybe we were abused or neglected as children, maybe our normal was not really normal at all, but rather what we came to expect as normal. (http://christinaehaas.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-childhood-experiences-can-cause-us.html )

As a woman who chose abortion, I have cycled through my own healing process and I understand better why I made that choice. I can take responsibility for my choice and understand it, but I also know that choosing an abortion when it wasn’t practical for me to bring a new life into the world wasn’t "my fault" either.

There is freedom in those words — “it wasn’t my fault” — a freedom that transforms the past with an awareness that brings acceptance and forgiveness to the present. I feel the same freedom as my sweet little boy who now willingly changes his bed-sheets in the morning.

The lesson of abortion is global. As we open our hearts to our pasts, may we not only find a sense of freedom, but also the compassion the world needs to change the underlying conditions that inform our hard choices. When we learn our own lessons, we can bring a new level of healing to the world.


Namaste

The Perfect Mother

The instant my daughter was born I made a promise to myself and to her that I would be the best mother ever. It didn’t take too much sleep deprivation to remind me I was human!

And yet, for years I continued on my mission to prove myself as a mother. I had to prove I was a good mom — to myself and to the world. I had such deep shame over the abortion I’d had years earlier that aspiring to sainthood seemed the best way to hide my secret. Afterall, if I was an impeccable mother, no questions would ever come up to suggest that an abortion was part of my past. I wondered, how could a “good” mother choose an abortion?

Shame is often referred to as the secret emotion because of the intense need the person feeling it has to conceal it. For me, the longer I buried the experience and tried to hide it from even myself, the harder it became to live my life authentically. I wasn’t living for me or for my daughter, I was living in fear and shame.

I have no doubt that my Catholic faith had a lot to do with these feelings of shame. Sermons about the evils of abortion, combined with teachings on original sin, reminded me regularly of what I had done and how mortally I had sinned. 

It took many years and many hurts to realize that my religion did not need to define my spirituality and that the Church was made up of human beings just like me. None of us, not even our priests, are exempt from the imperfections of humanity. I watched the clergy-abuse crisis unfold in my own backyard in Boston, and realized that my “sins” were no worse than many of the clergy who espoused a life’s vocation of following Jesus. 

As I learned to open up to other viewpoints, my spirituality evolved to where I could begin to think for myself, not simply as I was instructed to think by my religion. I began to see myself and my abortion in a whole different light. I wasn’t a sinner, I was a human being made in the image and likeness of God. And abortion wasn’t a sin, it was one possible answer in a world where both options were painful.  

Today, I strive to be the best mother I can be to my three kids. It isn’t easy to do as a single parent, but I no longer do it out of fear for being discovered, going to hell, or finding myself otherwise unworthy. I do it because I was chosen by them to be their mom for all the gifts I have to offer them. I make mistakes just like everyone, but I no longer berate myself afterwards for long periods of time. I take a deep breath, think about what I can do better next time, reminding myself this is where I was born to be and what I was born to do. 

For anyone still trying to reach sainthood, attain perfection in parenting or otherwise hide behind the mask of shame, I hope you find peace one day knowing that you are whole and perfect just the way you are.


Namaste.

A Ten Year Anniversary

It was ten years ago this past week that I started my healing journey with abortion. I was at my wit’s end and knew if I didn’t deal with my complex feelings from over eleven years earlier, I would probably end up institutionalized.

There were many factors contributing to my suppressed feelings of grief and shame. The biggest factor, by far, was my Catholic upbringing. While it gave me a deep faith in God, it also informed me I had committed a mortal sin. 

My Catholic roots went deep. I attended a Catholic girls’ school for four years before high school, and a Catholic college. To make matters worse, by the time I finally fell apart, my husband was enrolled in the seminary to become a deacon. Soon there would be many more eyes upon us both, looking to our family as model Catholics. After the years of parochial education, Sunday sermons and deaconate formation training, I felt like a failure as a human being. The pressure to live up to these standards was unbearable. 

Thankfully, there is a program for healing in the Catholic Church called Project Rachel. Project Rachel changed the course of my life.

Project Rachel helped me to understand the weight I had borne for over a decade. They helped me grieve and stood with me as I released my grief and asked God and my unborn daughter for forgiveness.

As with many retreats, the confidentiality of the group was a requirement of participation. Given our purpose for being together, that made absolute sense. Unlike other retreats, however, the Project Rachel retreat required secrecy in other facets of the weekend as well. Our location was secret. No one knew where we were meeting and we were advised not to share that information, except with our spouses. Also unusual was our final instruction - not to share with family or friends anything about our abortions or our weekend together. It might not be safe, and therefore was something we should keep to ourselves. For me, there was continued fear and shame as I listened to this final counsel. 


The one thing I was not able to release, my shame, stayed with me far longer than any other difficult emotion. Even Project Rachel’s Christ-like leadership and its generous love and compassion could not do for me what I so sorely needed. They could not change the language of the Catholic leadership and populace to remove condemnation or judgment. In the end, I was able to release the shame and find freedom only by looking outside the Church.

 

Since my retreat, as I listen to discussions between so-called pro-lifers and pro-choicers, I continue to wonder why the Church uses the language they do. Sinful, wrong, unthinkable, senseless murder – these are all words used in Catholic sermons and dialogs about abortion. The judgment these words evoke made it very difficult for me to release the shame of my abortion and I am certain make it difficult for most others. 

It’s unusual to talk about abortion. And while it isn’t everyone’s thing to share their story with the world, I do believe it is important that we share our stories with someone. One of the most productive things we did in the Project Rachel retreat weekend was to share our stories with each other. Sharing stories healed us because as we listened, we forgave. As we forgave and understood our sisters’ pain, we were able to access and release our own pain, and begin the process of forgiving ourselves. With greater support from Church leadership, women would be able to leave Project Rachel feeling more supported in their healing and fully releasing the shame - the contradiction and tension between emotional freedom and faith tradition would dissolve.

I hope and pray that one day soon Catholic leadership will really listen to the stories the women of the church have to tell and comprehend the compassion of the Project Rachel ministry who allowed us voice to tell them. I hope they will begin to understand and accept the experience of women that compels them to make this choice. Until we are able to speak without fear or secrecy, the road to full healing will be longer than it needs to be. 

As I reflect on my ten-year anniversary this week, I realize how lucky I am to be able to share my story today feeling strong and secure in who I really am – a woman of light and love who knows all is very well with her soul.


Namaste.

Homemade Applesauce and Festering Secrets

Yesterday morning I cleaned out my refrigerator. Lurking in the back was a Tupperware container filled with homemade applesauce from several months ago. Mold was growing all over it. 

I knew the applesauce was there, I noticed it at least a month ago. But every time I came back from the grocery store, instead of taking out that tub of applesauce, I squeezed in all my new food around it, pushing it deeper into the refrigerator so I could get everything else in. 

How long did I push it back, cover it up, pretend it was not there, letting it grow mold?  If I waited, perhaps one of my kids would discover it and squeal, grossed out.  Perhaps a girlfriend might stop in and find it as she reached in for a cold drink. How much longer did I think I could put off the inevitable?


I finally decided this morning that it was time to take out the applesauce and throw it away. It’s not salvageable now, not one bit of it. It’s toxic. It’s time to go. 

Secrets are a lot like that, too. We hold onto them, keep them hidden, cover them up with our “new purchases,” pretend that a new outfit, a new friend or a new neighborhood will mask the past.  

In my experience, eventually a secret becomes toxic too, like my applesauce. 

Before I was ready to release it, my own secret, held tight for eleven years, began to fester, just like the applesauce.  


The release of my darkest secret – having an abortion – went through much the same progression. Initially, I stuffed it down deep, tried to build my life up around it, pretended I was okay, that my life was perfect. Everything looked pretty good from the outside. But when I could hide no longer, when it was too hard to get up in the morning, or I couldn’t fall asleep at night, or my nerves triggered stomach pains, I couldn’t ignore the secret any longer. 

It wasn’t pretty in the beginning (and neither was cleaning out my Tupperware!). In fact, I had let it sit there so long it festered and had gotten downright ugly. If I had dealt with my angst about it sooner, it would have been a lot prettier when I released the guilt, shame and pain I had been carrying around for eleven years. 

Once the floodgates opened, the rest of the job was so much easier. After that, it took a good scrubbing, some patience and time to forgive myself. I was determined not to let this part of my life define me. Today I am like that Tupperware container, squeaky clean and with plenty of room for more goodness in my life. 

This morning as I look into my refrigerator, I see a beautiful open space where yesterday there was no room for anything new. I remind myself that with courage and determination, we can do anything, be anyone we set our minds to. Truly, life is good! (And my refrigerator is clean and spacious, too!)


Namaste.

Who Gets the Lifesaver?

When my grandmother told me that she had an abortion back in 2003 (Mor-Mor's story ), I was still too caught up in my own shame to think much about her experience. As I have studied abortion and learned just how many women are already mothers when they have an abortion, I began to think more about this fact (abortion statistics). Why is it that a mother would choose to terminate a pregnancy?

One possible answer comes from understanding my grandmother’s life experience. Shortly after she died, my mom wrote all of her grandchildren a letter, telling us the few details of Mor-Mor’s life that she knew. My grandmother was very private and quiet about her life, and none of us really knew much about her past. 

What I knew already was that Mor-Mor’s father died of pneumonia when she was nine years old. From reading my mother’s letter, I learned how hard her life had been after that. Her mother, a first generation Swedish immigrant, worked as a housekeeper, had many jobs and moved frequently. Sometimes, Mor-Mor would be left with cousins for periods of time while her mother sought work without the encumbrance of a child. She became a nanny at age thirteen, working for a family on Long Island, while also holding down a job as a waitress. She never finished high school, instead taking secretarial courses during her sophomore year so that she could develop business skills to help provide for the family. She began working for the New York Telephone Co. when she was just fifteen years old, although she claimed she was really seventeen in order to get the job.

Her childhood was fraught with hardship, loneliness and scarcity.

My grandfather emigrated from Sweden also, and they met shortly after he arrived in America. They married young and had my aunt during the Depression. My aunt was often sick, afflicted with asthma and other medical problems. As I think about what it might have been like for her to live, how her own childhood experiences informed her decision-making, I feel deeply for her.

 

It must have felt a lot like watching two kids drowning and having only one lifesaver. Who can she save? 

I have met many women over the years who have also had childhoods filled with scarcity, others with abuse (Childhood Experiences ). I suspect they feel a lot like my grandmother must have felt – tired, fearful, overwhelmed and alone. No woman wants to have an abortion. It feels like a choice born of necessity. 

I hope that the stories I share will help other women know that they are not alone and there is no shame in their choice of an abortion. As we bring our stories to the light, forgive and heal ourselves, maybe we can change the experience of the generations of women to come.

 

Maybe we can change the question from “who gets the lifesaver?” to “how can we support the life we that already exists?”

Namaste.

 

 

An Unexpected Moment of Connection

In June 2013 I attended a writer’s conference that featured a speaker who was a well-known female memoirist, and most of the attendees were female. I sat at a table with an exceptional group of women, our ages spanning four decades.

Through writing prompts and group exercises, we got to know each other in personal ways very quickly. I shared my purpose in helping women heal from abortion, explaining that I knew from experience how needed this work was. The responses around the table were positive. 

Until Kathleen spoke. 

Kathleen told her story of being a pregnant teen. Her parents had taken her baby away from her and put it up for adoption, deciding for her that she was not capable of being a mother. She was devastated. She vented anger at them and her sister, who also became pregnant as a teen, but who had made a different choice. She exclaimed both angrily and proudly, “Well, at least I had my baby. My sister aborted hers!”

No sooner had she said the words when she realized it and shot a look across the table at me. She didn’t want to hurt my feelings, and she apologized. 

I understood, and I told her so. Before my abortion I had always sworn I’d never have one either. And I’m used to negative reactions around this issue. When I tell people my experience, I hear things like, “I have nothing against abortion, but I would never choose it.”

 

It’s funny how God likes to teach us humility. 

We were not in a position to speak privately, but at the end of the workshop we ended up next to each other in line for the author’s autograph. It was a long line and we had over thirty minutes together. She apologized again, opening the door to more conversation on the subject. In the past, her words would have triggered me into a downward spiral of negativity. But having worked on my own feelings of self-judgment and self-worth over the years, I was able to step back from her comment and not feel it personally. As it turned out, I was able to provide a safe place for her to share deeply her buried feelings of loss and sadness. She had felt shame over her pregnancy and the loss of her child.

 

She, like myself, had lived much of her life feeling isolated.

Despite the noise and commotion around us we forged a special bond in those thirty minutes. By the time our books were autographed, we did not want to say good-bye. We realized we shared the same experience — having an unplanned pregnancy — no matter how different the outcome. After living in shame and self-loathing for many years with our buried secrets, we discovered that we were more connected than we could have dreamed at first meeting. We lingered a little longer before exchanging contact information and finally releasing each other.  

I believe it is these baby steps, taken one person at a time, that will change the world perspective on abortion. Kathleen and I discovered how much more we had in common than we’d thought. Once we were able to set aside our judgments, a beautiful moment of grace and connection unfolded for us. 

I wish you a moment of unexpected grace and connection in your life today too. And a loving release from judgment, of yourself and others.

 

Namaste.