A Tale of Two Sisters - The End and The Beginning

Thank you to everyone who has read and followed my blog over the past five years. When I started writing about abortion, it was a mission spurned by my need for closure and understanding of my actions and experience. I wanted to share what I had learned and was learning so that others might have peace in their choices too. I never dreamed this last piece would take this shape.

In 1992, when I chose to have an abortion, I didn't think much past the end of my own nose. I didn't consider the moments leading up to that choice or how each moment of my life prior to that one informed my decision. I didn't think about my family tree or the possible impact to my family in the future. I didn't think about my unborn baby or what she might have wanted. I remember thinking that maybe, just maybe, if I acted quickly enough, it wouldn't be a baby yet. There was a deep, visceral fear - a fear that permeating my whole being. Was this my fear? Or the fear of generations before me?

As I researched and learned more about abortion, a bigger picture began to unravel. I felt for the first time, the double bind of the many women who become pregnant in poor or abusive relationships. I considered the conflicted feelings of a young, pregnant woman, once abused or neglected herself, struggling to hope for a better future for herself and her child. I began to explore the notion that as much as the decision to abort seemed like mine, and mine alone, it was all part of a larger symphony of souls, that never in my wildest of dreams, could I have imagined.

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Twenty years after my abortion.  I thought I was done with my healing and learning from that experience. I had come to believe that there was soul contract between my unborn daughter and myself, that she had known ahead of time what my choice would be, but that she chose to enter into this contract with me anyway. I saw her as a martyr, saint, an angel, for giving up her life for my lesson. I still didn't realize that in this belief system, I was still seeing my soul as less than perfect. I still saw myself as a sinner. 

Not long after I began writing, I had an encounter with an intuitive. This seer told me that my unborn daughter was very glad she had not been born. I remember wondering how she knew I had had an abortion, and if that was something she told every woman who had one - to make them feel more peace over their decision. She went on to tell me my unborn daughter, Mary, is around me constantly. But then she said something else, something that haunted me for the next four years. She said "your unborn daughter says she would not have been able to endure her sister's life. She could not have survived."

I felt like I had been hit with a ton of bricks when she said that. A recently lapsed Catholic, I was still highly prone to self-blame and flagellation and this statement gave me a lot to think about. Was I really such a terrible mother that she didn't think she could have found some happiness and joy in that life? Had I really done such a terrible thing by divorcing her father that I made all my children's lives tortuous? I had just moved my children 3,000 miles away from their father after a highly contentious divorce. I was in a abusive marriage, and leaving a man who didn't want to be left cost me a lot. Going to California seemed like the only way we would ever have peace again. Had I made a bad choice yet again?

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Fast forward to the fall of 2015. My college-age daughter shares with me for the very first time, what her life as child was really like. How her father began molesting her at the sweet age of four years old, ramping up the abuse over the years in nature and frequency of the abuse until she was twelve. For many years, I had the feeling he was having an affair...I just never imagined it was with our little girl. How does one ever imagine such a thing? Years of odd and lewd behaviors flooded my mind and my body shook with the truth of knowing. Suddenly, everything in the past made sense.

Finally, I understood for the first time what my unborn daughter, Mary, meant, when she sent me the message that she couldn't have survived this lifetime. All that time, I made it to be about me. But all that time, it was about something more, something bigger than me. I wonder now, did I make that choice to abort because I was so afraid? Or was I hearing quite loudly my daughter's voice, telling me she couldn't handle that lifetime, a lifetime that would have been filled with sexual abuse?

I have come full circle on my blog about abortion, right back to my first month of posts, where I had learned on an intellectual level, the battle that women face on daily basis in protecting themselves and protecting their children. Only today, it's not just an intellectual understanding. It is one of an emotional and spiritual understanding that we are all connected, we are all part of the same Force, and almost nothing is what it appears on the surface - including and especially the experience of abortion.

Namaste.

A Leap of Faith and Counting Stars (Part 2)

Last week, I wrote about the first part of my family’s experience of being involved in a student exchange program. Witnessing a 15 year old young man coming into an unknown culture reminded me of how courageous we can be, and how amazing the spirit of our children is. For Gilad, and then for my daughter, to fly literally across the world to live with people they have never met, where the language is not their own, and where they have no one but themselves to fall back on, is an incredible act of guts and strength. Although my daughter knew Gilad when she left for Israel, she only knew a handful of words in Hebrew. To top it all off, she was raised in the Catholic religion and therefore lacked much knowledge of the Israeli religious or cultural background. As with Gilad six months before, I was awed by her “chutzpah” in making this journey.


There are so many experiences that I’d love to share from her two and a half months in Israel. The culture of community and connection between the people of Israel was far deeper and more authentic than anything she had experienced in the United States. For the most part, she has been fortunate enough to have been in a small school environment from a very young age, and for most of her life has had very tight neighborhood bonds. But in Israel, she was able to experience a different type of community with the children and the adults, where there was a profound respectfulness shown to each other. Honoring the connection between young and old was easier and more fluid than what she had experienced so far in her life here. By being honored for who she was, she developed a greater confidence in herself and learned exactly what she wanted and deserved in her relationships. 

Her host family consisted of two working parents and their three children. They are a busy family, and yet there always seemed to be enough time to support and guide the children in their schoolwork and other interests. The children learn self-sufficiency at an early age, but as a means of empowerment, not as a necessity or from neglect by their parents. 

Her host father also happened to be her teacher at school. Because of the dual role he had in her life, she was able to connect with him on a daily basis for a good amount of time. 

Over the course of the next two and a half months, my daughter developed a relationship with her host father that nourished her soul in a way it had not been nourished in a long time. I had forgotten how important a relationship between fathers and daughters is in the development of a girl. Watching my boys find their way without the affirmation of a father on a daily basis, I had lost touch with the feminine side of me that needed my father’s love and attention when I was growing up.

There seems to be so much attention put upon mothers in our society today when it comes to parenting issues. And yet, in my experience, there is no substitute for the presence of a father in our children’s lives. A mother cannot duplicate that role no matter how hard she tries.


The way a father shows up for his daughter(s) shows her what to demand of a man in a relationship. If her father treats her with disdain, disinterest, or abuse, that is what she will come to see as normal and accept into her life as she grows older. BUT, if he treats her with honor and respect, she will instead come to expect that from her future relationships.

My daughter came home from Israel with a sense of self and worthiness that I had not seen in her since she was in early elementary school. The self-esteem she exuded was palpable long before she got home. Her host father gave her the attention, honor, and respect from a father-figure that she had been so sorely missing for many years. She now has a clearer example in her head of who she is and not just what she will accept, but what she should expect in relationship.

As Father’s Day approaches this weekend in the United States, I cannot say thank you enough to our new Israeli family, but most especially to her host father, Avi, for the love and tenderness he showed towards Megan. I believe it does take a village to raise a child. Ours just happens to be a global one now!



Namaste.

Magnet and Steel

In his 1978 hit, Walter Egan sang “With you I’m not shy/to show the way I feel/with you I might try, my secrets to reveal/for you are a magnet and I am steel.” Egan may have been singing about romantic love, but as I reflect on my experience with holding onto secrets, I realize the concept of magnet and steel — two materials that make a powerful force of connection when they meet — holds a much deeper truth.

For over a decade, I believed I was the only Catholic woman in the universe to have an abortion and hid behind a cloak of shame, never guessing that I actually have a lot of company (did I mention I had a flair for exaggeration?).

It started when I stepped out of the private little world I had kept for myself for eleven years by attending a Project Rachel retreat (Ten Year Anniversary Blog). Because of their admonition to keep my experience to myself, I held tightly to my secret back at home, even — and especially — with my closest friends.


I had (and continue to have) wonderful girlfriends. Like me, many of them were practicing Catholics at the time. I knew them from grade school, college, work, my children’s schools, and church. Once I became a parent, I didn’t see them as much as I had in earlier days; my children took top priority. As my marriage fell apart, I realized that the marriage counselor we were seeing was only trying to save the marriage. I needed my own therapist, one who would help me save me. I went out and found one.

It was with this therapist’s advice that I began to share with my best girlfriends the biggest secret of my marriage. Despite the closeness and intimacy we had as we held each other through the births of children, the deaths of several pets, and the ups and downs of marriage, I had never shared with them the truth: My first pregnancy had ended with abortion.

The first friend I shared my secret with had worked for my husband for many years, even commuted with him to work for two hours every day. Logic would dictate that she be one of the last people I have this conversation with, not the first, yet my intuition said she was the one.


With great anxiety and fear, I told her the truth of my marriage, all of it, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. To my utter shock, when I was finished, she told me she wasn’t surprised. She cried as I cried, and told me she loved me.

My friend’s understanding and sensitivity made sharing my story with my other friends a little less difficult. As I began to open my heart, to expose the real me to my circle of friends, I discovered I had attracted women who were just like me. The statistics are that one in every three women by the age of forty-five has had an abortion. For my circle, it was twice the national average. Talk about a magnet and steel!

I am forever grateful to the therapist who gave me the homework assignment to reveal my secrets. We are not alone in more ways than we realize. Taking that one step began a journey of transformation from shame and despair into freedom and peace. 


Perhaps you can find that one person and “show the way you feel, your secrets to reveal.” On the other side of the door where your secret lies trapped is a lighter and brighter you. 

And check out the song I’ve dated myself with here (Walter Egan with Stevie Nicks) The idea of two metals attracting may be a message you’ll always remember and give you the fortitude you need to take that first step towards freedom.

 Namaste.

Starting a Domino Effect

As difficult a decision as it was to have an abortion when I was 29 years old, an even harder decision was to choose to divorce. Because of my deep Catholic roots and truly believing that, like everyone else in my family, I would stay married “until death do us part,” I never imagined myself in a position to make that choice.

It is just over four years since my divorce has been complete, and I only recently realized a key reason I was in denial about needing a divorce for many years. My husband was the father of the baby that I aborted. Although the abortion was something we were not able to talk about, divorcing meant that I would lose my connection to only other person involved in that hard choice. 

My ex-husband and I did not talk about the abortion after the conversation we had in the hospital the day I found out I was pregnant. (http://christinaehaas.blogspot.com/2013/10/who-really-has-abortions_21.html ). We did not talk about it the day we drove to the clinic, and we didn’t talk about it when we left. It wasn’t until we decided the time was right to start a family four years later that the subject came up, and then, only briefly. 

It wasn’t easy to get pregnant when I finally did choose to! We had a difficult time conceiving – imagine that after getting pregnant while using birth control! I wondered if the abortion had anything to do with our difficulty. After a quick conversation and a bit of research, we determined that was not possible. A few months later I became pregnant and so began another period of suppression. 

Despite our lack of emotional connection on the subject of the abortion, because of our bond in other ways as husband and wife, cutting those cords through divorce brought a finality and deeper feelings of isolation about that experience. 

It was only in watching a friend go through a similar process last year that I was finally able to see for myself how this was true for me. Sharing our stories in safe spaces with those we trust and love helps us to see the resonance of experience for ourselves. It can be hard to see beyond the branches of the trees in our own world, but as we look at the trees and even the forest of the world of those we connect with, our scope of vision expands. As I looked at the forest of my own beautiful friend’s sadness, I saw for the first time a large part of my own.

Healing from abortion truly is like peeling the layers of an onion. There are so many layers of experience to our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies. As we work through the healing process, and especially when we do the work together, we bring healing not only to ourselves, but to the lives of those we open up to.


Thank you, my friend, for helping me to heal a little bit deeper. Your openness allowed me to further deepen my own healing and understand myself in a more significant way. May we start a domino effect for the millions of others who need to hear our stories.


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.