A Birthday after Death.

Having an abortion was an unthinkable choice that allowed me to give birth to myself.
 

I found out I was pregnant just two months into my relationship with my current partner. Until then, it was unthinkable for me not to be a mother.

 

It made sense to honor a woman’s right to choose when it came to other women. Yet, cultural conditioning and my own longing for children made abortion feel impossible. Terminating my pregnancy would force me to release motherhood as the only purpose I’ve ever known.

 

Before I made the choice to have an abortion, a dear friend asked me to consider talking to the soul I harbored in my womb and to ask it whether it wanted to be born.

 

My friend assured me that every human soul is eternal. She told me that even if a woman decides to end a pregnancy, the soul that lives within her would find a way to come into the world. It would live on in another child she might birth in the future. Or, it would find another mother.

 

I couldn’t bring myself to speak to the soul within me. The guilt of killing a potential human being was something that brought the pro-choice woman in me to her knees.

 

Before my abortion, the nurse at the family planning clinic asked me how much time I planned to take off work to recover.

 

“Two weeks.”

 

“It shouldn’t take that long to heal,” she said. “You should be fine in a couple of days.”

 

A couple of days?

 

I had chosen to say no to the life of a child. There was no way I could heal from the consequences in a couple of days!

 

Using a wide-angle lens, I see millions of women across the world who take no more than the time they need to physically function again, post-choice. They must shut the door on pain, and the lessons of this experience, and carry on with life.

 

I imagined the numbers of women who yearn for more time to heal. Many of these women don’t have the privileges of Family Medical Leave, a warm bed to rest in, or a loving, supportive community to nurture them as they recover.

 

My heart ached for the women who are at risk for being shamed, rejected, assaulted, or even killed, because of the choice they’ve made to abort a pregnancy.

 

For two weeks, alone, I carried their pain with me.

 

Bleeding and pain-riddled for 17 days post-abortion, I grew more and more ashamed of myself for abandoning motherhood. The rage and shame felt ancient, as if they descended through centuries of oppression and from every corner of the globe, flying in the face of women’s self-love, self-worth, and self-respect.

 

In rejecting motherhood as my sole purpose, I let the rage and shame bleed out of me and created space for my true purpose to emerge. I surrendered to my soul’s guidance and trusted that the nourishment, the strength, and the wisdom I needed to heal would come from within.

 

What helped me heal was the realization that being a mother was only one of infinite ways I could express my soul’s purpose as a woman. No one, and nothing outside of myself, even my own future child, could derail me from who I was choosing to become.  

 

My priority in life became to birth and sustain the fullness of who I am. Whether I wrote books, danced with my stepdaughter, taught workshops, or made love, every breathing moment held new ways to honor my purpose.  

 

Through abortion, my body, mind, and soul renewed themselves in the incredible power I owned as a woman. The power to birth and nurture the lives of others, as well as myself. The power to allow death to possibilities that don’t serve me.

 

At the same time, grief floored me. I felt the blows that women across space and time have suffered at the hands of people and belief systems that rob them of their sacred right to create lives of their own, on their own terms.

 

How many women walk this earth severed from a sense of how powerful and divine they are?

 

What would happen if more women honored every moment of their lives to nourish their gifts, to share in the joy of living, and to taste the depth of the divinity within them?

 

I made the difficult choice to have an abortion so I could rebirth myself as a creator of my own destiny. I no longer believe that I’m just an object made to carry children and nurture the lives of others at my own expense. I have staked my territory at the center of my life, arms open wide to the people and the opportunities that will help me evolve as a woman and as a spiritual being.

 

Through having an abortion, I discovered how shame dissolves when women face it head on and choose how to direct their creative and procreative power. Sometimes, the most brutal decisions women make are the decisions that kill shame for good—whether it’s if/when to become a mother—or any other major life choice. A depth of power and purpose emerges from those choices that no one and nothing can destroy.

 

My hope is that anyone who is facing the choice of whether or not to become a parent will learn how to decipher the voice of shame from the voice of love—and base decisions on where the voice of love leads. The choices we make by the guidance of that voice may feel radically different than expected, but making them is the only way we can thrive.

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