How then should we live...?
Good Morning! For the past several months, one day has slipped into the next without a word in my blog although quite a bit has been happening. I’ve been bombarded by the happenings of the world and not really focusing time and energy on what really matters when all is said and done. You. And You knowing you’re not alone in your pain… and sharing with you the wonderful news that there’s Someone you can turn to for help. Someone who can - and really wants to - help you out of that pit of despair and regret after pretty much being convinced there’s nothing you can do about any of it anymore.
Like many of us – men and women in this 2020 world - I am post abortive. That fact cannot be changed. It’s a part of history that I cannot undo. However, after 33 years of allowing that fact, and all the emotional baggage that came with it, determine the lens I viewed everything else through, an amazing thing happened. That fact lost its death grip on determining my ability to see things without a cloud of guilt and shame pulling me down. and yes, make no mistake that grip is real and works just as powerfully on the woman who entered a building as two and walked out as one as it does on the man whose genes used to be part of that once beating heart. I know. I’ve spoken to many men who are just as devastated over that “choice” – whether they were the force behind that decision, a distant bystander or a passionate voice against it. We all deal with the results of this tragic aftermath in different ways, to different degrees – and that pain doesn’t stay with us. We share it daily in our interactions with others by the way we respond to everything else, whether we realize it at the time or not. We can’t help not doing it, because at our core, we’ve been changed. But our perspective doesn’t have to stay distorted by that pain forever.
In 10 weeks, the grimy and crusted things on the windshield of my perspective got a detailed spring cleaning thanks to someone else who had “been there, done that” stepping forward for me - and I began to see things I hadn’t been able to see so clearly in decades. With those weights cut off my ankles and my field of vision widened, I began to walk others through the process that helped me, one semester at a time, two semesters per year. It was an amazing part of my journey. But I want more. My reach was limited by how many women I could see in the weeks leading up to the classes to get the word out about the location we offered a "class" and being brave enough and close enough to drive out and share in-person time with us. Fear of disclosing that pain, discomfort with the possibility of others’ responses, and a host of other factors kept some from joining us. I want to change that.
I’m not sure how exactly this is going to go in the new “format”, but I guess we’ll discover what this looks like as we go forward together. I will be asking for help. I will be posting
resources and responding one on one if anyone needs more information. The important thing is for you to know that just because you’ve gotten so used to this being part of your story, doesn’t mean it has to define you and how you interpret things for the rest of your life. You are more than one decision that you’ve made (or that was made for you). And the journey out of those confining walls begins now… together.