It’s always exciting and a little scary when I have a new book published. There’s a part of me that still cannot believe God is allowing me to work for Him, using such an ugly part of my past to help others. Then, if I’m completely honest, there is a part of me that beats myself up, believing I will receive criticism, and no one will like it. I don’t say those words to make you think I’m fishing for a compliment…I’m just being transparent about the voices in my head.
But then you run across a blog like the one I have copied below. I first saw it on my friend Susi’s blog, who is a fantastic writer. Check her out at www.survivingsibling.wordpress.com. I knew this was the perfect way to kickoff and announce my latest book.
What you read below may be the first time you have ever thought about the abortion issue from this point of view; but I can promise you, the SaveOne staff and myself have been dealing with this for many years. We continually have grandmothers of aborted children, siblings of aborted children, aunts, uncles, friends of aborted children come through our SaveOne classes. We have even had people come through our class to deal with the fact they drove a person to the abortion clinic and for two decades regretted that decision, feeling as though they were an accessory.
Abortion has a ripple effect.
We can no longer focus primarily on the woman and think we are getting the situation worked out. We MUST deal with the entire scope of the family to make sure they are whole, healthy, and intact as they move forward as a unified whole. Please read what I have posted below from an anonymous writer and let your mind open to a different realm of the abortion debate.
From Susi’s blog…
When I was a kid, my mom was very involved with the Right To Life movement. She volunteered with fundraisers, helped lead educational groups in our area, attended rallies, manned an educational booth at the county fair, and did other things I am unaware of because she didn’t really talk much about that work. What she did talk about was the value of human life, and the importance of protecting unborn babies, and I took her very seriously because she seemed to have a lot of knowledge through her work with Right To Life.
At the age of 12, my vision of my mom shattered. As she was driving me to a Bible club at our church, she brought up in conversation that she’d had an abortion at the age of 18 (before she was with my dad.) She gave me a brief bit of info on the abortion, including the fact that she had been told the gender (a boy) by a nurse, after he was born. I sat silent in the car, and had no idea how to respond to her.
I spent the rest of my teen years feeling incredibly angry at my mom. I felt like she had betrayed me. It seemed like she was trying to white-wash her abortion history by getting involved with the Pro-life movement, only to later reveal that she had done the very thing she was speaking out against. I hated my mom for taking my brother away from me. I blamed her for the fact that I’d always longed for an older brother and felt a close bond with my cousins who would have been similar in age to my brother. I became obsessed with thinking about my brother. I wrote him letters, wrote poems about him, tried to draw out what I imagined he would look like, kept careful track (as best I could) of how old he would be, named him, and deeply grieved over all the things in my family that my brother hadn’t gotten to witness or be a part of. It was an intense grief process that took me years to walk through, and a very silent pain that no one, not even my own family knew about.
This writer goes on to say later in the blog…
Last year, I went through training to become a volunteer with a pregnancy center. The information they went over in training was just incredible! I suddenly felt like, for the first time, my mom made sense. All the quirky things she did, like suddenly shutting down, not responding to things in emotionally appropriate ways, rejecting affection from myself and my dad and siblings, and many other things sounded like symptoms of PTSD from her abortion. I realized that she was like many other post-abortive women (and men) who tried to push the abortion aside and move on with life, and bore some incredible wounds as a result. That training prompted me to talk with my mom, for the first time since middle school, about her abortion. I learned some shocking details about what she experienced, and understood a little better why she was so quiet about it (to this day, even her siblings don’t all know that she aborted.)
A wound carried through decades of this writer’s life, finally made sense and began to heal when she learned more about the symptoms of Post Abortion Syndrome. She was able to finally understand her mother and begin to forgive her. Education into this subject opened the doors for them to talk and come to grips with the mother’s choice. This is what we see happen every day in our SaveOne classes. We shine the light on grief, symptoms, reasons, and God’s forgiveness, bringing families back together with great restoration! Read on…
I wish that people realized how much my mother’s decision to abort at age 18 affected my whole family, how every Mother’s Day was a day when my mom cried and cried and felt completely unworthy of affection, how the gentle touch of myself or any other family member would make her jump or even feel excruciating pain, and how my mom’s secret about her abortion became the secret my whole family was forced to carry. The abortion industry tells women that abortion will remove the embarrassment, shame, and worry of telling people that they are pregnant, and then having to go through the birth process and the process of raising a child. The reality is, abortion creates a world of hurt and pain, anxiety, shame, guilt, intimacy issues, and host of other difficulties. Those emotions don’t just belong to the woman who goes through the abortion, but her family as well.
That last paragraph has incredible insight into what happens to the future family of each abortion survivor. Read on, this next paragraph is extremely important….
My mother is still a loving mom, despite the fact that she aborted. My heart hurts to see, however, that a piece of my mom died with my brother. She is not like other moms. She’s broken. And she will never get the piece back that left her on that fateful day. But my mom’s story can prevent others from enduring that heartache. Her story can echo through the ages as a reminder that abortion is a terribly tragic act, and something that can never be undone. And there are whole families like mine, quietly protecting these wounded women, while we grieve the loss of a family member as well. My prayer is that one day, I will be able to speak openly about my family’s abortion journey, and validate those who feel voiceless in this boat. Until then, I will speak privately or anonymously, with this important story. When we speak up, there is power there!
I feel this blog from an anonymous writer speaks volumes as to why, “SaveOne- The Ripple Effect” needed to be written. This book mirrors the SaveOne Men’s and Women’s Studies, so it will be very easy for a loved one to go through the class with others. Please contact our office for more information, or go on the site at www.saveone.org to order your copy today.