You're Not Alone Healing through God's Grace after Abortion

Chapter One If the Shoe Fits "You're not alone." On no day will [heaven's] gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. a?Revelation 21:25 For years, abortion remained a dark place within me, an indefinable root of my pain because its consequences didn't exist according to those "helping me" with my bouts of depression. Unbelievably, abortion was never brought up on any level by my doctors as a possible negative experience in my life, let alone the lynchpin to my pain. The despair I felt when I had my abortion was nothing, according to the therapists and according to a society that accepts abortion as a legitimate answer to pregnancy. There was no grieving for me because the baby I was carrying was just "a blob of tissue," "a mass," "a cluster of cells" that, in my case, was adamantly unwanted by the father. So, if abortion was such a walk in the park like everyone said, why couldn't I stop the self-loathing that consumed me? Why did I have to have surgery for my infertility and suffer eight miscarriages before carrying my last two children to term? Why couldn't I just emotionally "reappear" in my life as if nothing had happened, like I was told other post-abortive women did? What was wrong with me? Why did I feel so alone? Why couldn't I let go? When did my worth turn into a frozen asset? As found in the 1995 survey from the Alan Guttmacher Institute (Planned Parenthood's Research arm) . . . 25 million women have had the 40+ million abortions since 1971. 43% of all women who have reached the age of 45 have had an abortion . . . churched or unchurched. Abortion is the #1 medical procedure performed on women in America. Although we all know "it takes two" for a woman to become pregnant, we often don't recognize that "it takes a village" to abort those babies. Double the above statistics of post-abortive mothers to include the fathersa?then multiply them to count grandparents, siblings, children, extended families, friends and, yes, even those abortion facilitators who were involved. Now you can begin to grasp the staggering numbers of those affected by abortion. The truth is that few elude the negative, trickle-down effects of this invasive "procedure." Whether or not you have personally experienced abortion, it's safe to say that most of us know someone who has. If you, or someone you care for, are hurting from the aftermath of abortion . . . YOU'RE NOT ALONE! And here's the good news: There is forgiveness, hope and healing for the spiritual, emotional and physical wounds of abortion, but we have to choose to move from hiding to wholeness. Our willingness to come out from the shadows of denial into the light of a renewed future is the first step to freedom. Self-sabotage so often plays recurring roles in our lives, don't you agree? I know for myself, self-sabotage held the dubious distinction of being one of my most repetitive habitsa?with denial running a close second. Let's consider what we have achieved in our lives with the baggage most of us have carried around. Can you imagine what we could accomplish in the way of joy, peace, satisfaction, inspiration and achieve­ments in all aspects of our lives if we could just finally stop shooting ourselves in the foot? We all know those nasty little numbing habits come in various flavors such as overeating, overspending, overindulgence . . . over the top! Pick your poison. If we want to stop our not-so-merry-go-round, let's uncover the ways we've personally and defensively dealt with the pain of our abortions or the abortions of others. I've found that the only way to revoke the pain management ofO'Neill, Jennifer is the author of 'You're Not Alone Healing through God's Grace after Abortion', published 2005 under ISBN 9780757301681 and ISBN 0757301681.