I was born unplanned, unwanted, and unloved. I carried the fear of motherhood from my childhood, fear of becoming just like my mother, a young woman suddenly having to give up your life become a mother, something neither of us had the blueprints for. In 2022, when I went on vacation trying to escape a chaotic unfulfilling world I found myself suddenly the victim of S/A and even more challenging, pregnant from the assault. Pregnant at the same exact age, just like my mother. How could I do everything I was supposed to in life, everything by the book, and end up just like my mother?
The day I found out I was pregnant from the assault was the day my soul broke. Not only was I violated but also left to deal with the pieces and now thrust into the expectation of motherhood, when all my life I had avoided it. That was the darkest moment in my life, a humbling reminder of a broken girl. That same day I struck up the courage to tell my mother what had happened, and that I was pregnant, and it became the first time in years that I had cried in front of my mother as she hugged me and told me she supported whatever I decided. I finally understood her pain, and she mine. I wasn’t ready to have a child, I didn’t have a job, I was living with my family dealing with abuse, and most of all I didn’t know love. How could I have a child, love a child, when I didn’t know what love was to myself?
I made a promise that day to spirit. “Come back to me when I can love you, when you can have a mother and a father that can take care of you. Not under these circumstances, not now. Come back to me. I can’t love you now. Come back to me when I am ready, I will love you more than you can ever know. Just not now”. I gathered my tears and called planned parenthood. My mother drove me and waited in the parking lot as I mourned the girl I thought I was one last time and joined a room of women and girls with stories untold, never thinking I’d be in such a place.
In efforts to heal from such trauma I began therapy, journaling, self-care activities, and a very personal creative endeavor. The shame, hurt, loss, and despair that comes with an abortion weighed heavily on me. In what started out as a way to right my wrongs (what I had blamed myself for) became a way of bringing life back into my world and a journey of discovering love where once I had felt broken. The unplanned, unwanted, unloved slowly shifted into deeply lovable, deserving, and divinely placed in my mothers life despite what she knew she was capable of at the time. Loss is an invitation to dive deeper within our souls.