I write about wonder, and about the greatest theme of all stories … redemption.
Recently I saw a young woman with a visible disability … and something within me whispered that I just had to tell this story …
So … more revisions that for any post before … here I go:
In everything I have shared, I did so with one caveat, one condition …
I only share
from the perspective of
my own experience.
I cannot have words to speak on that which I have not personal understanding, experience or education.
I was born in March of 1969 … fifty long years ago, in a hospital, to a single woman. She was unmarried to the man who contributed his DNA to my creation … the man who skedaddled soon after discovering that (in the words of my kids, when they want something from us) “sex has consequences”.
It wasn’t until the day after she had pushed me from her body that a kind nurse asked if she had seen her baby girl (because, why would a single woman want to see her illegitimate child in 1969?). When my mother tearfully, shook her head … then that nurse made heads spin as she sought and brought me to her arms.
I was brought home to sleep in a bed by my mother’s, in her parent’s home … where her father lived … her recovering alcoholic father, who abused she and her siblings repeatedly throughout their childhoods (who also abused me, as an adolescent).
Just a few weeks later (four or six), I was left in the care of her mum, as she did not live in a time and place of paid maternity leave. She had to work so as to pay rent (to her parents), childcare (to her mother), all the necessities of a child as well as her own needs. She worked in a clerical position.
My life started as a crisis pregnancy, my mother made choices (some her own, some thrust upon her). It was not a smooth start … there were bumps and horrors along the way, but …
My life has purpose … present, future and past … I have, I will have, I did have purpose … from the very beginning.
Flash ahead to October or 1995. Hubby and I had an almost three year old, and a pregnancy success to failure rate of 1:4. I was taken to hospital in excruciating pain. After pokes and prods and a sonogram, an ‘old school’ surgeon told us that I had a perfectly functioning heartbeat in my fallopian tube, that had ruptured and my abdomen was filling with fluid. The tiny heartbeat would not survive and could not be relocated to the uterus. My own life was in grave danger without the removal of the other.
Two days later I was released from hospital … no tube, no heartbeat.
Ouch!
That stings
to write those words.
My choice to live resulted in the end of another … even though I had no other option. Reality, or a ‘good medical rationale’ doesn’t change the sting … consequences are real and they last a lifetime in a heart that feels the loss as well as the gratefulness for every breath.
Recently, in a restaurant, I noticed a young woman, with a visible disability … just after I had read a ‘post’ about these life and death choices.
As I observed her, I found myself considering all of the people I have worked with, or known in my life who have also had disabilities, those conceived from rape, those adopted from orphanages, those born alive after a late term abortion. I wondered how many of them have felt the sting from a society with a pyramid scheme of value … that not all are created equal. That the inconvenience of their existence … to society, to their mother … is reason enough to end their lives, to deny their most basic human rights.
I know that they have, they will have, they did have purpose … from the very beginning.
I have felt the personal sting of the comments … because I am a woman, who bore two woman, born to a woman who could have aborted her crisis pregnancy.
I was that crisis pregnancy …
I will never say that abortion should be a criminal offence … for a pregnant woman, for a doctor. I also will never say that it is just about a woman’s body … for all lives have purpose.
Here is what I will say …
There need to be more services, more opportunities for women who are in the midst of a crisis pregnancy. Not every country has the opportunities for women that Canada does, with a year of paid leave and coverage of medical costs. In some areas free daycare is even available. There needs to be more access to understanding the option of adoption. There needs to be counselling that considers, holistically, the needs of the woman and of the child, short and long term, including group support.
Crisis pregnancies are about two lives, and they both matter.
I only share
from the perspective of
my own experience.
I know that I have, I will have and I did have purpose … from the very beginning.
This is my story … of wonder and redemption.
itsawonderfilledlife 