Lisa's Story

I think if I had a place to go things would have been different.  I was alone.  While I was raised, I was told for years and years that I had an image I had to maintain. I was a professional who was raised in a middle class family.  How could you destroy that; how could you make your family look bad? There was no one that I could go talk to, and yet I knew that it was wrong.  It was a choice that I made.  I couldn’t tell anybody what someone else had done to me. If I told anyone I would be rejected.  That is why I had sex; to be accepted.  I did tell my first husband before we were married that I had had an abortion, because I wanted him to know everything about me. He used it against me.  That made the pain even deeper. When I had the second two abortions, as an adult, I wasn’t going to tell anybody.  I’ve been through that before.  I shared that secret of taking a life before.

I would give anything to go back and allow myself to share this with someone and have them say, “Let’s talk about this.  Let’s sleep on this overnight. Let’s sleep on this two or three nights and go to a pregnancy resource center and see what your options are.” 

I couldn’t tell my children, because I wanted to be a perfect mom.  I think the fact that I had already been through a divorce and this would just to add another thing (failure) to my life.  That child would probably have been a blessing to my children and me.  I regret that my younger son didn’t have a younger sister or a younger brother.   He would have been a great big brother.  He and my other children would have loved and accepted this child. It was me who didn’t give them the opportunity. 

If I had the chance I would tell myself to look at the options; get support; get help; surround myself with a team. Just recently I was in a pregnancy resource center, and I told them that my first abortion was really not my choice.  I got in the car and went and never talked about it again. With the second abortion, I didn’t’ know that there were resource centers.  I told the director had I known then what I know now; that there were women there that would love me and walk me through it; educate me on it; and help me share with my children I would no doubt have kept that child and loved it.  My children would have loved her too. 

I think about what the abortions have taken from me.  I think every child is a gift and I think those children were given to me for a reason. Selfishly I didn’t keep them, and I think at times whether those children were meant to be a doctor that saved a life or a part of God’s overall plan.  I do think about that.  I think that my children were meant to have siblings.  I still think about them and the situation often. Yet I do so without the guilt and shame because I have been set free from it. 

I am disappointed and sad that I’ve taken life.  I’ve lived with so much guilt and shame for so long, and I lived in a dark world for a long time. It was about knowing that I had taken a life.  It was about knowing that I didn’t seek other options.  It was about knowing that I put myself in a situation, and I wasn’t responsible.  When you have a relationship with a man and you choose to have a sexual relationship with him, there are consequences if you don’t make the right choices.  I was so desperate to be loved.  It just seemed like it would never happen to me or could happen to me, but it did.  I saw the world through broken glasses for so long.  I had to protect myself; I had to guard myself.  I spent so much energy making sure I didn’t’ say the wrong thing that I didn’t share this with anyone.  I didn’t function in a way that I knew I could function because there was this black hole. 

After my abortions life wasn’t the same; relationships with a man; relationships with friends.  I isolated myself from my friends and my children. I separated myself from God.  I isolated myself because I had this black hole that I couldn’t let anybody see.  There was so much guilt and shame.  As an adult, I couldn’t remember the first 16 years of my life.  There was so much I was trying to suppress, and then you add the abortions on top of that. It took a lot of energy to just keep everything together.  If I didn’t keep it together my world would crack and fall apart.  I couldn’t allow myself to get close to anybody because they would see.  I always check the eggs at the grocery store to see if they are cracked.  When I see the hairline fractures, I think that is me.  I don’t want anyone to see the hairline fracture. The hairline fracture could crack, and if it cracks then I will be rejected and will be thrown away.  I would be tossed out just like that egg.