I’ve Had Two Abortions with No Socially Acceptable Justification
Am I allowed to grieve?
Bakersfield, California, USA, 16 years old
I lost my virginity when I was 14.
I had spent my entire eighth grade year pining after a boy who hardly paid me any attention. I didn’t care, apparently, because I spent the year obsessing over him, writing love poems about him, and wishing nothing more than for him to like me back and be my boyfriend. Meanwhile, he expressed exactly zero romantic interest in me.
I was boy crazy, as we called it, and he was the subject of my crazy affection.
Meanwhile, he chased after girls like Nicole Miller, whom I studied with bitter jealousy, wondering what she had on me, and what the hell was wrong with me. Wasn’t the fact I was a whole year older than him a point of interest? Didn’t that, at least, make me somewhat desirable?
As soon as I became a freshman, it did. Somehow, once I moved on to the 9th grade, he suddenly developed an interest in me. After all the heartache and love poems, my undying love for him had finally paid off.
I sat on a swing at Challenger Park in the warm Bakersfield night air. He stood in front of me and we each held onto the swing chains as we kissed our first kiss. We were boyfriend and girlfriend.
I can’t recall ever thinking, wait a minute, why have I kept liking this guy who has had absolutely no interest in me for so long? And why does he suddenly like me now? If he hasn’t always been able to see how utterly spectacular I am, good riddance.
My parents had split five years prior, and my dad had left home. I don’t remember talking to anyone, really, about boys. Or relationships. Or love. Or hormones. Or becoming a teenager.
All I know is from sixth grade — when I was grossed out by the thought of kissing a boy — to eight and ninth grade, a switch had been made in my brain. All I wanted was to be wanted. To be desirable to a boy. To have the boy I liked, like me back. To triumph.
Triumph I did, and like two lost kids, we blindly started our romantic adventure. Before I knew it, my hard won boyfriend was examining my pubic hair under the covers, while we pretended to watch TV in his parents’ living room.
Not long after that, we started having sex. I remember trying to prepare myself when I knew it was coming, pun intended. I would listen to R. Kelly’s album, 12 Play and convince myself my body was calling for him and that I also didn’t see nothin’ wrong with a little bump and grind.
(Yes, the knowledge of what R. Kelly has done makes this all the more cringe-worthy.)
I had to convince myself because there was another voice in my head saying, “What are you doing? You don’t even want to do this.”
But one night, he snuck into our house and climbed into my bed. R. Kelly serenaded us with *reassuring* lyrics in a song called Sex Me: “Things I wanna do to you, nobody has to know.”
I remember the physical pain, but it didn’t last very long because my boyfriend couldn’t sex me for very long. Even though I felt a certain disappointment and emptiness after that, we kept sneaking around to sex each other.
R. Kelly misled us.
Turns out when you sex your boyfriend in the bedroom next to your mother’s, she might hear you. One night, she did and she came raging into my bedroom to find him hiding under my bed, buck naked. She grounded me for six months after that, but my boyfriend and I continued to find ways to sex each other.
We sexed each other in my room, his room, and any other room where we could find privacy, over the course of the next year or so. One day I wanted to try out being on top so we got on his floor and I started my research. What I concluded is that being on top is one of the positions you can get pregnant in.
I will never forget falling to my knees in my bedroom once I realized how late my period was. I leaned over the very bed we’d first had sex in, and the same floor my mother had seen my boyfriend lying naked on. I think it was my first time talking to God and I was making a mighty request: Please, I’ll do anything, just don’t let me be pregnant. God is a lot of powerful, amazing things but a professional magician is not one of them. Turns out I missed my period, and I had to figure out how to tell my mother.
“Hey mom, remember how you grounded me for having sex? Well, I kept doing it anyway and now I’m pregnant.”
Driving home from my volleyball tournament one weekend, mom treated me to dinner at Hamburger Hamlet. We got off the freeway at Magic Mountain Drive in Santa Clarita and I prepared myself to break the news to her. It was the most dreaded moment of my life, up until that point.
Over burgers, I mustered up the courage to tell her I was late for my period and thought I might be pregnant. To my surprise, she remained completely calm, kept eating, and started to ask me if I knew what I wanted to do. We finished our burgers and started driving north on the 5 freeway, back to Bakersfield.
By the time we reached the bottom of the Grapevine, my mother had given me my first experience with grace. She started telling me stories from her own life, and about some of the mistakes she had made at my age. It was the first time my mom had ever really told me anything personal about her life, and I remember this immense feeling of relief washing over me as she showed me her humanity.
Never once did she yell at me, judge me, ridicule me or punish me for what had happened. Instead, she shared stories of “Me, too.” It wasn’t until years later when I fully realized what my mother had done during that drive home. Her actions were demonstrable of grace, mercy, and unconditional love. Knowingly or not, she had given me my first glimpse into the love of God.
Still, I was pregnant.
Juba, South Sudan, Africa, 33 years old
None of it worked.
I tried everything I could think of — prayer, optimism, reading the great spiritual authors, focusing on beauty, focusing on gratitude, telling people I was struggling, telling people I wanted to quit, telling people I needed more support, talk therapy, EMDR, prayer healing, smoking cigarettes, smoking shisha, drinking beer, getting drunk, feeding a wild cat, dancing in the kitchen by myself, dancing in the living room by myself, dancing at Central Pub on salsa night, dancing on rooftops, social media, watching movies, listening to music, playing volleyball with the neighbors, walking on the track at the UN compound, running on the track at the UN compound, meeting new people, hanging out with girlfriends at the swimming pool, going to church, going to cafes, going to the river, sitting by the river, talking to boys, flirting with boys, kissing boys, avoiding boys, creativity, journaling, writing, yoga with Jesus, sex, more sex, a lot more sex.
At first, I was just lonely. Then I became exhausted and lonely. Then I became traumatized, exhausted, and lonely. Then I became numb, traumatized, exhausted, and lonely. Then I became pregnant, numb, traumatized, exhausted, and lonely. Then I became ashamed, pregnant, numb, traumatized, exhausted, and lonely. Then I became isolated, ashamed, pregnant, numb, traumatized, exhausted, and lonely.
I had to keep it a secret.
People sometimes ask if I did missionary work over there. The only thing missionary about my time in South Sudan was the position I got knocked up in.
I told him I didn’t feel like having sex that night but he aroused my body somehow anyway, so we did. In the dim glow of light, he crawled on top of me. All I could focus on was the hum of the fan and the white mosquito net surrounding us. He had some trouble pulling out and we didn’t use protection. My heart immediately sank as I eloquently reprimanded him. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I wasn’t even in love with this guy.
Not long after we had started dating, I told him I wanted to stop dating because I couldn’t feel anything in general, much less for him. I felt nothing for him. He didn’t care and he wouldn’t take no for an answer so he kept pursuing me. Since at that point I was only numb, traumatized, exhausted, and lonely (NTEL) — I gave in.
It was sweet and fun in the beginning, when we met. Before that, I had decided that just because I was NTEL, that didn’t mean I couldn’t try to have fun and feel alive. So, I went out with my girlfriend.
In the early afternoon, we went to church — a local church I had been attending, partly to keep up appearances for myself, and the faith-based organization I was under. I couldn’t much sense God anymore. After church, we went to Logali House — a place notorious for being filled with expats from all over the world, and journalists connected to Wifi.
My Kenyan friend and I sat at a table outside, under the big screen. As Aljazeera played on the television, we talked about work and life and finding a husband for me.
“Don’t ever date a Kenyan,” she joked. “They just want your money and a free pass to the United States.”
Not long after that, a tall, handsome man walked over to our table with a beaming smile. His friends, whom we had met earlier, told him about us so he wanted to introduce himself and invite us to the rooftop of James Hotel.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Me?” he teased, smiling. “I’m a Kenyan.”
I looked at my friend and we laughed. We agreed to meet him on the rooftop later. When we got to James Hotel, the smiling Kenyan was sitting at a table with his journalist friends. We all exchanged greetings, then my friend and I sat down and ordered a drink. We got to talking and telling stories. The boys told tales of how things were when the war started. How everything shut down and guns and other weapons shot off at all times of the day and night like fireworks.
Apparently, our new Kenyan friend was in Juba the whole time, trying to get coverage of what was happening, but also trying to stay alive. How very brave, I thought. Handsome, and brave. The conversation turned lighter as we talked about music and dancing. “My favorite dance in the world is the two-step,” I said. “Has anyone ever heard of it?”
Nobody had so I stood up and put my arms out in front of me — my right arm in an L shape so my invisible dance partner could hold my hand, and my left arm curled upward with my hand resting on my invisible partner’s shoulder.
“Like this,” I said, as I started two-stepping on the roof, feeling totally free. The handsome, brave, smiling Kenyan hopped up from his chair and begged for me to teach him.
There are three ways straight into my heart, and dancing is one of them. Even if I couldn’t feel much, at least I still understood this on an intellectual level.
And so, we danced.
In the weeks that followed, we kept on dancing.
Vertical dancing on rooftops, on a dock next to the Nile, on earth dance floors at various parties and pubs. And horizontal dancing, in whatever bed we could get in quickly enough. I didn’t particularly enjoy having the sex. Yet somehow, it allowed me to feel something, anything.
A few months later, I was pregnant.
FUCK.
Telling my mother was difficult but this was a whole other beast. I was now tasked with telling the leader of an international, faith-based organization — one I had promised three years of celibate service to, albeit in a post-conflict (turned conflict) environment, as an early-thirty-something-single-woman — that I was pregnant.
The one thing he had asked of me, half-jokingly, when he took over as director was: please, just don’t get pregnant. Lost, lonely, still boy-crazy woman that I was, that’s exactly what I did. And now I had to tell him. It was the most dreaded moment of my life, since the last most dreaded moment of my life, when I had to tell my mom I was pregnant the first time.
You should have seen the look on his face when I told him. I was arguably granted an image of God himself, in that moment.
Pure love and compassion.
He rallied behind me and told me he would do whatever it took to support me and help me get through, no matter what I decided. I could not believe it. During what was now the most awful, shameful moment of my life, I experienced the most profound grace to date.
Yet again, still, I was pregnant.
In the end, I chose to abort both times.
I don’t have much memory of the first time. I know I was making a decision with a lost, 16-year-old brain. How would I continue playing softball if I was pregnant? How would I finish school? How would I have a life?
I still had so much to learn about resilience and grit and stepping into responsibility, and life. I remember even less about the abortion itself. I remember going in for the consultation. I vaguely remember protestors outside the clinic. The day of the procedure, everything was over in a flash. I don’t remember being sick or in any pain. It was pretty early on in the pregnancy.
I don’t remember ever feeling sad about it either. Years later when I met God, I felt remorse over what I had done and sought forgiveness, but I’m not sure I ever felt sadness.
I remember the second time, vividly.
Four years later and I still have to prepare myself on the anniversary, and Mother’s Day. Some of my darkest hours in life have come from remembering that time.
It wasn’t easy.
When I first found out I was pregnant, I was as happy and excited as I could be, in the numbed out place I was. I wanted to have the baby. I spent about a month in that place, feeling sure I would keep the baby, and thinking of names.
I was still in Juba at the time. It was late 2014, a year after the war had started raging. My mind had already broken under the weight of trauma (on top of trauma from my life before that, that I had yet to really recognize). I was carrying more stress than a person should ever have to.
That faith-based organization I had promised three celibate years to? Not a lot of money in it. They took care of my daily living and physical health while I was there. It just wasn’t the type of job that allowed for saving money. And I would have had to quit, move back to the States jobless, and start over from scratch, while also trying to take care of an infant. So even if I wanted the baby, how would I do it?
About a month after I found out, I got to take leave in Kenya with the rest of my team. While on retreat, I opted to go on a hike in a forest outside of Nairobi, with a small group of people. I was really in it, processing and trying to figure things out, so I promised myself some solitude in the woods, even though others would be there.
I started that hike still thinking I would keep the baby. Sometime in the middle, something opened up in my mind and it became a possibility that I didn’t have to keep the baby. By the end of the hike, I knew what I was going to do.
I remember staring out the window of the bus as we rode back to the retreat center, wondering how that had just happened, but knowing it was going to be ok. I wasn’t relieved. I was sad. It was the single most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make in my life.
Less than a month later, I flew back to the States to have the procedure done. I remember nearly everything from that day. The memory is so painful, I’ve had to practice the art of prayer healing to keep from dying, myself.
Without Jesus, I am weeping from pain — physical, emotional, and spiritual — the entire time as some faceless woman hovers over me, every once in a while, reminding me to breathe. I can’t remember how I left the room, or made it out to the lobby.
With Jesus, he sits beside the bed, holds my hand, and weeps with me. He’s not happy about what’s happening, obviously. Neither am I.
But he’s pure love and compassion.
When it’s over, he picks me up and carries me in his arms out of the room. He gathers my sisters from the lobby and walks all of us out to the car, where he gently sets me down. He whispers to my sister that I will need some chocolate, and a lot of love.
Abortion is a heavy, dark, painful part of life. Nobody knows that better than me. And I have no justifications good enough.
I haven’t sugar coated it for myself, or to anybody else. I had sex (lots of times) and got pregnant, twice. And both times, I chose to abort, for whatever reasons I did. Since then, I’ve simply had to live with the consequences of my decisions.
But to grieve? Am I allowed?
Because no matter what you might think of me — and yes, there’s more to me than what I covered in this one essay — I experienced profound loss when I aborted.
It’s maddening and complicated and it might make you angry. God knows it has made me angry. And I’ve mostly been living with the pain and shame of it in isolation. Yes, I have told family and close friends. Yes, I have experienced some spiritual healing.
But I still get the sense that I’m not quite allowed to grieve.
Especially in the heated political and religious context of this country, and world. And by the way Alabama, women are going to keep getting abortions. You’re just making it more dangerous for them.
Society doesn’t allow for a person like me to grieve. This is disenfranchised grief. The type of grief society says we’re not allowed to feel. This includes the loss of friends, loved ones by suicide, a home, a miscarried pregnancy, the death of a pet, and so on.
Ever since I became aware of this type of grief, it has lightened the burden, ever so slightly. And of course, I know I’m not alone. I have often wondered at the sheer number of women out there who must have experienced similar feelings. I’m only one human. But I am a human, and my life and voice matter.
I am allowed to be sorrowful of my losses. I get to determine that. I get to declare myself worthy of grieving the loss of a would-be-child I once loved with giddy expectation — no matter the reason for the loss.
I need to grieve because I need to feel it all.
I need to grieve because I need to heal.
And I need to grieve because I need to continue learning how to love myself in all of my humanness.
It has taken me a long time to find the courage to share this. It took me a long time to start opening up about my abortions, in general. I wrote this in pieces, over the course of the last year or so. I know it may lose me some friends, but I bet it will win me some kindreds, even if they remain silent. Whomever you may be: you are not alone. You are loved. You are allowed to grieve. May you experience profound healing and compassion.
