A LETTER FROM A MOTHER WHO CHOSE NOT TO HAVE HER BABY

Dear Mama,

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I may not know what your journey has been like up until now. I don’t know your family situation. I don’t know what your support system looks like — your circle of friends or your relationship with the father of your unborn child.

 

What I do know is that you need to hear my story. I implore you not to read this letter as mere words on paper, but I encourage you to sit back and take this in.

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I want to share with you the power of the decision that is before you right now. Some start letters such as this with “I can only imagine how you feel,” but I assure you I genuinely KNOW the emotions you are experiencing.

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• Fear

• Uncertainty

• Feeling of failure

• Possibly feeling abandoned

• Confusion

• Not knowing where to turn

• Wondering how this is “your life.”

 

Many will tell you that having an abortion is the “easy way out.” “It will make your life so much easier.” “You’ll be relieved after it’s over.”

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LIES!

 

I assure you they are all lies. I know because my so-called advisors told me those things 30 years ago before I had an abortion. Mama, it has been anything but easy, and I’ve never felt relieved.

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I was 21 when I found out I was pregnant. I had been with my boyfriend for a little over four years. We were going to get married, and we were madly in love. He was a cross between Brad Pitt and Kevin Bacon. He was gorgeous and charming, and the sun rose and set for me in his eyes.

 

Life was somewhat stable when I found out I was expecting. We had moved from Arizona to Washington, living with an older couple in their basement. I was taking care of her children after her battle with cancer. We were young, in love, and excited to have a baby. But that feeling of excitement was shattered in a four-hour time frame.

 

The couple we were living with had mounting medical bills, and they were selling their house. We had one week to find a new place to live. We found an apartment, signed the lease, he dropped me off at work, and four hours later picked me up from work with all of his bags packed in the back of the car. He said he had decided that he wasn’t ready for the “parent thing” and needed to “go find himself.”

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I was in shock and devastated!

 

The next day, as I tried to process the weight of being alone, I found out he had cleared all the money in our bank account. I was pregnant, alone, broke, and six days from being homeless.

 

Even if I weren’t expecting a child, all of that would have been overwhelming. But knowing I was now responsible for life inside me was more than overwhelming; it was debilitating!

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I needed to figure out where to turn. I was 2000 miles from home. I called my dad to ask if I could come home, but he said they had guests for the next few months, so I could go home some rainy day in October but not this sunny day in July. The next day, a tow truck showed up to take my car. My dad was the co-owner and felt that I could not afford the payment, so he took it back.

 

I was five days from being homeless. I had no money. I had no direction. No car. And no place to go.
I didn’t know where to turn.

 

My grandfather found out that I was pregnant and called me. He told me that I could come to stay with them. My uncle would give me a job and buy me a car. “You can get your feet underneath you.”

 

He said he provided a way for me to square my life away so I could have a future. But the offer came with a price I was not prepared to pay. His proposal was only good if I went without a baby. He encouraged me to get an abortion, and he paid it.

 

It seemed like the only way to move on. Any other option was too much for me to bear.

 

Little did I know what was to come was worse in the long run. I went to a clinic, and they explained, “everything would be taken care of for me”. They had donors that would pay for a hotel room while I recovered. They ‘matter-of-factly’ showed me pictures of what my baby looked like inside me. My baby had arms and legs. It had a heartbeat.

 

They explained, in detail, the procedure of ending my baby’s life. I cannot describe how I felt while listening and signing the necessary consent papers. I walked out in a state of shock, but I didn’t know that I had any other choice.

 

I didn’t have anyone to tell me there was another way. I didn’t have a letter like this to help me know that what I was about to do would haunt me for the rest of my life.

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I was conflicted to my core. I could barely comprehend the decision before me. While I was grateful to my grandfather for extending his saving hand to me, I also felt like he was sending me to the front line of a war.

 

I went through with the abortion. The clinic arranged a hotel and dropped me off to recover for the next three days. I was alone and numb.

 

Here’s what they didn’t tell me at the clinic. They didn’t tell me that I would experience horrific, PTSD-like nightmares for the next five years. They didn’t tell me that 11 years later, I would cry to sleep for three years while battling to get pregnant again. They didn’t tell me about the shame. They didn’t tell me that whenever I heard about a murderer on the news, I would feel like I was just as awful as them. They didn’t tell me about the ache in my heart that would come after I had a child, realizing what I had missed with my baby in heaven.

 

For nearly 20 years, I felt like a soldier who had returned from a war zone.  If only there had been a Village of Hope for me back then.

 

But like every testimony, my story doesn’t end there. After my marriage ended in my 30's, I raised my daughter as a single mom. I am here to tell you that God kept His promise never to leave me or forsake me. He kept His promise to provide for us.

 

It wasn’t easy, but as I assure you, raising my daughter alone was MUCH easier than living with my alternate decision at 21. I could face anything in this world when I looked at her face and stayed close to the Lord.

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God has walked with me every step of the way and proved Himself faithful repeatedly.

 

So this brings me back to the decision before you. Ultimately, it is your decision but hopefully, after reading this, you have a different perspective of “easier.”

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I pray that you can see that there is a different “relief” available to you.

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Mama, God will keep his promises to you too.

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The opportunity for me to share my story with YOU is God’s fulfillment of the promise He made to both of us in Jeremiah 29:11  “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”