I attended an “Entering Canaan “ Day of Prayer & Healing somewhat reluctantly, intending to be non-committal and totally silent.  I tried to feel isolated and alone, the way I usually feel every day no matter how many people are around me.  I wanted to hold on to my self-hatred – but I couldn’t.

Here were women from all different backgrounds, different walks of life -- maybe wealthy, maybe not-so wealthy; young, middle-aged, old; women of Italian descent, Irish descent, Scottish descent, Dominican, Latino -- women who would never have come together for any other purpose, except for the one thing we all have in common.
 

The circumstances of our personal tragedies were all different, but the results were all the same – at some point in our lives, we made a terrible choice.  Not necessarily because we wanted to, but because we could.  And the world said it was OK.  The world said it was safe, good and even legal to have our child, or children, brutally killed in the very place where they should have been the most safe – in the protection of our own wombs.  I was among people I didn’t need to hide from, people I couldn’t have hidden from even I wanted to.  Here in this room in a convent in the Bronx, I was with my sisters.

We all spoke, we all shared our individual stories, and I understood at a deep, unspeakable level the anguish of each woman.  And I knew at that same level that my own anguish was understood and accepted.  No one blamed others for their actions even though others were involved, no one tried to relinquish their own responsibility or culpability in the choices they had made, and no one made even a small attempt to feebly justify their actions.  I was surprised to learn that many of us even share the same theme in our dreams, or rather our nightmares – Satan, the devil, the beast, a monster – chasing us relentlessly, trying to catch us, trying to hurt us in some ugly, horrible way.

No one held back – it almost seemed easy, as if we had all discussed this openly before.  But we hadn’t.  One woman had been suffering silently for 30 years, another for 28 years, yet another for 16.  Many women were young, and would be able to have other children later in their lives.  Several had already gone on to give birth to other children. A few of us aborted the only children we will ever conceive.

I attended this event expecting to remain silent.  I expected that nothing could change the way I feel about myself and that silence was my only recourse. 

I did not expect to come away with Hope.  And yet today, that is what I have.                        
Barbara A