Sibling witness

Healing the wound of abortion has been, in many ways, the central spiritual
task of my life. The conviction that my youngest sibling was a living,
beloved human being would not let me go – even in my adolescence and
college years, when I subsumed my grief and fear in affirming my parents’
pro-choice beliefs and attempting to secure their approval, love, and
protection, which had been denied to my sibling.

The abortion happened when I was in second grade. I was already the eldest
of four siblings; my parents were sunk in the turmoil of a young couple
facing strained finances, crushing responsibilities, and limited family
support. I wasn’t supposed to know about the abortion, but I overheard
family conversations that piqued my suspicions.

When I was 11-years-old, I asked my mom if she had ever thought about
having an abortion. She very gently and honestly said, “Yes.” We were in
the kitchen. I remember I had to leave the room. When I was away from my
mom, my feet fell out from under me. I began sobbing silently and
uncontrollably. I loved my three living siblings with my whole life; in
many ways, my identity centered on them. I could not understand why my mom
would assume that I might not love my aborted sibling just as much.

In the pre-internet days of my late childhood and early adolescence, I
scoured the library for books about abortion: pro and con; clinical
studies; confessions of women who lauded or regretted their own choices to
abort their children. I remember searching urgently through these books for
some hint that my grief and anguish for my lost sibling were not strange or
unfounded. I can see in my mind the two brief paragraphs in one book that
described siblings’ “survivor guilt” – but the commentary was limited and
gave no indication that this was a common reaction, or that there was
anything to be done about it. I assumed my pain was an anomaly. It was not
until my I read Toni Morrison’s novel *Beloved* that I encountered a very
personal story of a girl haunted by a baby sibling who died at their own
mother’s desperate, grieving hands.

Years later, a good friend told me she had heard about “sibling survivor”
retreats, and I was viscerally relieved to know that there was a name to
describe people like me, and that these people had the courage to grieve
and receive God’s healing for the loss of their aborted siblings. But I
wasn’t brave enough to seek out the retreat. Doing so would have required
me to face the fact that my grief was powerful enough to estrange me from
my family members, who, when my sadness rose to the surface, continually
said to me: “Why does the abortion matter so much to you? You weren’t the
one who had the abortion. It wasn’t your choice.”

Facing my grief’s power meant facing the fact that I, like my aborted
sibling, was vulnerable to my parents and family—not vulnerable to the
point of physical death, but vulnerable to the point of rejection on the
grounds of my obstinate obsession.

The Lumina(entering Canaan) Sibling Survivor Retreat was a turning point in my life. The
day’s gentle, intent pace; Eucharistic focus, and intimate setting allowed
time to stop and expand, encompassing both the pain of the past and hope
for the future. Father Conrad and Theresa stewarded us with very gentle
paternal and maternal care: a beautiful counterpoint to the gender enmity
that spurred the abortions in our families. It was so strange and deeply
comforting to be in a place where the central spiritual wound of my life
was acknowledged and soothed, not idolized but transformed through a call
to acceptance, forgiveness, healing, and celebration of my youngest
sibling’s brief life on earth and eternal life in Heaven, where she or he
now intercedes before the face of God for the healing of my whole family.

Now I know that this wound I bear is becoming like Christ’s wounds: welling
up with God’s love so that everyone – my mother, father, all my siblings,
and the generations before and after us – may be drawn to Him.

–by A