To forgive means to be able to see the humanity of the other. Distorted at times. Discoloured at times. Disfigured at times, but still humanity. To forgive truly someone who has wronged does not mean that what was done was acceptable or should go unpunished but rather to cut the chords which keep on binding the wounded one with the one who has wounded. It is these toxic ties, which continue to re wound. The chords can be cut using more violence or by forgiveness. Violence adds to the wounds a new dimension of pain. Forgiveness says “no more. You have no more power over me. You cannot harm me again” but refrains from hurting the other. Again this adds to the dimension of humanity of both the victim, and the perpetrator.
That’s why forgiveness is healing especially to the wounded. Compassion and forgiveness means sharing with another their load, walking alongside, so that humanly speaking the load is lightened. The prisoner chained in pain is still a human person, in pain, and chained, but who still needs bandaging.
Remembering that a post abortive woman/man will suffer from lack of self-esteem self-value. This woman suffers deeply from her own dislike of herself. She has placed a barrier, which between herself and everyone else. She has a sense of having “lost” herself. Her deep belief that she is not worthy of living or of being helped. At times even her own self lacerating comments “I have killed my baby…I am a murderer I don’t deserve anything” are a sign of her deep trauma and deep unforgiveness.
There is a need for this hurting woman to “disappear” to a “safe place” (mentally) when life’s difficulties arise and in that place she cannot see her life experience. Her compulsive need to wash her hands (sense of feeling guilty and dirty) and her lips (because she agreed and said YES to the abortion) and for cleanliness or alternatively to live in squalor, these need to be recognised as signs that she cannot forgive herself and needs help in this area of her life. There is a “stuck ness” filled with pain which refuses to release her from her decision to abort and take that next step towards forgiveness and healing.
To begin to forgive herself not only so that she can begin to “love” again who she is but so that eventually she can begin to forgive others who “forced” “encouraged” “urged” “made” her have the abortion which has changed her life. Even the medical profession who may have first suggested the idea and then who carried out the procedure. After an abortion there is always a loss of respect for mental health and medical profession who “didn’t care for me, but hurried me to make a decision.”
Over time much has to be spoken about and explored and forgiven and then let go. Many losses discussed and wept over and then let go. Loss of security. Loss of normal life without abortion in the history. Loss of sense of femininity. Loss of confidence in idea of mothering and loss of motherhood. Loss of place in family where others have had children and are lauded for presenting grandchildren. Loss of being with friends who are pregnant and sharing pregnancies and experiences…many losses.
But most importantly helping the post abortive woman to see herself as good person beginning from when she was a child. To see that little girl, who continued to make progress and grow, and that the abortion, terrible as it was, has given her a new but different opportunity at life. An opportunity to begin again but as a different person (a mother of an infant who has died and the kind of suffering this has brought) because now she has known suffering and loss as only a parent can know, and has come through it, not without scars, but different because of her suffering.
She cannot go back to a time pre abortion, but she can continue on life’s journey in another way, but an equally good way. The Way of forgiveness. The Way of Jesus who has shown her forgiveness. The Face of Mercy.
Anne Lastman
Clinical Counsellor
Victims of Abortion (Australia
