What’s life like day 1-7 after an abortion? With the tremendous support and response from my first episode of my podcast ‘My Abortion I Had Yesterday’, I decided to continue documenting my healing journey.
If you’re interested in my decision process around my abortion, pro-life vs. pro-choice, and the mental health what ifs, emotions, relief, regrets, depression, and guilt following my abortion…then this blog post and podcast episode is for you.
This blog post is inspired by and an extension of my podcast found here. Please follow to keep up with my journey. Please follow to keep up with my journey.
Come into my world, as I bring you through my journey of the week after my abortion, healing, battling with the decision, going through depression, feeling both regret and relief.
It’s been a roller coaster of a week for me. While I had a lot of support prior to my abortion, the tremendous supportive response from all the chakra warriors made me feel relief, support, and loved, following my procedure, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for easing my struggles and grieving immediately after my abortion.
Time seems to stand still, as I go through this journey. I’m allowing you to peek into my life during this journey in hopes this will also help bring self-awareness to you, answers, understanding of what the journey is like, and what the process of accepting your decisions looks like.
The day I came back from the hospital, my sister spent the night with me. Day one was not that bad, because the anaesthetic was still in my body and it hadn’t responded to the loss of a baby yet. It was a very sleepy day. I didn’t really have too much time to think or feel that day. My sister was monitoring me, because they get worried about blood clots. She slept over, and she made it a very supportive, happy day, with lots of food.
It was the second night and onward for the rest of the week, when I was alone that was really really hard. I literally cried out loud for five nights in a row. While my hormones were levelling out, I went into depression again. It was the same feeling as my deep depression prior to the abortion, so I was really worried and scared I was headed into that state again. What if I didn’t come out of my depression this time?
Nights were the hardest, when things really hit me and I was alone the most with my thoughts. My pain would get worse at night thus making me more emotional. The physical pain is so connected to the emotional pain with an abortion, and I could really feel the absence of the baby from my body. Of course my ego and fear tried to bring me into the what if’s and did I make the right decision states. The disappointment in myself set in fiercely at night. I would be hard on myself for not having my life together at my age, while questioning my self worth on whether I was deserving of a really good relationship. It was a boohoo pity party for me at night causing the spiralling of negative emotions and depression.
I cannot explain how much the physical pain was connected to my emotions; the more emotional I got the more physically painful things got, and the the more pain I had the more emotional I got. This experience has made me feel more connected, empathetic, and less judgmental of all women around the world in any situation. I even have more empathy for the pro-life movement despite being a pro-choicer. My deeper feeling of connection with every woman in the world brings me to answering why did I go public with my story.
I had a really shitty December and January leading up to the abortion. It was hard to decide to tell this extremely personal story, although everyone sees me as a person who tells the truth and shares all the time. This journey was different, because it really didn’t make me look good, and I feared my business would suffer coming out with the truth. I couldn’t live a lie anymore. I was done pretending, so telling the story became part of my healing journey.
I didn’t expect what happened next. Once I shared my journey, I got a tremendous supportive response from my following of men and women, and women started reaching out sharing their abortion story with me finally feeling liberated of their secret. I was surprised, because I didn’t get a lot of negative backlash at first – just support with people private messaging me. I felt so blessed that some of the people who were pro-life who I had talked to prior actually reached out saying they supported me after hearing my whole story.
This brings me to one of my main points about pro-life and pro-choice. I’ve always been pro-choice, but before I had my abortion I didn’t fully understand emotionally everything behind an abortion and all the moving parts behind pro-life and pro-choice. After my abortion, I developed a real understanding of where pro-lifers were coming from, because the procedure I went through was terrible and nobody wants to kill a baby.
I think after going through that, I really felt both sides – the pro-life and the pro-choice, and I’ve been asked, did I tell my story in order to break down the taboo of having an abortion?
It really wasn’t my intent initially. My intention was actually to get people to really see the raw me. It was time for me to tell the truth, for people to get something from my journey, learn, support women who go through this journey, and also support all of us who have a hard decision to make. I wanted to connect everyone, have them understand what I was going through, and hopefully they could relate it back to their journey. I suppose this will in time help release the taboo, because I’m hoping for people to understand me, a pro-choicer, in the way I now understand pro-lifers more.
I feel we really need to get rid of the us vs. them mentality – the pro-lifers versus the pro-choicers. We need to come to a shared understanding about the human experience. I did not understand how big an abortion was until I went through it. Hence now why I understand the pro-lifers, but this isn’t a black and white thing. This is a place, where us as humans don’t need to fight each other. Can we find the understanding, the non judgment, and the empathy on both sides? I just think, when it comes to protesting each other, fighting doesn’t work. Yes, I believe in choice. Yes, I believe in women’s rights. I’m so thankful that I had the choice, but there’s no need to completely obliterate anyone for their beliefs or their choices. I am okay with pro-life people, and I have an understanding of where they’re coming from.
I went public to bring more understanding between us and our situations, and everyone experiences their situation differently. I came across a post on IG claiming women don’t undergo psychological stress and feel relief after an abortion. This triggered me even as a pro-choice person. I definitely had psychological stress after my abortion, grieving, and depression. I also went through a lot of psychological stress in making the decision. I did also feel relieved after the procedure, but I still grieved the loss, turned over the what-ifs in my mind, and went through the hormones. Yes we may feel relieved, but we still go through an array of emotions around this.
It’s funny how people think it’s one way or the other – you have an abortion and you’re either so relieved or you regret it. I’m sorry that’s not how emotions always work. I used to think that too, and you can feel relieved, while still grieving the loss of a child.
Before I close this blog, I also want to talk about the what-ifs. You get what-ifs with a lot of major decisions you have to make. In my first blog post, I said it’s very important to make a decision and not go into the hypothetical “what ifs,” because your ego and fear will run amok. I had to really keep this in check, but the haters didn’t keep it in check…
I received an email stating, “what if your child would have been a world leader, or what if your mom would have aborted you?”
My reply to that email was “Thank you, you might be right. Thank you for sharing your opinion. Blessings.”
…Because he might be right. You know what else might be right? Yes my child could have been a world leader. He could have took on the world. That would be great, and and yes, my mom actually could have aborted me…
…but guess what? She didn’t, and I won’t know if that child would have been a world leader. My child also could have been a child molester that ended up in jail.
It’s a common pro-life argument…what if. I’d like to add the following…
What if I would have died in childbirth? What if the baby would have never lived to term?
What if, what if, what if? I don’t think the what-ifs anymore. Dwelling on your decisions and wondering what if…is an ego and fear game. Allowing your ego to create an illusory reality that doesn’t actually exist should you have taken the other path…will always keep you stuck. Stuck from moving forward and trapped in guilt, fear, regret, and disappointment. You’ll never truly live.
The pro-lifers say to me:
What if your baby would have been a great world leader?
What if your mom would have aborted you?
What if you would have had the baby?
What if you would have considered adoption?
I’m here to tell you that the ego will create whatever it wants in your head to make you think the other choice would have been way better. The ego creates whatever scenario it wants, when, in reality, you know it wouldn’t have been like that. Yet you sit in regret.
I’m begging you now. Please celebrate your decisions by moving deeper into your chosen path, and accept the successes and consequences of your choice.
It was the right choice, and you can’t turn back time, so just move forward from here. Accept and make new choices to align with the life you want. Please be gentle on yourself, or the what if’s will eat you alive.
I got an abortion, so these what if’s didn’t happen, so I move forward from here. Let’s move forward together.
Blessings,
XoXo
Brittany
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