The Beauty of Counseling

Underneath the many valid reasons for having an abortion—reasons prompted by necessity and life circumstances—is the pulsing of a new way of being in our lives, a way based on self-respect, autonomy, safety, and equality. 

— Life Choices (p.11)

The word that best sums up what I see in my counseling work is beauty. The beauty of…

— engaging in self examination

— acting in one’s own interest in spite of being afraid

— releasing fear of judgment and punishment

— courageously exploring self-limiting ways of being

— changing, transforming, and becoming empowered

For some women, having an abortion is the catalyst that turns them towards themselves in ways they have never experienced before. A crisis pregnancy can give rise to the need to entirely re-organize the way a woman is living her life. She finds herself needing to question and come to terms with her relationships, her life direction, and the way she sees herself.

Why?

Because, in the process of turning back a pregnancy there is a convergence of natural forces that opens doors of perception, feeling, and belief. The forces are like those that gather under the earth and move in concert to push a seedling through the ground and up into the light where it can flower in the warmth of the sun, balance in the fluctuations of wind and rain, and come into the fullness of its own being.

Each of us is the same as a seedling, though our consciousness is different. Each of us is moved by natural forces to make decisions in our lives that support the fullness of growing into who we really are. The ground from which we push up towards the sky is the darkness of our origination. Our origination is all that we were born from and with, plus the experiences we have accumulated over the course of our lives.

These psychological developments occur with many significant life events, but there is something about the work women do around their abortion experiences that is fascinating and phenomenal. It’s worth honoring. It’s the reason I wrote Life Choices. I’d love to hear your thoughts about this. You can comment by clicking on the title of this post, or, if you prefer, just send me an email.