Abortion Teaches Us to Let Go Like the Trees of Fall
If we are to survive as a species, human beings are going to have to accept that our bodies and the body of the Earth are one and the same. We must engage consciously with the life cycles—the coming into being and going away of life through death—and respect those individuals who are put in the position of making direct decisions about that in specific situations. Life Choices, p. 80 Every fall I am struck by the dying process evident in all of nature. It’s right in front of our eyes at this time of year. Fall is the perfect time to enter into an appreciation of death in life. Where I live the drama is most evident with the turning of the aspen. Quaking aspen proliferate in the mountains near Boulder. They are found on the slopes above 8,000 feet mixed in swaths with the powerful, prolific pines. You can take in the view along the Peak to Peak highway between Nederland and Ward, two small mountain towns about a half hour from Boulder. The trees announce their dying in spectacular splashes of gold. It’s captivating and we stand in awe no matter how many times we’ve seen it over all the years. I love these trees. I also love the way most women make choices about pregnancy; and choices about their lives in general; the way we carefully and deliberately let go of parts of ourselves that no longer serve in order to grow into ourselves anew. Like the trees in fall. Like everything in life really. The dying gives us our living and it is beautiful. When a woman makes a choice to end a pregnancy by having an abortion, she engages with the part of her consciousness that knows the importance of letting go. Sometimes it is difficult and emotionally painful, which is one difference between us and the trees. But, once a woman learns she can stand tall, she is able to step into a sturdier ability to let go more easily. This might happen right away, but sometimes it takes years for a woman to find her confidence and self-respect and to heal from distressing circumstances. Every woman has the potential to face down her fear and doubt and come to peace with abortion. Paying attention to more than human nature can accelerate healing. Go to the earth. Hang out with the trees, especially now during the time of changing colors. Let earth help you find the serenity you seek. If abortion is part of your current field of experience, let nature heal and guide you. The love and comfort you need is available for the asking. All you need to do is open to it. ~ ~ ~ It’s been a year since Life Choices came into the world and I moved into life as a published author. I trust that the book is finding its way into the hands of those for whom it is interesting and healing. However, there is no way for me to know for sure. I still need help and support from you to let people know about it. For example, you could check your local public and university libraries to see if it’s there and if it’s not, ask them to order it. The same with local bookstores, women’s health clinics, and women’s studies departments. You could invite me to participate in a discussion with your book group; or, to give a talk and/or webinar to your class or community organization. It’s not to late to write a review for Amazon or Barnes & Noble online,...
Read MoreThe 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...
Read MoreThe Book Tour, The Conversation, and Vital Services
We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. These words are from Molly Ivins, quoted today at RH Reality Check from Ivins’s last column before she passed away. They can easily be applied to the current contraception conflicts. Hmm… something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. There’s this week’s Doonesbury cartoon strip, thank you, Gary Trudeau. There’s a bill pending in the Ohio state legislature requiring men to have sex counseling before they can have a prescription for Viagra. And more, I’m sure. The lampooning is great. It’s good to laugh, and it helps people to see more clearly. However, the painful consequences of repressive politics are taking their toll among women and families across the country. The latest is in Texas where 130,000 women are losing their reproductive health services at the hands of the state government. So much for less government intrusion in our lives! I’m not in Texas. I’m in Oregon. I was in California last week. I’ll be in Washington State in a few days. I’m on a book tour for Life Choices. It’s going well. The talks at the bookstores have been attended well. I’ll be at In Other Words in Portland tomorrow at 5 p.m. The whole tour schedule is here. This morning I had breakfast with Shelly, the director of Backline. This indispensable pregnancy options hotline provides non-judgmental counseling at 1-888-493-0092. Shelly and I had a meaningful exchange about the root causes of crisis pregnancies and the terrible bind many women are in with regard to having safe support from society for their reproductive choices whether these are pregnancy, parenting, abortion, or adoption. The stress on the vital volunteers at Backline is more difficult in the current political climate. The same is true for the dedicated volunteers at Exhale, a post-abortion hotline at 1-866-439-4253. While in the Bay Area last week, I met over lunch with Exhale’s founder and director, Aspen Baker, who started the organization ten years ago with the unique mission to build a pro-voice community to change the culture so that it is more supportive and respectful of the experience of abortion. On March 3 in Oakland, I attended a training sponsored by The Abortion Conversation Project, an inspiring group I urge you to know about and support. ACP is in the midst of an in depth re-envisioning process. See their mission and vision here. In Ashland, I enjoyed not one, but three gatherings, the first of which was the monthly meeting of the local chapter of the American Association of University Women, and participated in a good exchange about social policy issues including reproductive choice. Lots of good people in that town. What sort of conversation do we want to have about women’s health issues? Certainly not the one that isolates and stigmatizes the abortion choice or one that demeans and demoralizes women for choosing to be parents when they are poor—double pressures that reflect the judgments and fears that prevail in certain sectors of society. Damned if we do and damned if we don’t. This is the way a patriarchal, class society maintains power over people. Not everyone sees it this way of course, which just shows how important it is to have open discussion if we are to achieve our goals. In Life Choices I talk about how legal abortion and the rise of women’s reproductive freedom is one of the main vehicles that will help society evolve...
Read MorePerspective About Abortion is Important
If Life Choices is about nothing else, it is about perspective, and perspective about abortion is important. Women are caught in the crossfire of the currently overheated abortion wars. An epidemic of distorted legislation is spreading across the country in the form of bills that would give “personhood” to the fertilized egg in pregnancy, and more proposals that violate women’s bodily integrity by requiring ultrasounds for anyone requesting an abortion. The patriarchy is alive and well and still living in America. Forced motherhood has been the way of of patriarchy and dogmatic patriarchal religion for the millennia. It is the main way women have been subordinated to men throughout history. Remember how it was not very long ago. Margaret Sanger and others who spent their lives ensuring the health and safety of women and children had to struggle hard. They were steadfast and courageous. Their work is not yet done. Feminism, too, is alive and well, and growing. If the women’s movement (around the world) stands for nothing else, it stands for the freedom of women to choose whether to have sex, whether to become pregnant, and whether to have a baby, or not. What I’m offering is a deep, earth-oriented perspective. Women have been the arbiters of human life on earth as long as there have been humans. Earth is where we live and what we are, and it is through our bodies, the body of Earth, that life renews itself. Renewal comes through life dying into and giving birth to itself, which includes women’s choices to turn back some pregnancies. Renewal and growth occur on all levels—physical, psychological, mental, and spiritual. Human consciousness is by its nature a consciousness of choice because it is a consciousness of awareness and responsibility. The intrinsic power of women to mediate between life and death is a defining aspect of Earth’s way of balancing life. Abortion helps us learn both individually and collectively how to care consciously for the Earth and All Life. Each of the above ideas is part of a holistic perspective about pregnancy choice making. I will share these concepts and more during the Life Choices west coast tour in March. I’ll be in San Francisco at Modern Times Bookstore, Ukiah for private meetings, Ashland at Bloomsbury Books, Portland at In Other Words, Seattle at Elliot Bay Book Company, and Bellingham at Village Books. Click here for more...
Read MoreAbortion Healing, Feminism, and the Earth
I’ve heard from a good number of women and men since Life Choices came out in September. Sometimes it’s about their own abortion healing, and sometimes it’s about their desire for more depth, clarity, and kindness in the public dialogue about abortion. Everyone I speak with expresses alarm and sometimes disgust about the current political battles around abortion. It’s all I can do not to be upended by the severe antipathy of the political debate.There is an urgent need for us to once again fervently and courageously hold our ground. The big lesson is about trusting our own voices. It’s about not being manipulated by people, especially people in power, who claim to have our best interests at heart but who really don’t care at all about our lives. Our real lives I mean, and the real life of our planet. The attack being waged against women is nasty and ferocious, and led by narrow thinking, usually ignorant, mostly male legislators trying to turn back the most basic of services that provide safety and good health to women. And how are they doing it? By hollering about abortion, as if abortion were the worst thing in the world. By speaking of abortion as a life taker when it is really a life giver. By lying about the real lives of women and men. By playing on the fear and embarrassment most people feel about anything related to sex. And worst of all, by pretending they care about women, which they do not, because if they did, they would know not to wipe out services that are essential to the well being of women and their families. The current situation can make you a feminist in an instant. There’s no getting around it. In April, Terry Tempest Williams (one of my favorite authors), felt called to write about the furious attack on our health options. What is good for women is good for humanity. The world’s population is rising as the earth’s resources are being depleted. This is the conversation we need to engage. Tending to women’s reproductive health is tending to the health of the planet. I was on the radio the other day being interviewed about abortion healing and the ideas in Life Choices. The wonderful people at KGNU, our local community radio station, were passionate, intelligent, committed, and supportive. I’m grateful. I’ll do a book talk and signing at the Tattered Cover (Colfax Store) in Denver on Friday, November 4, 7:30 p.m. What a time this is to be re-entering the...
Read MoreA Special Thank You
Today is the birthday of my dear friend and spiritual teacher, David LaChapelle (Oct. 8, 1952-July 21, 2009). David served the world through deep heart teachings and an extraordinary ability to perceive psychological, spiritual, and scientific—especially ecological—phenomena, often simultaneously. The result was an intriguing mix of usually separated truths joined with a poetic sensibility when he spoke or wrote. He linked everything, whether it was the most exquisitely personal piece of daily life or a grand scientific theory. He pointed the way forward to a more unified way of living on the earth. David saw through a lens of layered perception and a direct intuitive line to the All. He mirrored those of us who knew him with an accuracy that allowed us to melt into ourselves and surrender to our soul’s mission. He did it all with an unremitting love of each individual’s essence and the essence of the world. In Navigating the Tides of Change David wrote about how “accelerated change is pushing us to a new understanding of our role upon the planet.” Much of this understanding is about learning to care for the planet and for ourselves with our hearts open. In my book, Life Choices, I bring some of what I learned with David to issues that are intimately female but that effect everyone. I thank him for the support and love he gave to help me to go my own way and pursue the rightness of my path. Happy Birthday, David! On another note, I am touched by the many emails and other words of support that are coming in for Life Choices. Here are some upcoming events: I’ll be interviewed on Boulder’s KGNU radio station – Friday, October 21, 8:30-9:30 a.m. I will sell books at a benefit show for Boulder Valley Women’s Health Center – Saturday, October 22, 8 p.m. at Boulder Theater. I’ll be at Tattered Cover (Colfax store) for a book talk and signing on FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 7:30 p.m. Please join me! Please make a comment below if you feel so moved. I would love to hear from...
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