Reclaiming Our Children

The Gift of Imperfection

One of the things you hear over and over again in the post abortion ministry from those who have aborted their children is, “I cannot believe I did this.” They are tortured by the fact that they have participated in the deaths of their own children, and they deny that fact to themselves and others. “How could I have done this?” “I paid for them to kill my child!”When the harsh truth sets in, and the confusion is gone, it is almost too much to bear. It is heartbreaking. 

Today, we live in a society that wants to obliterate human imperfection. We act shocked if we fail at something, or fall short of a goal. We cover up truths, and brag about achievements as if these things define us. We attempt to control every aspect of our lives, in a sense, to be our own “gods.” This sad reality extends to society’s destructive attitude toward unborn children, whether they are “perfect” or not.

Lately, we have begun to hear more and more from a population of couples who aborted their “wanted” unborn child because of some perceived deficiency. More and more, doctors not only seem to encourage abortion, but are blatantly suggesting to parents that it would be selfish to give life to their children.

Turning the truth on its head, many are now calling infanticide a “compassionate” solution. What a loss to our society! The call to grow in love that these children would have brought to their families is being wiped away by this false sense of perfection. The love which is there to be given and received, is denied as we are encouraged to become more self centered.

As post abortive women and men move closer to being healed, they become capable of recognizing their own imperfections. They can accept the fact that they rejected the precious gift of life. But they also come to know that Jesus can transform their sense of deep loss. God’s perfection is finally acknowledged, and also His ability to bring good out of misery.

In His immense mercy, Jesus uses the very children who were aborted as the holy means to bring their parents and others to Him. Yes, God uses even our worst sins to help us. Imperfection can actually become a gift, knowing that all good comes from Him, and that without Him we are capable of doing so much harm.

May each suffering couple be healed by this love and united with their children in heaven, the only place where true perfection exists.

TB 2007

For more information on abortion because of an adverse prenatal diagnosis - please click here.

There is hope.  There is healing. 

 

 

A Song of Hope

My family has a generation-spanning commitment to social justice.  My grandmother was a leader of the American Civil Rights Congress, an early champion of the rights of Black Americans.  Her friend, Paul Robeson, toured on behalf of the Congress in 1949, the occasion for the infamous Peekskill riots.

As a committed Catholic girl opposed to violence, I joined the War Resisters League at the age of twelve.  As a teen, I spoke at nuclear disarmament rallies.  At the same age, I began exploring the gift of my singing voice, which would lead me to an international performing career, and ultimately to the D.M.A. program in Voice at the Graduate Center.

Steeped in the spirit of progressive activism, and convinced that abortion rights were the cornerstone of women’s rights, when faced with a crisis pregnancy in my twenties, I chose to abort.  I believed it was my body, my choice; that abortion was my only viable option without a committed partner; and that it was a grim but necessary reality in our times, when compromise with evil seemed an unavoidable mark of maturity.  I believed that once it was over, I would go on with my life, perhaps somewhat diminished, but essentially the same.

I didn’t realize how devastating the choice to abort would be, nor the effect it would have on my life.  The women’s movement did not speak to the issues attending abortion; issues of profound loss and grief regardless of where a woman stands on abortion politics.  Young women were expected to be grateful to our foremothers, who strove for our right to legal abortion.  But now that the right had been won, abortion’s human consequences were forgotten. I began to question the idea that abortion rights and women’s rights were synonymous.  I was a member of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, and some of my acquaintances in the abolition movement accepted abortion as a necessary evil.  I wondered how we, who decried violence, could condone the violence of abortion.  True feminism, I believed, would not sanction violence as a means of problem solving. The early feminists agreed.  Sarah Norton, the first woman to attend Cornell University, wrote in 1870 of her hope for a day when an unmarried mother will not be despised and the right of the unborn to be born will not be denied or interfered with. Elizabeth Cady Stanton concurred:  “When we consider that women have been treated as property, it is degrading . . . that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”

Informed by my deepening Catholic faith, I now base my social commitment on the commitment to life, the true foundation of human rights.  I was fortunate to find the group Feminists for Life, a strong advocate for women and children.  I have received healing from my own loss through the Sisters of Life, an order of nuns founded by Cardinal O’Connor and Theresa Bonopartis who works with them in their “Entering Canaan” ministry for post abortive women and men.  I am also working with Therese Schroeder-Sheker, the renowned pioneer of Music-Thanatology, on the use of music in post-abortion healing. While my work as a singer cannot engage the political debate surrounding abortion, my cherished desire is to use my singing to bring hope and healing to other women.  For my pain, I have received great healing, and from my sorrow, great hope; I now want to share these gifts with others.  JG

************
Are you living in darkness and depression after an abortion?
Unable to get past the pain of your loss?
There is Hope.  There is Healing.  There is a way out of the darkness.
Email us at [email protected]
Call us at 1-877-586-4621 or 1-718-881-8008

More Graces Than Asked

I've been doing some research for a project I am working on weekends and came across this article from The Divine Mercy Publication in 2007.  It is a great reminder of the amazing mercy of God!

'More Graces Than Asked'
Former 'Tormented Soul' Tends to Those Who Need Mercy Most
Marian Tascio, a writer and English teacher who lives in Yonkers, N.Y.

"Jesus, I trust in You. Jesus, I trust in You. Jesus, I trust in You..."

She didn't know how many hours had passed or how many times she'd repeated that one-sentence prayer that was all the hope she had left. She crouched on the bathroom floor with her hands over her head and the door shut so that she wouldn't wake her two young sons. They shouldn't have to see their mother crying again.

God was merciful. He loved her. That's what the priest had told her, and she had taken him at his word. She'd confessed the sin that had haunted her for so many years. And God had forgiven her; she believed that. But she hadn't forgiven herself. It seemed impossible.

Yet for months she had prayed before the Blessed Sacrament like Jacob wrestling all night with God. "I'm not leaving You alone until You heal me," she had told Jesus, clinging to Him as persistently as her shame clung to her. "They say You can do this. They say that You're faithful. I'm not leaving You alone until You heal me." Now, in the middle of a dark night — literally and spiritually — she called on Jesus with all her strength. He was the only One who could help her.

Years later, while giving her witness at Most Holy Trinity Church in Mamaroneck, N.Y., Theresa Bonopartis recalled that night when she had cried out to The Divine Mercy and He had answered.

"I was in such excruciating pain ... and ... my mantra for the entire time [was] Jesus, I trust in You," she said, "And ... at some point in the middle of the night, I felt like I had climbed on the cross with Christ ... I just surrendered myself ... And as soon as I had that surrender, rather than feeling the pain of the cross, I felt an intense love sweeping over me, because that's the only place where there is enough love to heal the wound of abortion."

I met Theresa, who now works full-time in post-abortion ministries at Our Lady of New York, a former Sisters of Life convent in the Bronx where Theresa and the sisters welcome post-abortive women, men and couples for days and weekends of prayer and healing. The first thing Theresa showed me was the chapel, where a large copy of The Divine Mercy image rested against the altar. "It's always there," she said, beaming.

The image had been donated during the first year of Entering Canaan, the post-abortion retreats Theresa conducts with the Sisters of Life. Canaan was the land promised to the Israelites, which they reached after 40 years of wandering in the desert. It's a fitting name for a retreat that helps women and men to emerge from the desert of post-abortion agony and find their way into God's arms again. The Divine Mercy image watches over the retreats and reminds the weary travelers Who is shepherding them on their journey while also watching the road, eager to welcome them home.

Theresa makes Divine Mercy central to the retreats because it was central to her own healing from the abortion she was pressured into having as a teenager. She knows from experience that without trust in God's mercy, post-abortive souls can't escape from the darkness that grips them. Theresa tries to help post-abortive women face their sin so they can begin to recover from the effects of it.

"You can't really do that without knowing God's love for you," she says. "It's too terrible otherwise."

Theresa doesn't play along when women attempt to minimize or rationalize their abortions or to imagine that they can make up for them somehow. She urges them to acknowledge their sin and to understand that they can never do anything to take away the horror of what they've done. The good news, she hastens to emphasize, is that they don't have to. When Christ died on the cross, He made up for every sin, even abortion.

Acknowledging their sin helps the women seek forgiveness from God, themselves and their babies, to whom they are invited to give a name that they can write in the Immaculate Heart of Mary book on the altar. It also enables them to have compassion for the parents, doctors or partners who may have coerced them into the abortion and for people who have judged or condemned them.

"To really know ... that you're capable of anything ... makes you more merciful," Theresa explains.

When Theresa tells her story, she always closes with these words our Lord spoke to St. Faustina, the Apostle of Divine Mercy:

Let the greatest sinners place their trust in My mercy. They have the right before others to trust in the abyss of My mercy. My daughter, write about My mercy towards tormented souls. Souls that make an appeal to My mercy delight Me. To such souls I grant even more graces than asked (Diary of St. Faustina, 1146).

Theresa prays that all of the "tormented souls" who attend Entering Canaan retreats will learn to trust in God's love as she did.

"Abortion is what brings people in, but ultimately it's about God's mercy," she says.

To Everything There is A Season

To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven:
 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant,
and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace,
and a time to refrain from embracing;
 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

Today we live in a “quick fix” society. Somehow we have gotten to the point that even when sad things happen, we are not allowed to mourn. We have an endless supply of drugs made to cover up our emotions, and many people believe there is something wrong with them if they feel anything but happy. It is as if there are acceptable and unacceptable emotions.

I have heard many people, some in my own family, speak about how they do not want to be a “burden” to their children when they get old. We complain about the self centeredness of the younger generations and yet our society seems to promote this idea of being a burden. We have taken away the opportunity to learn and grow in love through self sacrifice, instead creating a “if it feels good do it” mentality.

In the case of abortion, many women have run far from their feelings, partly because of their own denial and partly because no one wants to speak of it.  I often describe it as the elephant in the living room that everyone is pretending does not exist. We fight against our “negative” emotions as if we were waging a war, and yet, the happiness we seek, in spite of our best efforts, often evades us because we do not allow ourselves to feel pain.  We want the joy of love, but we do not push ourselves to grow in love, even when it is painful. We have lost a sense of commitment, through the good times and the bad. We have lost a sense of being fully human with all of our emotions. We are lonely and sad many times because we do not allow ourselves to feel our sadness and so get stuck having no affect at all.

As Ecclesiastes tells us, “to everything there is a season…a time to weep, a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance…”  As we enter the summer season may we allow our emotions to be felt, then we will be free to feel the joy of new life within our souls.  -TB

New York Day of Prayer & Healing

For someone who has been in the desert of post-abortive suffering, responding to an invitation to a Day of Prayer and Healing is a grace: a grace of faith in the promise of a loving God and a grace of hope that His promise of love is real, personal, and forgiving.  Come join us and begin your journey of healing, July 18, 2015.

The Beast of Our Spiritual Pride

“Spiritual Pride preys on everything that it can ingest. It even feeds on making a good examination of conscience and contrition that come from noticing our faults. The beast of spiritual pride can grow in us catastrophically.” (God Alone Suffices, pg. 93)

I remember when I first came back to the church. We had a very dynamic, faith-filled new priest in our parish, and the Spirit was very alive in all that was going on. It was easy to feel good about things. I was basking in my new found faith. Being spiritually immature, I thought we were something special and took pride in the things we were doing in the prolife movement and a lot of other places.

When that priest left our parish, so did a lot of people.  It seemed the Spirit took leave with him and so many of the wonderful things he had begun ended one by one. It was painful. The presence of God I had begun to be so accustomed to seemed to have disappeared. How could that be? I was crushed.

In hindsight, it was one of the best things that could have happened to me.  I began to learn that faith, true faith, had nothing to do with what I was feeling from one moment to the next, but everything to do with my belief in the promises of God.

It was a hard lesson to learn.  I often felt abandoned which was a real trigger for me from my abortion, but I refused to believe that God would abandon me. After all, I had an encounter with Him in my healing and there was nothing or no one who could take that experience away from me. And so, I began to learn to trust in darkness, and then I began to learn to trust in the midst of attacks because I believe in God's love and His word.

Sure it is not always easy. I still get tossed around by the storms of life at times, but no matter how I feel, I never think of walking away.  I know God is present to me always -  even when I cannot feel Him.

That truth has been a mainstay for me through many of life’s difficulties.  Now, when I am blessed with “feeling” His presence, instead of thinking I somehow have something to do with it, I am very much aware it is a gift from Him and not something I deserve and this too is a gift.

Jesus, I trust in You!

Retreat - Day of Prayer & Healing,Bridgeport, CT

Getting Out of Your Own Way

Sometimes we can get so stuck on our own pain from abortion that our world becomes “self centered." We become obsessed with thinking about it 24/7. Everything speaks to us about it. We can go over things in our head a million times and fill our lives with “if only’s."

This constant focus on self is not only unhealthy, but it is not helpful.  “Would have," “could have," “should haves,” and “if only’s," will get you nowhere, and addressing your abortion 24/7 will not make the pain leave any earlier. In fact, it will most likely make things worse.

Instead, find a ministry or therapist that can help you work through your abortion. (If you cannot find one, call us and we will help  877-586-4621). Put your abortion/s in a box except when you are in a place where you will actually get help by learning of the dynamics, spiritual support, and an ear that can help you understand what happened.  Some people fear that this will mean you are forgetting your baby. That is not true. You will still be dealing with it but in a healthy way, in an environment where you can get actual help and clarification instead of just tormenting yourself.

The gospel of Matt 25:31-46 speaks of helping others. Whenever you see yourself sinking into the habit of obsession, take your focus off of yourself by doing something for someone else. Not only will it help the other person but, it will help you as well.

After Abortion-Nothing is Wrong with You if You are Hurting!

Every month, I get at least 15 new women and men looking for help regarding a past abortion. It is heart breaking to hear the anguish they are going through, but I know there is hope of healing, and so we connect them with people and places that will be able to help them get through this very real trauma.

There is something about participating in the death of your own child, that touches the deepest recesses of your soul. Some people claim it does not bother them at all. I would NEVER want to be one of them if that is true, but chances are, they are burying it. Often women of 80 and even 90 years of age come forward for healing. It catches up with you sooner or later.

That is why posts like this, "How Will I feel After Abortion", make me so angry. The  repeated attempts to blame the emotions and dynamics of abortion on other life events is unjust and a down right lie, and they continue to feed it to women in a manipulative way.

"Serious, long-term emotional problems after abortion are as unusual as they are after giving birth. They are more likely to occur for certain reasons, for instance, if a woman has a past history of psychological troubles prior to the abortion, if she does not have supportive individuals in her life, or if she has to terminate a wanted pregnancy since her wellness or the health and wellness of the unborn child is at risk.

Eventually, most women feel alleviation after an abortion. Women tend to really feel a whole lot better after abortion if they could chat with encouraging people in their lives."

The message to women is clear. "If your abortion is bothering you long term,  you must have had psychological problems before, or lack of support, because most people feel alleviated." In other words, something is wrong with you if you are suffering from your abortion, as if taking the life of your baby is not a reason to be suffering! Of course, no problem, you can call the abortion clinic to help you get to the point of denial by allowing them to help you get over it!

Sadly, many women fall for this deceit and spend years struggling silently (with really no support as after the abortion most people who know do not even want to deal with you) with the loss of their child and the emotions surrounding it. My hope is that women who have gotten real help are speaking to other women who are suffering, and that they are able to find places to go to who acknowledge their feelings without making them feel like something is wrong with them, because there isn't!!!! Women are not programed to take part in killing their children and that is enough reason to feel the way they do. Still, there is hope and there is healing...I know and so do countless other women because we have been there!

************
Are you living in darkness and depression after an abortion?
Unable to get past the pain of your loss?
There is Hope.  There is Healing.  There is a way out of the darkness.
Email us at [email protected]
Call us at 1-877-586-4621 or 1-718-881-8008

Love of Christ

"Padre Pio, St. Gemma Galgani, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross , Mother Theresa, the Curé d'Ars all had the experience of sitting round the table with sinners, living their experiences, of carrying, in a different way, the weight of the Agony in Gethsemane; they testified to the love of Christ Who takes upon Himself, the pain of the man who has left his Father’s house and doesn’t want to go back, even if he knows in his heart that he is better off in his Father’s house rather than tending to pigs. Man today continues to imagine that he can live as if God didn’t exist; and we see the devastation this has caused."Cardinal Carlo Caffara (Archbishop of Bologna)

 

Great little interview with the Cardinal in which he speaks of the attack on marriage and family being the final battle. With everything going on in our time it seems the battle has begun...http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2015/06/cardinal-what-sister-lucia-told-me.html