I have had four abortions.
I felt the air pressure change from the collective in sucking of breath you readers just performed.
Miscarriages, pregnancy loss, ectopic pregnancies–on paper they are labelled as abortions.
It was a punch in the gut when I saw this.
I don’t think I consider myself pro-life or pro-choice. At least not in the framework of the political world by which the word abortion has been adopted.
It, simply, just isn’t that simple.
But this isn’t really a political post. At least, I don’t envision what I have to say as being political. But, then, nowadays, everything seems to be tinged with politics whether you really want it to be or not.
This is a post about personal experience with the word abortion and how the word has been reduced.
I have lived in a world where abortion was associated with women who didn’t want their babies. And their right to not want their babies was protected. That is how I saw the word.
Then I had abortions. . .spontaneous abortions, missed abortions. . .and I realized that the word is not that at all.
Like many words its complexities run much deeper and wider than we give credit. We have allowed the word to mean just one thing, and therefore, diminished it while also giving it this incredible power. Talk about paradoxical. Now this word divides families, communities, countries.
It is an ugly word. No matter what, its meaning is ugly. I lost four lives that started within me. Abortion…the tiny babies, the hope of the future, the imagined lives, the joy, the innocence. And though that is exactly the ugly word that describes my experiences on my medical charts, I am not allowed to call it that in conversation because it no longer fits the narrow definition to which a complex word has been reduced.
My body did it four times. Three of those four times, my body needed medical assistance so that I would not die as well.
Or the life I live now would have been aborted.
Twelve Pounds Heavy
June 8, 2022
tistheczn Life in General comments, high school, offhand, parent, power, teacher, weight, weight loss, Words 1 Comment
Thirty years ago my tenth grade PE teacher told me I should lose 12 pounds. I was five foot almost ten inches and weighed 162 pounds. I remember this precisely because it made the numbers “pretty”.
I didn’t need to lose any weight.
But I have managed to pinpoint that exact moment as to when the number started to carry weight.
He was a teacher. Surely, he knew what he was talking about.
And I have spent the better part of the last thirty years chasing that twelve pounds. When will the number be “pretty” enough? When will the PE teacher in my head not say that?
The truth is the PE teacher will never stop saying it. But I can stop listening to him. I can stop giving him so much power. He was a jerk to say that to me. {Honestly, he was a jerk for a lot of other reasons, too–nothing illegal or immoral, please don’t misunderstand. Just a jerk of a man.}
I thought about this moment often in my twenty years in the classroom. I think about it now when I talk to Peter. The power that man’s words had simply because of his position. I wonder how many students I inadvertently labeled myself as a jerk to because of an offhand comment. I wonder what kind of weight Peter is going to carry because of the things I say to him.
I mean, here I am thirty years later still trying to lose twelve pounds…ok, it’s more than twelve pounds now and I do really need to shed the weight for my health. But caring about the specific number, that is what a sophomore encounter did.
Weighty.