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Initially, I wanted to wait and share my story once I had everything "figured out." Before I let myself be vulnerable, I wanted to have given birth at least once, I wanted to have kids, I wanted to be stable, and I wanted to have everything neatly lined up. I wanted my boxes all checked.

I spent years bartering for "good enough" reasons... I spent years wanting to prove my choice was worth it because I had done and accomplished x, y, z. This is how I processed challenging or contradictory experiences - I tried to make it all "make sense." Tie it up nicely with a red ribbon.

But my life was, and is, messy. I have since learned to appreciate that.

I am now sharing my story without apology, free from the need to "prove" myself or defend the decisions I made that contribute to the emotional, mental, and physical well-being I experience today.

I celebrate abortion and how it has helped me co-create the many blessings present in my life - my deepened relationships, my ability to complete my education, and how it has helped me dismantle a toxic, shame-filled view of myself and my body.

Late March winds, yellow daffodils, hot coffee dashed with oat milk. The pregnancy announced itself when I felt a sudden aversion to butter and a craving for lemons.

What I can say about the pregnancy is that it happened with someone I love. Someone who loves me, who advocated for abortion access even before it became a part of his story, too.

From the beginning, he made it clear that my health and my future goals mattered. I wasn't used to valuing myself in that capacity and his kindness surprised me.

There were lots of times in my life where I had felt disappointed, hurt, lost, ashamed, depressed, anxious, disempowered, and like a failure prior to the abortion. So the abortion was not at all a traumatic event. It was actually quite beautiful and was something that changed the way I approach motherhood and parenthood for the better. It felt like a release. It felt like courage. It felt like change.

Pursuing the pregnancy would have significantly interfered with my educational and professional goals. Pursuing the pregnancy was dangerous to my health. The pregnancy was not only completely accidental, but also had a poor prognosis.

I was pregnant with twins, and the embryo had split ~two weeks after conception. I was 5-7 weeks along at that point; all I could see on the scan looked like two distant stars in the night sky. Two specks of dust.

Before the abortion, I used to think I needed to change who I was in order to be a “good” mom. Just like I felt like I needed to change myself in order to be a "good" partner. That I wasn't "good" enough as I was.

Needing to be "good" has never done me any good. Motherhood felt like another mysterious aspect to who I was and who I am becoming; yet, my creativity moves in an infinite number of directions and is more than my capacity to bear a child.

Having children will not save and will not fix me, just like having a partner will not save or fix me. And I do not need to live my life auditioning for the part, hoping I'll be validated or loved in return.

Sure, a healthy relationship and the decision to grow a family can lead to amazing, humbling, and enchanting perspectives and experiences of unconditional love and acceptance. But it will not fix me or make me somehow “whole.”

The lessons from my adolescence and early twenties have been about picking up the broken pieces, leaning into the fractures, blessing the broken mirror. Becoming "whole" is a rather curious riddle, some kind of pathless path, a quest without a map... The more I have broken down, the closer I've felt to wholeness.

What happened after the abortion? I followed my dreams. I became a teacher. I graduated from college and earned two graduate degrees. I lived in three different countries. I wrote poetry. I journalled. I healed. I studied topics that made my heart sing and applied to jobs that aligned with my heart's many callings. I started working.

Slowly but surely, I found my confidence again. I adopted a dog. I got married. Skipped across a river of milestones that wouldn't have happened had I been forced to pursue that pregnancy back then.

In my work as a teacher, I realised there are so many ways I can be a part of children’s lives without needing to give birth. We are all part of this expansive soul family, and even though I still deeply want to experience what it is like to give birth and I would very much like to be a parent, I know I will be fulfilled, no matter what my journey is. I no longer try to fit my life, or my Self, into neat and tidy categories.

Abortion was the right decision for me and I have never regretted it. Given the pregnancy's poor prognosis, inviability and host of other high-risk, dangerous potentials I'd have faced had the pregnancy continued, it was the recommended course of action... yet I still grieved.

I woke up after the procedure to the April rain against the window feeling a tangle of intense relief and loss. How can it be possible, that the "right" decisions also can involve the deepest sense of loss? That sadness can also be a part of happiness?

I chose names for the pregnancy - names that would represent what the pregnancy meant to me, names that would represent the qualities I hoped to "birth" in my life in the days and years to come. Words I say and use quite often - Hope and Joy.