I Had An Abortion and it Wasn't Through Planned Parenthood

When I was 18 years old I got pregnant.

It was my last year of high school and I was madly in love. I'd been in love with this boy for 3 years and was fully intending to be with him forever, just like any 18 year old who's in love. And also like many 18 year olds in love, we were sexually active. Very. Extremely.

But I wasn't completely irresponsible. At the time there was a Planned Parenthood  in the mall near my house and I'd been going there since I was 15 for screenings, advice, and free condoms. I actually spent a lot of time in there just talking to the counselors about things I didn't feel comfortable talking to my mother about. All the women were supportive and helpful and they let me just walk in and talk to someone. I had even taken several of my friends there, other girls who were sexually active and wanted to be safe but we're scared to talk to their parents. Twice I was allowed to be in the room with my friends, holding their hand while they got their first ever gynecological exam. 

But I was still a teenager and somewhere along the line my boyfriend and I weren't as careful as we should've been (and yes we could've just abstained from having sex, but we didn't so I'm not going to engage in that debate) and in the last semester of my last year in high school I found out I was pregnant.

The very first place I went to was Planned Parenthood, because, like much of America, I thought PP was the place to go to easily get an abortion. I took a pregnancy test, we calculated how far along I was, then we talked. And talked. And talked. They told me every conceivable option available to me and how they could help me with each, including helping me talk to my parents. I left there with stacks of papers, ideas, and a possible plan.

I did not leave Planned Parenthood with the completely legal abortion I was determined to have.

I went home and started making phone calls. I DID NOT want to have a baby. Yes, I was terrified of telling my parents, but I also had plans for my life that did not involve a child just then. Later, yes. I was in love and truly wanted to have children with my boyfriend later, when we were married. Not then. Not as teenagers. So I made phone calls and got an approximate cost for an abortion. 

That's where things went wrong. I had some money but not enough, so I started asking around to borrow money, and pleading with anyone I asked to keep my secret. In such a scenario, it only takes asking one wrong person for things to get out of control. I asked the wrong person, who then told an even more wrong person, who took it upon themselves, for their own religious reasons (this person is pro-life), to tell my parents. 

It was ugly. I won't get into the domino effect of ugliness that ensued, but it was not a good time in an already volatile relationship with my parents. However then end result was they agreed that it was not the time for me to have a child and they took me to a hospital where I had an abortion. Coincidentally it was the same hospital I was born in.

Actually, that's not the end result. Later that fall I went off to college and I was forced to leave the boy I was in love with. But we remained friends and kept in contact over the years. I harbored intense guilt over the abortion for many years and felt like I'd disappointed him but eventually we did talk about it and he assured me he had no ill will towards me.

Our first son!

Baby boy #2!

Fast forward 15 years, many other relationships, thousands of miles of travel, countless emails and MySpace messages (yes, I said MySpace!) and he and I realized we're still in love and decide to reunite. High school sweethearts back together. Less than a year later we become parents to a beautiful baby boy who we adore. Seven years later (exactly 5 months ago, to be precise) we have our second beautiful son.

This is the family we were meant to be. Our lives would've been drastically different if we'd been teen parents. Both of us have learned independence and self-sufficiency. We've traveled the world. We've come to know ourselves and we can teach these things to our sons. Because of the lives we've lived we are conscious, peaceful parents who homeschool and are super protective of our kids. We are better people so we can be better parents, I don't think that would've been the case with our teenage selves. We would've managed, like the millions of other teenage parents, and we probably would've worked things out, but we made our choice and looking at my wonderful, happy family today I'm content with our choice.

And I continued to go to Planned Parenthood for my health care over those 15 years, I even went there to find out I was pregnant with my 7 year old. They remained my source for advice, support, and contraception. Which is why I denounce all the false statistics, misogyny, and rhetoric and I strongly Stand with Planned Parenthood.

walking a tightrope

days like today I wonder if I'll ever find a true balance in motherhood, my relationship and work. as I write this I'm thoroughly exhausted, grappling with a migraine, wanting to snuggle up with my man but listening to our son tossing and turning trying to fall asleep and it's 11:30pm. yet I feel like I didn't accomplish 90% of what I needed to do today.

I have no idea how to do this! I have friends with more than one kid and they have careers and run businesses and have beautiful loving relationships and seemingly seamless lives. I know there's no such thing as a seamless life but mine often feels like a patchwork quilt of frustration, exhaustion, foolishness and nonsense. how do successful moms balance all these things!?!

in the midst of it all I can acknowledge the great things in my life. I have a truly awesome kid, a loving fantastic hubby, a marvelous family and family of friends, my health (and a healthy hubby and kid) and we're dead ass broke but at least we're not living in our car or *gulp* with either of our parents.

but in the midst of it all I have a very sensitive son who told me the other day he wanted daddy because I work too much, a hubby who I know I neglect too often, and 'work' that I can barely generate an income from.

I know there is a balance that will allow all the main aspects of my life to stay on an even keel with the occasional tilts to one side or the other but not so much that I plummet. it's there, somewhere, lurking in the darkness and if I'm patient and remember that my relationship is only 4 years old, my son is only 3 years old and stop being so hard on myself things will level out.

but in the meantime i'll keep looking forward, never looking down, and hold tight to that pole that is my strength and sanity and be grateful that if nothing else I'm rarely bored and most folks tend to like the show!

NaBloPoMo - Blogging for Blogging's Sake

right now lots of fantastic things are popping up that are making me refocus my attention on writing and that's a very good thing. i need to reintegrate 'myself' into my life, being a stay-at-home-mom i realize that 'mom' and 'home' tend to be the predominate traits in my life. but writing has always been my release and a part of my life so i welcome the chance to allow it a comeback (now of course the lyrics 'don't call it a comeback, i've been here for years!' are running thru my head).

anyway, one of the things that i'm using to focus myself and keep my fingers and mind flowing is NaBloPoMo!

many of you know of NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month which encourages and guides budding novel writers in writing a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days. it's a huge endeavor but can be very fun and stimulating. well NaBloPoMo is an initiative of Blogher.com to encourage and guide bloggers in posting a blog everyday for 30 days. a theme is picked and daily writing prompts (monday thru friday, weekends are free writing days) help to keep the ideas and motivation flowing. i just happened to decide to jump in this month when the theme just happens to be 'blogging for blogging's sake'!

this month is perfect for me since while i usually do have underlying intentions for the posts i write, most of the time i'm just writing to get all the voices and ideas out of my head. especially now when 90% of my in-person conversations are with a 3 year old who might be very smart but i don't think he truly appreciates my discussions on current affairs or social networking.

so, although i'm a few days late i'm going with the 'better late than never' policy and jumping in with both feet! feel free to read along or to start your own NaBloPoMo journey or check out the other awesome bloggers churning out posts everyday for NaBloPoMo. happy blogging!!

hair we go!

this photo has me in a bit of a tizzy.

it was shared on a friend's FaceBook page with the caption "Praise the Lord!", indicating she took a liking to it. personally, i have to agree. strongly. i showed the photo to my hubby, since we like to compare notes on what we think is attractive and he thinks the photo is great! however the comments from many of the women is just the opposite. lots of 'eewww!' and 'werewolf!' and equally negative remarks populate my friend's thread and the thread of the person who originally posted the photo.

at first i thought 'to each his or her own' and i still believe that. until people started to take it farther, taking tallies of how many women didn't like him and saying only gay men like the photo. the bandwagoning got a bit annoying for me but it took me a little while to figure out why.

black women are highly defensive of all things that make us black women. we indignantly justify our behavior, our tastes, our style, our bodies as characteristics of strong black women. and black women who consider themselves 'natural' which usually means their hair, are even more so. if someone condescends to speak negatively about a 'natural black woman' trait all of black womanhood stands in loud open defiance.

but these women were cutting this man down, not for his gym made muscles or something that he physically altered, they were cutting him down for the one thing that he left 'natural'; his body hair. i can't even recall ever seeing a male model that wasn't waxed and buffed to a high sheen so that light bounced off his hairless body. this dude is HOT and PROUD to be hairy as all get out. and what do we do, trash him for it. not just say 'he's not my type' and leave it at that, no, we name call and bandwagon and basically do all the petty shit that we hate on others for doing to us.

let this dude post a photo of a beautiful black woman with an afro and have a single comment in his thread saying 'eeewww!' or 'too nappy!' and black women would probably flag his profile and try to have him banned from FaceBook for being a racist. but we can say all sorts of hateful things and try to justify our hate by counting how many other folks are being hateful too, and it's all good.

i can totally see why more gay men like this photo than straight women, because straight women (in this country) aren't even comfortable with our own body hair. we've been trained to trim the hedges and mow the lawns, waxing, shaving and tweezing ourselves into oblivion. that's our own hangup, why make it his. men are comfortable with body hair because men have body hair. simple.

and of course, if he were waxed and shiny the same women who have nothing good to say now would still have nothing good to say because of course a man who spends that much time on personal grooming (and look at this dude, grooming all that would take some time) must be gay! so he's screwed in the small eyes of these women either way. good thing he probably doesn't give a rat's ass, look at him, i'm sure he gets whatever play he wants.

and i will say that maybe my personal preference is a bit biased since my hubby is a proud, hairy man and i love his hair! LOVE IT! i love laying my head on his furry chest and running my fingers thru that thick mass of hair when we're talking. and my man is also ultra hot, yes he is! (that's him, splishing and splashing in all his hairy glory!)

personal preference is human nature, we can't choose what we are or are not attracted to. but name calling and bandwagoning for any reason speaks less to personal preference and more to personal faults. 'that's not for me.' means the same thing as 'eeewww!', one is just decidedly more mature, dontcha think?