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| Reborn from the Ashes by Benjamín Calatrava (See attribution info below* from Wikimedia Commons) |
First, let me say how sorry I am that you have suffered so much; that you are one of the ACE1 children whose life have been so disrupted and damaged; that what you feel and think has been so impacted forever. I have suspected in recent years that you, and perhaps others of your siblings, had suffered because of your difficult family circumstances (and because of what I have learned in recent years about the prevalence of abuse), but at the time of your youth and with your family living so far away, we never suspected anything. Such abuse was not on the radar of most common folk, even 20 years ago.
I am glad you finally wrote of it with such passion and commitment to self-determination and self-preservation. You reveal in your words what the ACE studies reveal about ACE consequences. I understand, in part, how ACE colors the whole life thereafter, and why you passionately assert “the [absolute] right for women to choose what happens to THEIR individual bodies”; that it is “MY BODY to keep or release a pregnancy as I see fit.”2
Thus, I know you are not ready to hear this now, and maybe never, but I write this here, hoping that at some future date you (or some other) may be able to appreciate the irony in what you (or they may) now believe and so passionately insist: “I can NEVER budge on—”
Can you appreciate the irony? how YOUR very own words might echo the cry of a spirit-being as its mortal mother contemplates abortion?
“It is *MY* ,,, BODY.”OR, even as passionately, might this voice also cry:
“My beautiful, amazing, miraculous, powerful, [long-awaited], and [soon-to-be-] liberated body.”
“MY BODY to own.”
“MY BODY to make choices for.”
“My body is not YOUR temple.”
“My body is not YOUR toy.”
“MY BODY IS MINE.”
» I am NOT a static blueprint. I am on internal life-support for brief months in your body—as real, as vital as you, with your external life-support from mother earth.What do we reply to this voice echoing our own cries for affirmation and value? Does the suggestion of such a voice enrage us? Do we deny its value—its reality? Do we do unto the embryo/fetus what has been done to us? Or do we do unto that spirit/body (whether fully conjoined or not) what we desire to have done to our spirit/body?
» MY body—MY DNA—is unique, unlike any other ever conceived. It can and will NEVER be duplicated.
» Can you truthfully judge the value of MY physical/spiritual stages of growth?
» Do you have the right to measure when MY life begins or when it ends when your agency3 resulted in MY conception—when you willfully engaged in an act that you knew had risk of ME?
» If you do not want ME—if you are not prepared to receive ME, there are others who will thank you forever for preserving ME.
» If you are angry with God, nature, circumstance, or self for the unequal consequence (burden?) placed upon women, please do not take it out on ME.
» If you don't believe in God, please believe in the worth/value/future of ME.
In this echoing voice can we hear?
... the embryo child in a world beguiledThe additional irony in this “absolute right” is that ACE sometimes perpetuates itself, generation after generation, because some ACE children / adults become so locked into self-determinism or sometimes, self-loathing, addiction, or déjà vu that they cannot comprehend the damage they perpetuate because of the damage that was done to them.
By rights of all but those.4
It is difficult to understand why so much abuse and suffering is allowed, except that so many of us use our agency at the expense of others. But even in the ashes of regret, fear, disappointment, sorrow, suffering, and confusion, beauty can arise.5
And yes, all this “spirit-dimension” voicing can be denied or rejected, but perhaps Shakespeare was more right than we care to admit when he wrote:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,--------------------------------/
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio.
1. ACE = Adverse Childhood Experience: See prior Déjà Vu posts on this topic: https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2017/02/tell-me-about-your-childhood.html ; https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-faces-of-ace.html ; https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2017/02/a-thousand-points-of-enlightenment.html ; See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_Childhood_Experiences_Study
2. She adds: (“Yes! Even after 18-gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, tear-inducing, marriage-straining years of infertility, I still get that choice. It's MINE.”) But is this truly an absolute right? or is it qualified when there are competing rights, even if that competing right entails substantial sacrifice or inconvenience by one party? Which right is superior? the one with the most power? the one with the most long-term, fatal consequence? Does a first choice: to have sex constrain a second choice: to abort a life consequence? In other words, perhaps there is a right to choose abortion when there was no true consent: when sex was forced or was consented to under duress, fear, or trafficking.
3. See the possible abortion exception in footnote 2 above
4. Offering Up the Children at https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2010/06/offering-up-children.html
5. Perhaps read or listen to: Beauty For Ashes by Joyce Meyer (Time 51:27 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrTvgFq89yQ ; Joyce Meyer - Brokenness and Wholeness Sermon 2017 (Time 1:48:30) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYVI9bPBagA ; Refuse to Be Trapped by Your Past - Joyce Meyer (2016) (Time 1:42:03 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WK1UrxQH0 ; (See, also, Isaiah 61).
*Image Attribution:
Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reborn_From_The_Ashes_(136679141).jpeg
File URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Reborn_From_The_Ashes_%28136679141%29.jpeg
Attribution: Benjamín Calatrava [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]
