My Abortion Story | 9/25/22

In the Temple at Burning Man, I found a corner with a marker and I wrote one single word in dark black ink:

RHAEGO 

The child I chose not to carry, yet will always carry in my heart. 

White owl flying at night, artist unknown

PREGNANT

On a Saturday in May, amidst the Roe storm, my period was late. I figured it was just stress, so I took a pregnancy test thinking it would allow my body to relax and bleed.

I was wrong - I was pregnant.

Even though I want a child dearly, it wasn’t the right man or the right time. It wasn’t even the right spirit baby.

Immediately after finding out, I logged onto HeyJane, a US-based virtual clinic that provides abortion support. A friend is a founder so I knew about the service. I chose the rush option since I was flying to the East Coast the next week and was hoping to take the pills and pass the pregnancy before going home. A terribly tight schedule.

The pills arrived on time, and I was able to take them a couple of days before my flight.

The night of the second dose (more on the process here) I can only describe as spiritually walking to the door of death and back. I was in the portal of creation, writhing in pain in the bathtub, breathing heavy on my bed, pissing and shitting and vomiting into the toilet. Pain moans and tears. Through the immensely intense contractions, I heard the voice of the Goddesses, giving me strength and guiding me through.

The feelings and sensations I felt as a being of life left my body… all I can say is I never wish that on anyone, and I pray to God that I never have to make that choice again.

The man was still in the picture at the time. He was useless. He rolled me one blunt and made me one cup of tea. Tools that helped and only scratched the surface of what I needed to get through the night. Through the 10 hours of near constant pain. For 3 hours straight, there weren’t even breaks in the waves.

The next day I was exhausted. I rested, let the man take me to get pancakes, and prayed that I’d have enough energy to get on a flight the following day. I packed the blood in my suitcase to take with me.

BLOOD OFFERINGS

I buried the blood and tiny clump of cells that my body expelled in the backyard of my childhood home near the lilacs. Near where my old playhouse has been. Near where we had buried the bodies and ashes of beloved pets.

I was still in a daze from walking through the death portal and then flying across country. But it was a New Moon and an auspicious time to make an offering to the earth. I wanted to connect with dark sky energy.

I went outside and did the minimum requirements for an offering, as I was still incredibly weak from the physical, emotional, and mental taxing of the experience. I was outside for maybe 15 minutes, then came back in to get ready for bed.

Immediately, it started to rain. The sky crying tears for me. Tears that I could not yet access in my mostly-numb state. It poured hard outside for a few moments and then stopped. Mother nature’s own honoring.

The inner region of the Orion Nebula as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument

ENDINGS

One ending lead to the other. The being that moved through me, Rhaego, is so damn powerful. He ignited something in me and brought me back to an earlier version of myself, a version that hadn’t yet been sexually assaulted twice. A version that hadn’t yet been shattered by the men in this world.

With my power creeping back, I was able to end the relationship with the man, which required forcefully removing him from my life. I saw clearly that if I did not want to have his child, I did not want him in my life.

He had been living with me, a deep soul with narcissist tendencies that preyed on my compassionate, empathic heart. I was an opportunity for him to meet his needs, even as his presence was causing me to leak out all my energy.

Thank God that the abortion gave me the strength to finally make him leave.

THREE BLEEDS

Because I work with spirit babies and because the public was going crazy talking about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, I wanted to share about my experience immediately.

I held myself closely instead, sharing in personal spaces. I did not want to use my social media as my therapy. I decided to give myself three bleeds to process and heal before I started actively sharing and teaching from the medicine I received.

And while it was hard to wait, I’m glad I did.

If you’ve been following along with me and my story, you know that I’m familiar with grief. I have multiple soulmates on the other side and am connected to dozens more souls who have crossed over. At the Temple this year, I honored 11 different people. To me, part of being a medium is holding space for, providing healing to, and having incredibly intimate relationships with beings who have already died.

So while death and grief are familiar to me, the grief of losing something from within my own body was something I have never known before. At least not in this life. It felt tragic in a personal, primal way.

My body felt empty. It felt like my body had wanted to keep the baby. It felt like my body was mad at me. I experienced postpartum symptoms while pregnancy hormones continued to course through my body. (It can take 3-6 months after an abortion to detox these hormones.)

The emotions in my womb felt bigger than I could hold. It felt like an endless dark ocean. I became temporarily detached from that part of my body, unsure of how to interact with this part of myself.

Yet, I kept going. I worked with various healing practitioners, coaxed the hormones out of my body, and reconnected with myself. I asked every single one of my teachers for advice. I stayed dedicated, even when it was reflected to me that my womb felt abandoned, dropped. Instead of taking this as me failing, I chose to show up.

I held my womb, I told her I love her, that her emotions are not too big for me to hold. I let the emotions grow into my whole body, to get as big as they needed to. I let them get bigger even than my physical form and asked the universe to hold them for me. Because how was I to hold an ocean? The night sky?

I let my cycles ebb and flow and be irregular. There was a time when I bled for two weeks. I almost lost my mind and asked God and my body to stop, please. I couldn’t possibly bleed another day.

I continued to collect my blood and offered it on both the East and West Coasts, as I flew back and forth all summer for wedding events.

My power grew with every breath, every practice. An intention I had been setting for years - to get my power back - was finally happening.

I’ve been working with my own womb for a few years now. Doing internal massage and energetic work to heal painful periods that intensified after sexual assault. I’ve been collecting and offering my own blood back to the earth for over a year. I’ve read several books and have been doing feminine embodiment practices, rewilding myself.

I thought this work was “just for me,” that I was healing my lineage in honor of my ancestors, for my future children’s sake. But after turning my business towards spirit babies and then shortly after having an abortion, womb healing felt like the neon sign flashing at me.

In this three cycle time of pausing, I decided to teach my first womb healing workshop at Burning Man. And luckily for me, my third bleed since the abortion started right before I started to head to the desert. My waiting period was over. I was ready to share what I had been receiving.

Image of the Empyrean Temple, Burning Man 2022, Photo by Jamen Percy

DESERT HEALING

This year, Burning Man felt like a continuation and completion of the work I had started in Egypt, almost exactly a year before.

The downloads and energetic signatures that I received while in Egypt changed my entire life and decimated parts that were no longer serving me. After returning from Egypt, one thing after another left my life: a childhood friendship; another soulmate to the other side; my entire business coaching online presence - website, Instagram blog. And those are just the few things that immediately come to mind.

It felt weird to commit to my spiritual path fully by visiting Egypt, and then seemingly “lose everything.” I’m laughing as I write that now, because that’s exactly what can happen. The illusions fall away, only the truth remains.

But it wasn’t like I had just started. I’ve been meditation daily for 7 years. I had already entered recovery and quit certain patterns and substances. I’d already done tons of talk and trauma therapy. I had already had awakenings. Still, Egypt brought it all to an entirely new level.

At Burning Man, it all started to make sense. It all started coming back. The gifts and the blessings of all the work I’ve put in. All the sacrifices I’ve made for my highest self and evolution finally started to feel worth it.

Burning Man threw me back into the reality and embodiment of my power. Rhaego coming through my body briefly gave me direct access to the divine in ways I had never accessed before. And if you haven’t noticed, I talk to spirits all the time. This time was louder and more tangible than I have ever experienced.

I felt viscerally protected and led, both in my bliss and in my grief. I listened to and acted on guidance. I received completely. When I heard the call of the Temple, I went and wept. Shoulders shaking, head to the ground, eyes blurred. The Goddess kept talking to me, kept holding me, as I sobbed next to strangers.

The beautiful chorus of the many facets of grief in the Temple added solidarity and grounding to my pain, helping me feel even more deeply. After a long dark summer, this was the final piece.

I pulled the tampon out from inside me and pressed it into the corner of the temple under a wooden light, giving an offering from my third bleed. It would burn when the Temple burned on Sunday.

I was finally ready to lead.