cmyk for printIllustration by Mary Kirkpatrick
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As I sat alone in my bedroom with the lights off this Mother’s Day, my seven-year-old son watched cartoons in the next room, and I silently fought back my tears. I buried my face into the pillow, inhaling deeply and internally reciting the current events that made up my life for the last 11 weeks.
I found out that I was pregnant three weeks after my relationship had ended, and two weeks later, I was laid off from the community newspaper where I had been working for the past several months.
As a Swampy Cree-Métis journalist and parent, I understood the realities of being a single mom and I dreaded the optics. More specifically, what that would mean and represent in Canada. I had more questions than answers: Would I lose my children to the system, like so many others have? Would we end up homeless or living in a transition house? Or would it be kindest to end a life before it was filled with emotional abuse from the man who kept telling me he “wouldn’t be the father”?
The option of giving birth began to feel less viable as the circumstances grew in complexity and emotionally more terrifying, with each passing day. I worried about the judgments that others would make about being an Indigenous single mom of two.
The equation was a heavy one, with lots of uncertainties to consider, and to my horror, the surgical abortion was slated by the obstetrician’s office during the week of Mother’s Day.
After the abortion, I reached out to an old friend as I attempted to reconcile the decision I will live with for eternity. I made plans to visit her in the Laurentian Mountains.
In the days following the procedure, I sat in her sunroom and let the scent of jasmine wash over me. I sat beside the flowers, blinking and fighting back my tears, trying to figure out how to get closure without looking like I was unhinged.
Lavanya and her husband, Marc, invited me to stay with them for a week to rest and recover following the procedure. My son stayed with friends and family. Lavanya and Marc wouldn’t let me cook, shop or help with any cleaning, which was hard help to accept given all the unkindness I experienced over the last few months of personal turmoil. I was in shock about the decision, and about who had (and had not) shown up to support me through it.
Lavanya and I talked about my abortion after dinner one night. She patiently listened and gave thoughtful replies, and when emotion took hold of me, she held my hand at the table and let me cry, later holding me in her arms while I tried to regulate my own breathing. Eventually, I had to pull away, so I wouldn’t completely unravel in front of my host.
It is strange to think that people who were essentially strangers became dear friends in less than a week, and showed me more kindness than many others in my life.
While I had to refuse the complexities of my pregnancy, the love I feel for my daughter is alive and well. Her spirit remains with me. I am grieving her loss deeply, and trying to honour my child’s spirit and my own.
Prior to the abortion, I read countless first-hand accounts from women who didn’t want to be mothers outlining how giving birth would ruin a child’s life. I also read many anti-abortion religious arguments. None of those perspectives aligned with my own thinking, and I couldn’t find any stories from my Indigenous peers.
Traditionally, our Cree ancestors had medicines to trigger a termination when an unwanted pregnancy did not align with a matriarch’s family or travel needs, and it occurred without shame, unlike my own procedure.
I began searching out Cree knowledge keepers across the country by sending emails to strangers who I thought might be helpful for their exposure to traditional cultural teachings that I did not grow up with. A knowledge keeper in Winnipeg was kind enough to share some healing practices on a video call to resolve the grief I felt from my abortion. In exchange, she asked that her teachings be shared with others but not recorded in any way, so those who seek knowledge come together to learn.
There is comfort in knowing a nation of people find support in some of the same ways that I am searching for.
I refused the emotional, mental and financial burdens of this pregnancy, and I hope to someday reconcile the pain it has caused so our spirits can rest gently when we meet again in the next life. I am hoping that closure will come when my daughter’s spirit is reincarnated.
I’m grateful Canadians continue to have the autonomy to make decisions about their own bodies. Abortion should always be available to those in need of one, regardless of the ongoing shortage of doctors, obstetricians and midwives, and the long wait times.
By telling my own story, I hope other women going through this arduous process will find themselves in good company and see themselves represented, with at least one support person, knowing many other women have walked this road before them.
Breanne Massey lives in Kamloops, B.C.