As the Blackness Sets In

It was my job this week (and last week, if I am honest about my procrastinating) to write a report on our first auction results. It was a spectacular success. The first day of our E-Bay auction, our website links were hit thousands of times, and every day thereafter, peaking on the day the auction closed. Overall, more than thirty thousand people viewed our pro-life messages, including the excellent advertisements produced by Virtue Media, Inc. which can be seen in their entirety at www.virtuemedia.org. We could not have purchased this much airtime for them, and we are immensely grateful to you, the internet viewers, for your attention and your compassion. We had many bidders and many watchers. Our E-Bay ad generated at least a thousand more hits than any sale of like items in the past, and certainly we owe that to the pro-life message that made it unique.

Our winning bidder is from Norway. He purchased an excellent guitar with collector’s value for just $430 – a good price for him and a good contribution to Virtue Media that will be matched by another generous donor. But this wasn’t about a guitar sale at all. It wasn’t even about the money we will contribute. We did this for our children – and their parents, grandparents, siblings – to make others aware that abortion destroys lives and souls.

I, personally, did this for the child I aborted. Mentally, I had parted with my guitar a long time ago – there was no sense of loss, no idea that I would miss it. I felt nothing but happiness thinking of someone else learning to play as I had and developing a love for making music. I thought I was handling everything quite well, actually, in spite of the memories that were being stirred up. During the auction’s seven-day run, I watched the numbers rise as more and more people visited my website. I watched the number of hits grow and grow, and slowly it began to dawn on me that all of these people know the truth about me, now. It’s one thing to have a website “out there,” and get a few dozen hits from internet travelers. It’s entirely another to see the truth of your life spreading like bad news, and to know that others see the shame you think you’ve hidden so successfully even from yourself.

This is such an ugly truth, something which I would not even disclose to medical personnel under pain of death before now. I owe this idea of being “Silent No More” to the Silent No More Awareness program founded by these remarkable women:

Georgette Forney
Co-Founder
Silent No More Awareness Campaign
National Director, NOEL
Georgette@NOELforLife.org
(800) 707-6635

Janet Morana
Co-Founder
Silent No More Awareness Campaign
Associate Director, Priests for Life
Janet@PriestsforLife.org
(888) PFL-3448

I was inspired to write my testimony for them and by them. Originally, it was to be published anonymously, and you can find another copy of my story, with so many others, on their website, www.silentnomoreawareness.org. Please visit, and read the testimonies. So many other people want to share their pain with you, pain they have had to keep hidden.

After reading my testimony, my husband took me to an entirely different level. He’s a man of action, and not satisfied with an anonymous contribution. Having been made aware, he had to help. God blesses our world with people like him and his twin brother, who has also embraced the cause as his own. My husband, Ron, designed a site around the story, and gave me a forum, a voice that I had never had before. Then he gave me courage to speak. I wanted to honor his gift to me by being as courageous as I had to be. So I endured as the numbers grew, and my shame became more public.

I felt strangely detached, emotionless, and I suppose that should have been my first warning that I was not doing as well as I wanted to think. Even everyday things that would ordinarily at least cause me to swear a little with impatience were not bothering me at all. My goodness, I thought, I have come a long way.

And then the blackness overcame me. If you are a member of this particular club, a survivor of the holocaust of abortion, you know the blackness all too well. It creeps up on you, and sets in beside you like an old, familiar friend. Eventually, often before we know it’s coming, it envelopes, and it colors the entire world. Particularly when things go well, when we are rewarded for good efforts, or simply receive gifts unasked and unearned, the blackness comes to remind us that we are so unworthy.

I received emails telling me I am courageous. I am not. Brave women bear their children and their responsibilities. We were doing something good for the world with this auction, telling everyone who would listen that aborting the child is NOT a valid choice, any more than killing any human being is a solution to a problem. But the blackness sets in to remind me that I am not worthy of such a task. I could not do good for my poor child, who died in agony, his neurons developed fully enough to experience the pain, but without the tools we have when fully-grown that help us to cope with it. It makes me want to scream his agony to the world, even as I want desperately to hide from the grief and the knowledge that I brought about this suffering.

I have to find a way out of the darkness. I can’t reach anyone from in here. I need to thank the people who listened, and who told their friends about it. I need to pick up my share of this burden and go on to the next step. We need our next auction, the next piece of testimony that brings the truth out of the black void and puts it in the world for everyone to hear. We need your “guitar,” whatever that might be, and your experience, so we can do this again, and again, and again – until the entire world understands, and we are put out of business. God, I pray to be put out of this awful business.