Do it yourself: saying goodbye to an aborted child by Ero Langlotz

Introduction

If you are affected yourself, you will feel that the subject of abortion is fraught with guilt and shame in our culture.

It is obvious that pregnancy can trigger extreme changes in a woman’s life: loss of job and thus financial independence, dependence on the child’s father. She therefore has the right to decide against the child – without feeling guilty.
For a woman, abortion is always a very painful step. But there is no need to feel guilty. How can we know? If a representative is set up for the aborted child in a
constellation, then she never feels reproach or resentment. From this I conclude: it feels that it is in agreement with its fate. But it hurts him to see that the mother feels guilty about him.
Saying goodbye to a loved one is always painful, all the more so if it is your own child and if you have decided to have an abortion yourself. But this farewell is so important for the whole family: for the mother, for the partner. It is also important for living children, who otherwise tend to identify with the aborted sibling.

Parents often lose emotional closeness when they lose a child if they don’t say goodbye together. This also and especially happens with an aborted child! Therefore, I find it abusive and inappropriate when others – mostly men or therapists – prevent saying goodbye by talking about murder and thereby triggering massive feelings of guilt in the woman.
In order to be able to say goodbye to your aborted child, it also seems necessary to greet this child beforehand, even if this may seem inappropriate or “prohibited” in the case of an abortion.
Are you ready to say goodbye to your aborted child like this?

Preparation

You will need a chair and a nice pillow (represents the aborted child) and a scarf (represents the border). An assistant to accompany you through the process would be helpful, but is not required.

1. Place the chair with the pillow in front of you and say to your child: “You are my child and you are part of my life. I decided against you back then – and I stand by it!“
Even if, for example, a partner or your own parents urge an abortion, it is crucial for the success of the farewell that you take responsibility for your decisions by standing by them. This means that you also stand by the consequences of this decision: You cannot accompany this being into life. You will never see this child grow. It is very painful. And this pain must be seen and accepted.

2. Are you “identified” with the child? To check this, place the scarf between you and your child and feel whether it feels “cut off”. Then swap places with the child. Do you know that? Do you know the thought that you would rather have died in his place? These would be indications of identification, of a symbiotic merging with your child.
In order to find your place “in life” again, in order to be able to “be there” completely for your partner and (possibly) your children, it is important that you resolve this identification by going back to your place and say to the child: “This is your place and your destiny. You are you and i am me. You went your way and I’m going my way.“

3. Greeting. In order to be able to say goodbye to the child, you first have to greet them – actually a truism, which, however, strangely enough, is mostly forgotten in this context.
“I respect that you wanted to come to me. I couldn’t be happy about you then, I couldn’t greet you. It has nothing to do with you, and – you don’t deserve it either!“ And then imagine that you are lovingly taking the unborn being (represented by the pillow) in your arms and letting the love flow to it that you – despite everything – have had for this child. Until it’s good.

4. Farewell. It’s long gone for the child, and they could have found their peace long ago if you weren’t holding on to them with YOUR guilt! The child cannot be free and you cannot turn to life again – both of you lose! In order for you both to feel better, the following step is necessary:
“It’s long gone for you! And I don’t have to hold you down with my guilt anymore! You are now free to go where you can find your own peace!”
Then you put the child back on the chair and imagine that they are moving away to “go where there is no pain and no guilt, just love and light!”

This parting process causes a lot of pain. That is “normal”, parting just hurts. This is a healthy pain. It indicates that you haven’t really said goodbye to this child yet – despite your efforts. When you go through this pain, a door to the “here and now” opens for you. After that, a deep inner peace can arise.

FEEDBACK FROM A CLIENT:

I thank you for this loving and sensitive guidance. So far I’ve only dealt with feelings of guilt and self-punishment. For the first time I experienced that my pain at the heavy loss has also been given space. So I was able to let my children (2 abortions, 1 miscarriage) go. As it is always confused, I have mistaken responsibility for punishment. So I sat in a penitent trap for years and, without knowing it, tied the children to me through feelings of guilt. Lately I’ve had an incredible longing and a strong desire to have children. I had developed breast pain and increased bleeding. The subject was ripe.
I feel much better, I can be happy and I am loving. Above all, a loving mother.

Comment on the dynamics
These last two sentences from the client are very remarkable. Feelings of guilt can lead to the mother’s love for living children being blocked, as if she felt guilty about the aborted child for loving her living children. She remains bound by feelings of guilt – and holds the aborted child in her “own space”. This dynamic also seems to contribute to the fact that a living child, looking for the unreachable mother, “encounters” this – hushed up – sibling in the mother’s room and identifies with him – perhaps in order to be just as “important” for the mother?
If the mother succeeds in seeing the decision against a child and parting with it as painful, but basically as something natural, then it is very relieving for herself – and for the whole family.

BASIC LAW OF LIFE?

Here something becomes clear that one could call “the basic law of life”: Everything is in constant change. When give and take succeed, when goodbyes and encounters are possible, then there is a flow.
We hold on to the other through possessive “love”, but also through feelings of guilt or reproaches. And at the same time we are bound, which means we are not free for the flow of life.
Therefore, renouncing a love that wants to possess, therefore reconciliation and the readiness to say goodbye are the prerequisites for our participation in the flow of life.

Ero Langlotz 7.6.2017

Copyright:
Any copying of the contents of www.e-r-langlotz.de in written, printed or electronic form requires written approval.