CHAPTER 4

On my worn-out, weak awakening, I felt as if my bed was capsizing. A sheet was between my legs to absorb and stop my bleeding. I couldn’t move well. I was still semi-paralysed.
I can still feel, more acute than ever, the torment I felt when I realised I was no longer a mum... because a woman becomes a mother on the very moment she finds out that she is no longer alone, but that a new part of herself is growing inside. It is a new life, it’s her child... 
I felt warm, silent tears running down my cheeks: my torment began on that precise moment. “It’s no longer there... it’s no longer there” I became desperate and agitated with that little strength that remained inside me.
The phone rang. I replied with an enormous effort. It was my friend Liliana, with whom I relieved my feelings, crying and repeating “It’s no longer there, it’s no longer there...”


A few minutes later the third girl came back from the horror room: and so the slaughter had come to an end! Our sobbing, isolated from the happiness of those who, in the nearby rooms, were getting ready to experience the most extraordinary event in one’s lifetime, recalled the darkness we had shamefully fallen into.
Who would save me, giving me back to the light of Divine Grace? Who would return the dignity that, as a woman, I had suffocated with my own hands? But, above all, who would give me back my child, or rather, my little girl? Yes, because I was sure the child would be a little girl. 
The remorse that immediately knocked on my heart was excruciating. From then on, I have never had a single moment of peace. I will never forgive myself for deciding to cause the death of the person that was supposed to be the most important person in my existence.
And now, my friend, you know my story and have read about my sorrow, as far as I could explain it.
I cannot still explain to you what really pushed me to become the person that I am not. It was probably the fear of growing up, of being abandoned, of being no longer loved, or of keeping beside me a person who I thought could feel trapped, or, simply, the fear of not being able to cope, of failing to be a good mother and a fine woman.
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know...
The human mind is complicated and tortuous and, we, ourselves, are often unaware of all the labyrinths in our unconscious.
What is sure is that it was a rash gesture, the outcome of my most despicable selfishness and that I wouldn’t do it again, never and never again, if only I could go back.


I know that you feel lonely, too, and you can’t see a way out of your anxiety. You feel ill at ease about a situation you don’t know how to handle and that doesn’t seem to belong to you because it is new, bigger than yourself, than the world where you have lived until now. You are afraid of being judged for what you really feel, afraid that nobody can understand you and you are convinced that having an abortion is the best thing to do. You are sure that a few minutes of your time will be enough to secure a painless and definite answer to your anguish. However, it will unfortunately be only a definite answer, because you will never be able to efface the remorse of having been impatient and having agreed to your child’s death.
Don’t feel you are on your own.
Closer than you think there is somebody willing to help you, to give you a hand not to let you fall, to be your friend, a friend who is sincerely sorry for what you’re going through and who wants to help.
You need to talk. Get it out of your chest, do whatever you feel necessary to save yourself and your child, you have the right and also the duty to do so. Protect yourself from yourself, protect the love that already lives inside you.
I understand how difficult everything seems to be now, and impossible to overcome, however, gather all the strength that you have inside, because I am sure you have a lot of it.
We women, we are special: frail creatures, but who can also be solid rocks...
It is true, the unknown is scaring, paralysing, but just think that it can turn out to be a wonderful surprise. Life amazes you especially when you are convinced that there is no longer light for you, and moves you as deeply as the unexpected hug of a child.
God has chosen you to be the mother of your child: he believes in you.


You have chosen your child and he has wanted you and not another mother!! Take courage!! I am sure that it will be enough to look in its eyes, to hold its tender hand in yours, to hold it close to you and smell its perfume to efface all bad thoughts, anguish and uncertainty. It will be your strength and you will be its light, always shining.
If someone had decided to make us die, we wouldn’t have been able to find out how beautiful it is to sing, have friends, fall in love, be astonished before the beauty of the sea... be what we are...
How many times have we been overwhelmed by anger because we have not been let free to choose? Let’s not then arrogate ourselves the right to decide whether to let a human being live or die, that is, the flesh of our flesh.
Don’t deny yourself the love of your child, as I have done.
In the presence of every pregnant woman you will ask yourself “Why not me?” and it won’t be possible to reproach anybody except yourself.
You cannot even imagine the excruciating pain inside you every time you see a happy mother with her child, because you could have enjoyed the same happiness which you have rejected. You will start counting the months and then the years that your child would have been if you hadn’t made him die. You will try to imagine its face, the expression of its eyes, its smile and you will see them in every child you will come across in the street.
You must not think that this is just words. Who can understand you better than me? I have been to hell and I don’t want you to be there, too. I beg you. Listen only to your heart and, if people try to push you into believing that having an abortion is for your own sake, turn them away because they don’t know what they are saying, and they don’t really love you.


If you decide to have an abortion, remember that you won’t be able to go back. It will always remain an open wound, always bleeding. Don’t feel mortified... I beg you as if you were my sister...
I’m leaving you now, with a message that I wrote the day after my abortion. Somehow, I had to free the pain that was consuming me to the point of choking me.
“I feel so bad, very bad... I wish I could die and only God, who sees everything, knows why...Yesterday was the worst day of my life... hell on earth... Now, I am looking for forgiveness, but I haven’t even the courage to ask for it. I only hope that God, in his infinite mercy, will have mercy on me, the least of human beings, and that he will change my heart, that same heart I believed to be better but which, instead, made me betray life...”
I strongly wish that tomorrow morning, when you wake up, you will smile because you will have decided to start a new, extraordinary adventure...

... with YOUR CHILD.