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I should have been playing with dolls. Instead I was playing with the notion of having sex—fully armed with free birth control from our neighborhood Planned Parenthood and eager to lose my virginity—all by the age of 12.
Then came April 4, 1968 – the day Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was shot and killed. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. It was a day of great sadness for all of us in the Black community. It was also, tragically and ironically, the day that the death certificate for my first child was signed in my heart.
My mother was hot-combing my hair and the news bulletin about King blasted through the air. Our spokesman for civil rights was dead. It was the only time I had ever seen my mother cry. But she marshaled the strength to try to inspire me in the midst of her grief. She said, “Denise, you go on; you go to college and make a way for other blacks; don’t be like your sisters; make something of your life.”
But what I heard was something my mother never meant or intended. What I heard was the devil’s translation: “Denise, the burden of the entire black race is on your shoulders. You have to go to college to make a way for others. Don’t be like your sisters – they were failures because they got pregnant out-of-wedlock and became poor and lived on welfare. You go on and become a very successful professional. Don’t let Dr. King’s death be in vain.”
That day I learned what it meant to be a failure and I vowed to live up to what “I heard.” Unbridled ambition coupled with the 60’s sexual revolution and lust sealed it – I would never be like my sisters. I wanted to have the fun they had without the consequences. I would be a success. I would never be unmarried and pregnant, or poor. Not ever.
Tragically for me and much of my generation unregulated by Jim Crow, the upheaval during the 1960’s for us was not really about civil rights. We lived in the north and were already living the American dream of home ownership in a nice neighborhood with great schools. We did not live in segregation. No, it wasn’t about civil rights. It was about something else.
Like so many, I too was taken captive by the free love movement and the Pandora’s box opened by my seventh grade sex education classes. Encouraged by media and pop culture, we were given the green light to adopt the requisite loathing of traditional values of purity and abstinence until marriage, in order to “live the life we wanted.” No, for us it was not about civil rights, it was about civil license.
College dorm life was a sexual free for all. By age 25, I had been with 49 sex partners, aborted 3 babies, (what a sanitized way of saying that I killed 3 people), contracted one STD and became part of an ill-fated marriage.
Throughout my adolescent, college and young adult years I was spiritual, but not moral. I was my own god and I worshipped me. I made up the rules. I was determined to have my career and fulfill my mandate. Nothing, no one, and no circumstance were going to stop me. And my sibling’s example of the single parent, welfare-funded lifestyle was not part of my package. Life was about having fun without consequences. With racial and sexual roadblocks gone, abortion was my guaranteed ticket to the American dream of endless fun and prosperity: two-kids, suburban home, cruise ship vacations, camper, boat and a dog.
The initial relief I felt after the abortions was supposed to last forever. But immediately following the third abortion, a deep, unconscious rage gained fervor and began to silently roar. I coped by following my boyfriend Brian’s (later became husband) advice to “forget about it; let’s not talk about it anymore” and dismissed my pain. Inwardly I was appalled, but outwardly his advice seemed right since all that was lost were “blobs of tissue” – right?
I buried the truth that I had taken lives so deep that we didn’t talk about it for decades. I tried over and over again to get on with the American dream, but it continued to elude me. I had unknowingly joined the ranks of the millions of post-abortive walking wounded, and it put my life into a total subconscious tailspin for the next 20 years.
The first 17 years of my marriage were plagued with emotional firestorms. Where was all this rage coming from? Why couldn’t I seem to get on with life, or get my life in order? My husband is a faithful, hard-working, kind, loving and handsome man, yet I could not stand the sight of him. Four months prior to our African wedding he abdicated his role as my hero and protector by insisting on the abortion of our first child together. To make matters worse, after the birth of our first child a year later, he sent me to the welfare office. Wasn’t abortion supposed to keep me off of welfare and propel me into the American dream?
Even though I unconsciously despised him for it, and blamed him for everything that was wrong with our lives, I did not realize until many years later how tortured, fractured and bleeding both of us were because of our abortions.
My gratitude towards family members who clothed my young children masked the awful secret that I dreaded the baby section of department stores. I would experience deep feelings of fear and foreboding wrapped up neatly in grief bows whenever I would look at baby shoes and socks, and I could not figure out why.
Unfilled imaginary chairs were cruel reminders at family dinners and holidays that my children were missing – they were gone. Day after day I wandered around in a hopeless sea of silent unconscious grief – hating my husband – but hating myself more. I finally got to go to law school, but I ate my way through it and gained 100 pounds more.
Suicidal thoughts frequently rattled through my brain; not because I wanted to die, but because I just wanted to stop the pain. My friends had no clue that I was suffering, but my children were worried. Days turned into months; months into years. Inwardly and silently I would cry this pitiful cry: “oh God, help me; please help me.” Some days I refused to cry, fearing I would never stop. My life continued to plummet as I rode the emotional rollercoaster: one day happy go lucky; the next day I was in the depths of despair and depression.
These were not fleeting, momentary feelings of the blues. No, what I was going through was much deeper, very scary and more disturbing. It was that penetrating and lasting feeling that something is not quite right; that something is very wrong with me.
Somehow on my way to the American dream it did not even dawn on me that the Creator built into me the instinctual capacity to nurture and raise children, and that by killing my own I would be left with a broken heart—a bottomless pit of emptiness, shame, rage, remorse and regret. And tragically worse is the knowledge that even if someone would have warned me, I doubt that it would have made a difference, because my heart was rock solid hard and my soul was far away from God.
The good news is that God led Brian and I to support groups where compassionate men and women helped us to recognize that post-abortion trauma is a real wound that causes deep pain and suffering. They lovingly administered the aid and help we needed to be healed and made whole again. As a result, abortion/miscarriage recovery and marriage enrichment has become our life’s work. Rich in Mercy, our abortion recovery program, is a safe and confidential place. If you have had an abortion, or you are a post-abortive couple, or the father, mother, grandparent, sibling, of an aborted child, or one who helped someone get an abortion, including clinic staff, it is our joy to administer that same hope and healing that was given to us to you.
I can never bring my babies back, but I can warn others that abortion is not the solution you think or have been told it is. Abortion will destroy whoever you are inside, and your baby. Like a cancer, it will grow and attach itself to others in emotional and spiritual places you would never dream possible. This cancer has reduced the African American population by 39.6%—3 times more than our representative percentage in the total population of the United States.
Do yourself a favor and take this warning seriously. Or pass it along to someone you know who is contemplating abortion. It can save their life and the precious life of their child.
If you have had an abortion (even if you feel like you do not need it) give yourself a great gift and get into a support group. It has been our experience that the clients who initially felt that they did not need it (like we did) are very glad they came.
Rev. Brian & Rev. Denise Walker founded Everlasting Light Ministries, which is dedicated to exposing the lies about abortion and revealing the truth about its genocidal effects, and re-establishing the culture of marriage in the African American community. They co-authored and conduct Rich in Mercy, an abortion and miscarriage recovery program, and Everlasting Love, a marriage enrichment and restoration course. The Walkers are seasoned communicators appearing as guests and co-hosts on radio; keynote speakers at statewide and local conferences and pro-life events; and seminar presenters.
To contact the Walkers, call 763-560-8383 or visit www.everlastinglightministries.org
