Well. Here we are, together.
And isn’t that something to celebrate?
Or, at least, to notice and name? Here we are together, even when here bears a remarkable resemblance to hell. Here we are, all of us. You and me. Let’s acknowledge our proximity to one another on this path forfull of roots and rocks and holes and
I often find, these days, that I’m constantly telling myself that quiet lie of alone-ness. The Nobody will understand these feelings I had about my abortion (/my work/that friendship/this love affair/my body/God/etc. etc. etc.); or This is too ugly and messy to share, I don’t want to burden them or make them feel obligated to comfort me; or Everyone else is handling their traumas with more grace than I will ever manage; or—sometimes as I’m speaking, and especially on the days when I’m particularly clumsy or inarticulate (i.e. on the days I most desperately need to say things): This isn’t making any sense to them. This is bragging. This is navel-gazing. This is stupid.
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I'll Always Help You Get Abortions
And I'll Always Be Brave Enough to Ask for Your Help, Too
Hannah Matthews
Aug 31
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Well. Here we are, together.
And isn’t that something to celebrate?
Or, at least, something to notice and name? Here we are together, even when we’d really rather not be, even when here is feeling particularly hellish.
Here we are, all of us. You and me. Let’s acknowledge our proximity to one another on this sun-ruined, uneven, garbage-covered sidewalk. Let’s match one another’s pace for a few short blocks, while we have the chance. Let’s offer one another a little eye contact or (even better) an outstretched nail-bitten, trembling hand, as we push through another daily commute with no map and no directions and absolutely no sense of what awaits us on arrival.
I often find, these days, that I’m constantly telling myself that quiet lie of alone-ness. The Nobody will understand these feelings I had about my abortion (/my work/that friendship/this love affair/my body/God/etc. etc. etc.); or This is too ugly and messy to share, I don’t want to burden them or make them feel obligated to comfort me; or Everyone else is handling their traumas with more grace than I will ever manage; or—sometimes as I’m speaking, and especially on the days when I’m particularly clumsy, or fragile, or inarticulate (i.e. on the days I most desperately need to say things): the This isn’t making any sense to them lie. This is bragging. This is navel-gazing. This is stupid. They don’t need to hear about all this.
It’s funny to have this kind of self-talk jogging away on its little treadmill in my mind, as a doula and a clinic worker. As I’m cleaning up your vomit, as I’m asking you for your consent—to touch you, to call the clinic on your behalf, to help you step into your underwear, as I’m listening to your questions and stories and your narration of what’s happening in your body and your mind, I am never, NEVER, thinking: Wow, they’re not doing this the way they should. They’re not asking for help the right way. They’re not having their abortion right.
And I mean: never, babes.
But when it’s me who’s thrown up (nightmare), who is feeling too tired or scared or embarrassed or overwhelmed to make the phone call, who needs you to hold my underwear so I can hold onto your shoulders for balance and step my dirty, chipped-nail-polish bare feet into each leg-hole one by one? When it’s me, the person who donates and crowd-funds and secures $500 or $1000 for someone’s abortion appointment, who finds myself in need of funding for my own?
Then I’m a Mariah Carey .gif, I’m saying I don’t know her and I can’t read, suddenly and I’m putting on my sunglasses in that dark and crowded room. I forget that it’s a group project, this (and everything else that I do or that is done for me, perceptions of “personal accomplishment” or “luck” aside).
When I help you, it’s obvious and constant. It’s humming along in the background of every thought I have. I know, just as true and steady as I know my own name or contours of my own steering wheel or the colors of my favorite people’s eyes, the very thing I often forget when you help me: care work is not charity. It’s community.
All animals are born with only their most essential survival skill. That first lone thing they somehow immediately know how to do upon arrival, that first terrifying day the tiny being is on earth, is what keeps them alive to learn all the other skills they’ll need. Newborn horses can stand, and then run. Many birds hatch with colorful suits of full-flight feathers. A newborn kangaroo—blind and the size of a jellybean—somehow climbs into the safety of its mother’s pouch, clambering its way up through her fur to the place where it can get the nourishment it needs to keep growing.
Humans are born knowing only to do one thing: to cry for help.
So I’m reminding myself, and you, here. Regardless of the role that abortion support (or any form of community care) is playing in your life at this particular moment—if you’re giving it; learning it; needing it; apologizing for needing it; running from it before it can even be offered; wishing you had more of it, or a different kind, or that you could receive it more gracefully; writing a Thank You note for it…no matter what’s happening over there on that side of the screen:
It’s brave to help,
and
It’s brave to ask for help.
It’s brave to let yourself be helped.
It’s brave to speak the word, to cry hungry ragged shrieking at the top of your lungs just as all those fearless babies do, to identify and seek out and consent to and tell your own story of your need for: help.