For more detail about supporting the following descriptions see my About Me page at Experienced Mum.Summer of 1983 A close friend had an abortion that I was silent about where I had the power to save the baby by telling the parents of the woman. Still though, I considered myself pro-life because I would never personally have an abortion and I loved children, though I had made the mistake of choosing to keep the secret of my friend over saving the babies life.
(The catechism teaches that we share in the guilt of someone's sin by silence, by counsel, by consent and by defending the ill done as well as several other ways. It took me several years actually to understand that I shared in the guilt of my friends abortion by not even trying to stop her.)
High School During this time I actively babysat for over 40 families. I went with my friend to confession after she killed her baby. Later though over several years I saw how the abortion became an impediment for her to live the true Faith and caused her much suffering and a hardened heart. I too suffered not realizing until several years later that the scar of that experience influenced every area of my life; in many ways bringing me closer to God, in other ways plunging me several times into depression. It is one thing to lose your own children not of your own fault; it is totally another thing to carry the guilt of killing an innocent child.
I have come to believe that part of my penance in this guilt was losing my own children part of the time when my husband left me summer of 2004 and I had to undergo two custody battles. Now I can truly say I know the pain of my friend who lost her child due to the abortion. Though, my pain is lessoned by the fact that I still have my children and still get to spend time with them; albeit not full time.
College Summer 1987 to Summer 1990 Several summers I worked as a camp counselor. My first summer I worked in a camp with autistic and down syndrome children. I majored in Elementary Education and in my last year switched to speech communications; though for several financial, moral, and physical reasons of being sick (I had also been hit by a car), I did not finish college my fourth year.
Nanny Years Summer 1990 to Summer 1995 I volunteered one year while I was a nanny taking an autistic girl swimming; helped the homeless in Portland, spent one summer helping single mothers in East Harlem discerning a vocation to the religious life, was a nanny for three summers in a family with a down syndrome boy, and one summer worked in a home caring for Alzheimer's patients.
I consider all this work as pro-life considering that these fragile members of society many propose to have eliminated through abortion or hide them away in institutions. I was also a nanny for six different families during this time. (Nanny in Corvallis, Oregon; Washington D.C. and Bethesda, MD) During this time I actively babysat for pro-life families such as the Crnkovich's, Schmidts and Hamms. Mary Suarez Hamm (sister of former Mayor of Miami, Xavier Suarez) had 11 children, attended my church and ran a crises-pregnancy center, Centro Tepeyac
Mary was an active force in my life for over four years as I babysat her children, read the books
she read and was educated by her into the destructive forces of the IMF, World Bank, United Nations and Planned Parenthood who were all working together for the sterilization and birth control of families mostly in third world countries through contraception, and abortion.
I lived three summers with Mary's sister in law caring for her three children. One of them was a down syndrome boy. It was another exposure for me toward down syndrome children. I learned of their innocence and joy, saw how they were special people from God and it is people's total ignorance who think they should abort a down syndrome child. They are throwing away one of God's most precious treasures.
During this time also I met and became acquainted with friends who had worked alongside with Joan Andrews (pro-life activist jailed many times) in the 70's helping her dismantle abortion machines. It added to my understanding of the pro-life controversies of silent prayer and talking to women vs the more hard core response of going in and destroying the murder weapons of the little babies.
I also babysat for several protestant families who believed in birth limitation and abortion in "hard cases". I remember several prominent Washington D.C. families whom I babysit for such as Christopher Buckley (son of William F. Buckley Jr.) and David Ignatius (Editor of the Washington Post) who held conversations with me on the drive back home from babysitting challenging me on such pro-life beliefs of my Faith. I had a chance to meet and visit on a regular basis with such prominent political figures such as Doro, President Bush Seniors daughter who's son attended the same school as boys to whom I was their nanny.
So, I saw both the political and religious polar extremes at work with those I was acquainted with in my own personal life.
Many of these protestant families attended church at St. Columba's, an Episcopal church in Bethesda. I came to see that the church was more about politics then religion as I became personally acquainted with many families who attended there. It was at their coffee hour every Sunday that the real political decisions were being made and discussed in Washington. I didn't attend church there because I attended the modern Catholic church, but I babysat for these families and visited once in awhile their socials.
Connected to this church was a pre-school that at the time I had no idea was the research center for Sensory Integration Disorder. Several of the children I was a nanny fo
r attended this school and my job was to drop them off and pick them up. There I met Carol Kranowitz who wrote The Out of Sync Child. Later this was to become a lifesaving book for me as my own son suffered from vaccination damage and hypersensitivity that was then exasperated in his anguish by a split family causing our whole family untold suffering and much judgmentalism against me in trying to deal with him by my thought to be friends.
Later the understanding I gained about a child's vestibular system and their development from the study of Sensory Integration Disorder added another element of understanding how parents and adults can take this understanding and put the "life" back into these children.
For some reason I became the babysitter to many of the second grade boys and their siblings in one neighborhood in Bethesda where I was a nanny. It is during this time I became profoundly in tune with the damaging effects of too much TV on them and also on the younger children I was a nanny to as I describe in my article The Golden Calf in the Living Room.
I can frankly say that I came to see too much
television viewing in many ways as anti-life. It robbed families and little children of a wholesome lifestyle. Here I was in one of the richest and politically powerful neighborhoods in the United States and before my eyes were many children with glazed eyes, totally depressed.
Jim Trelease has written one of the best chapters I have ever read about the damaging effects of too much TV on young children in his book The Read Aloud Handbook.
Many of my "older" friends in that same neighborhood all had shrinks and were all on psych drugs. What is going on? I wondered.
Hmm too much TV, leads to couch potato syndrome, leads to mental insta
bility. (Read between the lines: LACK OF EXERCISE!) Interesting, the first thing their psych doctors told them was to start exercising.
It is one thing to kill the unborn. It is another thing to kill the living; killing them in their soul, robbing them of true joy through joy robbers.
L'Arche 1993/1994 I volunteered for a year in Tacoma, WA caring for adults with mental disabilities. Then I returned to Washington D.C. to continue my life as a nanny.
St. Anne's 1994/1995 During this year I was actively involved in a young
adult group at St. Anne's in Washington D.C. with many pro-life figures such as Roderic Burke (now Friar Roderic, known as the Roving Reporter on AirMaria.com) and Tim and Angela Huelskamp (Tim is now a Senator in Kansas). Rod was actually a reader at my wedding in 1996.
Several times I found myself sitting behind and later visiting with after church, pro-life activist Mary Ellen Bork (Judge Robert Bork's wife) who had talked to our young adult group about the marriage vocation.
Once a month, Rod, Tim and Angela, myself and others joined Fr. Thomas Morrow
(who is now on the staff of AveMaria Singles as Ask Father) as he lead the all night prayer vigils to end abortion. These included devotion to the first nine Fridays and Saturdays to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Included were many Latin Hymns drawing me into a love of tradition which became preparation for me to finding the true Mass that had been removed from these once Catholic churches.
When the evening had past and morning came, the group of us walked or drove down to Planned Parenthood and prayed the rosary and tried to talk with the women entering the abortion clinic to persuade them to not go in. Fr. Morrow always led by example by joining us here in praying the rosary. Fr. Morrow is one of the few clerics in the United States who actively tries to help homosexuals overcome their deviancy as well as counsel young people in dating, modesty, courtship and marriage.
I visited Fr. Morrow recently in the last few years on one of my trips to Washington D.C. I asked him if he would join us in the traditional movement and consider being properly ordained. I left him all the necessary materials for discernment. Unfortunately, he doesn't agree with me but I still pray for a change of heart and ask for your prayers for this intention.
Motherhood Years 1996 to present.
During my first year as a mother I found the Latin Mass. In fact the first time I attended a Latin Mass I vowed to never attend the novus ordo service again. I broke this one time that first summer for my friends wedding but I have never been back since, even for a friends wedding or funeral. I have attended receptions; but I have stayed clear of the mockery service of the true Mass. That is how strongly I believe it is so evil.
I was now a resident of Cambridge, MA and later three other communities around the metropolitan Boston area. During these years I had five children. I buried myself into homemaking, home schooling, motherhood -having babies! You could say I a was a pro-life mom for sure.
My first doctor as a young mother who delivered my first baby was an active pro-lifer.
During these years as a young mother I became acquainted with, through my church, several active pro-lifers. In fact three of them were in a rosary group at my home and belonged to Massachusetts Citizens for Life, MCFL. One of them, who prefers his identity kept private, convinced my computer saavy husband to get the first webpage going for MCFL. So, actually, I became the first designer of the first pro-life website main page for MCFL because my husband let me pick out the whole design. We created the whole thing in our living room on our family computer. It was the first year I was a mother and the first year I was attending the Latin Mass. We never ourselves belonged to MCFL, but my husband created their first website and I designed the main page.
I personally would never join MCFL later as I did not agree with their interfaith prayer policies and support of the false Ecumenical movement. It is another reason why I never joined in their pro-life walk every year in Boston.
At the time, the President of MCFL was Ray Neary. He met my husband. Later Ray became a key player in our family situation when 8 years later my husband decided to leave me and I engaged Ray's help in trying to keep our family together. But, to no avail. Ray to my disappointment was a strong supporter of public school education, condemned by the Church as a danger to our children's Faith. This was another eye opener to me amongst many of my experiences amongst pro-life modern Catholics -their total ignorance in traditional Church teaching.
I came to see that the modern churches doctrine was pro-life and that's all. Nothing more. The other traditional teachings my fellow "thought to be Catholics" were in total ignorance as they promoted Vatican II and left everything prior behind.
During this time as a young mother, long before our family split, Susan Gallagher came into my life also. Susan, a strong activist in the pro-life movement and active with Operation Rescue was friends with original Founders of MCFL: Mildred Jefferson and Father Philip La Plante.
Never did I realize at the time how involved in my life they would become. Susan was one of the many singles who would join our family on holidays. We held the tradition of taking in all the strays who were "homeless" of family roots around Boston.
For 8 years I listened to Susan talk about her friend Fr. Philip La Plante. (see the story of Susan, Fr. Laplante and also photo's of Mildred at this link) Many Mondays and Saturdays she tried to convince me to join her with my young children at the abortion mill. She said she truly believed if I came that the young mothers seeing my children would have a change of heart. In all my years I never joined her; I was a run down mother who's husband worked 12 hour days. I was a single mother long before I was forced to be a single mother in "fact". I just never had the energy to go into Boston with all my little ones.
In all those years I never joined Susan's invitation to "come meet Father." But, after my husband left me I was called by Fr. Laplante's dying side in the hospital with a begging Susan calling for a traditional priest to give him the last rites. You may read the story at the link above. Father pulled through that episode and Susan took him under her care. That began a year long intimate friendship with Susan and Father where I let them come to my home a few times a month for respite. Susan cared for Father around the clock, so by spending the night at my house she could sleep and I could take a turn watching him and give her some rest.
By this time I was in a joint custody situation where I had my children part time and over four years I hosted many woman in my home who needed help; one of them also being ironically another friend of Father Laplante's.
Ironically, during that first episode of Father in the hospital, he was transferred to Brigham and Women's Hospital; the main place that Susan constantly picketed as a pro-lifer begging women to save their babies. She was amazed she slipped in to the hospital that night to be with Father without being escorted from the premisses.
We sat there and laughed that night as I joined her at the hospital, thinking of the irony of the whole thing where the same hospital that was killing infants was now trying to save the life of her good friend. That laughter was mixed with tears, believe me.
Thus ends my description of my background in the pro-life movement which continues as I try to raise my own children as good Catholics to promote life and share my insights with those who are interested in saving the unborn.
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