Esther, my daughter

	Toni-Lisa Pennsylvania, United States

	Esther, my daughter …… I believe that you know me. So I know you know that I have written countless hundreds of letters over my 44 years. But never to you. Dare I come to you now? Is it ever too late? Esther, forgive me. I had so little conception as a girl of 19 that what I was doing was denying you life, and denying me motherhood. I feel that you have forgiven me. And I believe that you are grateful that I have finally faced the act that took your life ………… because now ………….. we can be truly connected. I acknowledge and bow in humility to the sacrifice that you submitted to. Did you know, prior to your implantation in my womb, that you would never see the Earth’s blue sky or the brilliant yellow of a daisy’s center? Did you know that you would not be comforted by your mother’s arms …….. Nor share in the joys and struggles of our mutual lives? What did you know ………… so long before I knew anything? Although I have only actively missed you for 2 years …. having lived in denial for over 23 ………… you may know that I am an intensely intense woman …….. and so I have packed decades of longing for you into 2 years of accumulated days. Sometimes I fear I might die from the pain of the loss of you. Sometimes I fear that I won’t die and that’s almost worse. Esther, it is so embarrassing to me that I have not tenaciously clung to life, and that the prospect of longevity has held so little appeal to me. Maybe you know that decades of an anguished life lived through the bio-chemical debris of my mentally ill brain allowed me to consider suicide as my best friend. Was it you who prayed prayers for my survival? If so, as you can see, they have worked. My quest for mental health led me to GOD and He has led me back to you. So here I sit on this summer day in June ……. pondering what life would be like with a 24 year old daughter. Would you have been small like me? Would you have been tall like your Dad? Would you have liked dance and music and theatre, or would you have liked tennis, swimming and golf? I know now that if GOD creates a life, He has a purpose for that life. And therefore, I had no right to extinguish your life. It was a slap in GOD’s face that I ANGUISHED over how as a 19 year old I would provide for you. If I had really known GOD, I would have known that He had an answer for both of us. But I didn’t know THAT GOD when I decided to end your life. All I knew was that I had term papers due, tests to study for, and a long range agenda for my life that did not include a child at 19 years of age. I have read touching novels and autobiographical accounts of how women perceive their aborted children. Dare I believe that you are really well and happy and that we shall laugh someday together and play among the stars? Yes, I do dare. And I hold to the dream in the hope that it is a promise. How I do love you ……. my spirit-girl, my daughter, my invisible-princess who lives, works and plays in another dimension. How does one apologize for so great a commitment of sin and selfishness? Words are a powerful and incisive tool, but how could words begin to encompass the enormity of my pain in denying us each other? And by denying you an earth-life, I denied myself motherhood. All of the BEAUTY, the SORROW, the NURTURANCE and SACRIFICE, the FACETS OF CHARACTER that develop through motherhood, have been lost to me. But I learn fast ……. so perhaps as we move forward ……. we will be able to have a spiritual life together. A life whereby we cannot touch, see or hear each other ……. but a shared life of sensing and intuiting each other. Come to me in dreams if it pleases you, Esther. I will receive you. And forever and ever ……. no matter the swift end of shared lives ……. I will always be your mother. You will always be my daughter. I am grateful to GOD that He cares for you now.

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