What To Expect

Victims Of Choice

My Abortion Grief Guilt And Shame Is Ending Soon

What To Expect

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM GOING THROUGH THE THERAPY MODEL

My Abortion Grief, Guilt and Shame is Ending Soon is a unique after-abortion counseling, ten-session therapy model built on a biblical foundation and administered by a trained professional or lay/peer facilitator.

Your facilitator acts as peer counselor, teacher and friend, guiding you through the journey toward wholeness and freedom using a combination of readings, discussions, and exercises proven to help you get to the root of your pain and lead you to forgiveness, closure and freedom that only God through His Holy Spirit can do.

"For I am confident of this very thing, that He [God] who began a good work in you will perfect [bring to completion] it until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6.

My Abortion Grief, Guilt and Shame Is Ending Soon is unique because it offers a one-to-one experience.
This means that you will receive private care and personal attention. You have your facilitator's undivided attention throughout the sessions as she comforts, instructs, leads and offers hope.

With your facilitator's compassionate guidance you will:
Learn the common symptoms of a negative abortion reaction.

Examine and compare who you were prior to and after the abortion:
What were your background, beliefs, dreams, life-situation, relationships, stress-ors, etc. prior to your abortion decision?

In order to discover how you were changed by the abortion experience you will do the following:

Uncover and identify the painful memories and emotions related to your abortion experience.
Allow yourself to grieve your loss, perhaps for the first time since the abortion.
Determine and disarm the emotionally charged connectors that trigger the same painful feelings and the negative reactions of your past, producing the same painful, negative consequences in your present.
Identify the hurts you've caused and received and the judgments you've made about yourself and other people involved in your abortion experience.
Work through denial and anger toward acceptance and forgiveness.
Lovingly remember and finally release the child you never met to God.
Reclaim your life!

Your abortion will become an accepted part of your past rather than a troubling part of your present, freeing you to create a responsible, productive, and joy-filled future. "I know the plans I have for you" says the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the LORD. Jeremiah 29:11-14a.

Learn to continue your healing journey: You will gain tools for effective living, for building and rebuilding relationships, and for reaching out to others who are still in pain to share the same gift of forgiveness and reconciliation that you received through Christ Jesus. "Blessed be God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ the Father of mercies and God of all comfort; Who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." 1 Corinthians 1:3-4.

My Abortion Grief Guilt And Shames Is Ending Soon incorporates 6 goals the facilitator and program participant will achieve. Ten Sessions completed over the course of 11 to 13 weeks offer the education and tools to meet the goals. Please read the following for an explanation.

Six Goals
     1. Understand Negative Affects of Abortion.
     2. Determine Personal Abortion Connectors.
     3. Identify Hurts and Judgments.
     4. Restore Broken Relationships.
     5. Memorial.
     6. Learn How to Continue the Journey.

Ten Session
Each session deals with a specific aspect of your life experience.

1. The Pre-pregnant woman - looks at your personality, relationships, world view of the woman before she becomes sexually active which results in pregnancy and abortion.
This session allows you to see who you were before the pregnancy and abortion.
2. The Pregnancy - Situation, Emotions, Reactions. In this session you begin identifying connectors and people (contributors) who contributed to your abortion experience.
3. The Abortion Decision - Personal needs and values, family influences, societal influences. Connectors and contributors continue to be identified. This session helps you see who made the abortion decision.
4. The Abortion - The environment, operation, post-abortion. You will relive the abortion experience in order to identify connectors and contributors. You will tell your story in a way you will never tell it again.
5. The Accommodation Stage - Integration of abortion into self, blunting of emotional effect, denial; physical, spiritual and emotional symptoms manifested.
6. Hurts - Identifying hurts, identifying people whose actions or inactions caused hurt, identify judgment and charges.
7. Emotional Response to Hurts - Unforgiveness results from hurts which causes emotional and spiritual harm.
8. Forgiveness - Forgiveness extended to other, God's forgiveness received.
9. Memorial - Giving humanity to the child lost to abortion through memorial.
10. Going on With God and Life - Tools for living and continuing the healing journey, relationships, getting rid of secrets, outreach.

These ten sessions are completed in a safe and confidential place with only your facilitator and you. It is advised that all ten sessions be completed over a 11 to 13 week period of time. Meeting once a week for 1.5 to 2 hours each meeting.

Each session will include written and verbal exercises. Some sessions your facilitator will do much of the sharing, other sessions you will.

We know for the thousands of women who have completed this program - it gets much worse before it gets better, but once it starts getting better - it is difficult to explain just how good it is.

It has been 16 years since I completed these sessions with an 'untrained', volunteer facilitator. At the time I did not believe the pain could ever ease much less go away. It has been 31 years since my abortion, the pain I felt so many years ago are counted as nothing compared to the joy and hope I have today.
A comparison -- a scar years after a serious injury has healed. The memory of the event and pain may always be there - but the actual pain has long since stopped.
I will always be the mother of an unborn child who was aborted at 7 weeks after conception, nothing will change that part of my history. For many years the guilt, shame and emotional and spiritual pain was almost overwhelming.
Today I am free due to the abundant grace of God. I am very happily married to the father of my child for 33 years (2007) and look forward to many more years with my life-mate.
I hope you too will find the peace, closure and hope I have found. Most of all I pray you will grow in The Faith that produces much fruit, and a certain expectation of an inheritance and kingdom reward. Please, do not delay, take the steps to begin and continue the 'journey' that leads to life that is more abundant.

Elizabeth Verchio,
Executive Director,
Victims Of Choice, Inc., 1974-2007

Whether your abortion was three days, three weeks or thirty years ago, you don't have to feel alone or remain in silence another minute.

DO IT TODAY
Walking through this healing program will help you move toward the place where you can allow Almighty God to work even abortion out for good, and you will be able to give Him the glory for what He has accomplished in you. Whether your abortion was three weeks or thirty years ago, you don't have to feel alone or remain in silence another minute. Becoming free of abortion grief, guilt and shame is not an event, it is a life long process.

Begin that journey today by contacting a local post-abortion recovery organization.

Help is also available for fathers who are hurting because of an abortion.