I had an abortion at 18.
Four years ago I turned down an aisle at Homegoods and found a painting that spoke to me, “Here I am, mom.”
Yes, there you are.
Somehow I had to have that painting.
If I indulge myself, she looked like I imagine my daughter would if I’d had a girl. Same nose, same small wrists and long fingers and wide smile.
What beautiful hue of caramel colored skin would she have?
I wonder if she would have hazel eyes like me or dark brown like her dad.
I’m glad I can’t see her eyes.
Just like I will never know if I would have had a baby boy or a bagy girl, I will never be tortured by knowing the color of their eyes. Eyes are the window to the soul and my soul wouldn’t be able to bear it.
I want to keep that wonder.
Because somehow, this young woman is with me. This young woman speaks to me in ways I still, four years later, didn’t quite understand until this week when I saw people just like her being represented all across the country.
I always wanted a girl.
She’d be almost 30 years old now.
In the best of circumstances I can imagine her hand in mind as we marched down the streets during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, both of us terrified yet determined. She would have been 23 and probably taller than me by then. In the best of circumstances she’d be as tenacious and stubborn as I am, because I would have raised her that way. Maybe she’s even be courageous enough to run for office someday; sick of seeing the despair and cruelty and discrimination and corruption everywhere.
It’s days like this that I miss her. The day after a historic election where she would be a young woman finally seeing herself represented in a country that she would have been raised to see white danger everywhere. This hate I’ve seen over the last 10 years against people of color has made me ashamed of the color of my own white skin.
In 1997, as a new single mom at just 18 years old, it would not have been the best of circumstances though. I was in no position to be a mom and I don’t regret my decision for a second. I look back on those days and who I was at the time, and I imagine her being placed into foster care, put up for adoption or raised by her grandparents.
I’ve seen the foster care system and I’m glad she didn’t have to carry a trash bag with all her belongings from one stranger’s house to another. I know how adoption can leave so many questions and hollow hearts and I couldn’t stand the thought of my child wondering, “Why wasn’t I wanted?”
She was wanted, it was just at the most precarious time in my life for her. I wanted her to be here on this earth.
I thought of every possible scenario.
I wasn’t responsible at 18 and I was still a child myself, but I knew enough to know I wasn’t raady to be a mom, nor could I give my child up or subject them to a life wondering, “What if I had been born to someone else?”
So I made an incredibly difficult decision to save us both. It’s a decision I live with to this day.
Maybe it would have been different. Maybe I would have grown up faster and we would have grown up together..best friends..ride or dies. Maybe I still would have gone back to school and received both my degrees. Maybe I would have obliterated every stereotype of a high school dropout teen mom.
I do know the odds were stacked against me.
There’s no way to know now, but after 18 years of parenting I am more positive than ever I made the right decision for her. I didn’t deserve her at the time and she didn’t deserve me. She deserved so much better than I was ever able to give at 18.
I would deserve her now, and she would deserve me.
And this week we’d be sitting on the couch together, staring at our phones, and smiling and probably crying. To me, she lives in every woman of color that got elected this week.
All the sudden she came alive, without warning, without explanation, this girl I never knew, but somehow know so well, came out of my painting and onto the stage in all her beautiful, powerful, brilliant glory.
I think I understand why I had to have this painting four years ago.
And now, she lives with me forever, in my house. No empty nesting. No heartbreak. No sadness. She is safe right here with me forever. She will never be hurt and she will always be smiling. Her smile today looks brighter to me now.
She feels real. For the first time it feels right.
And now, as of November 4, 2026, all her brother’s and sister’s will be a little safer too, because they just got more mother’s and a few excellent dad’s.
So many firsts, and not among the last.
First Black Woman Governor
First Muslim Senator
Texas’ First Latino Governor
Wisconsin’s First Black Governor
California’s First Elected Latino Governor
First Native American Governor
First Native American Woman Senator
First Openly Gay Male Senator
Minnesota’s First Woman Governor (I love that for you Minnesota)
I never named her. I had a name for a girl, Sydney, but that name was reserved for the sister I was planning to give my boys. They wanted a sister so badly. But I won’t give this girl a name that was reserved for another soul that was never meant to be.
She deserves her own now.
So I named her Shemerie-pronounced Shimmery becaause getting someone’s name right is important.
I named her just this week. In honor of all the other “shes” that are about to step into their power.
I hope she likes it.
To Missouri residents, where I had my abortion three decades ago, thank you for saying no for the second time and choosing to trust women with their bodies and understanding that the decision to have an abortion is full of lifelong consequences and what-ifs and often times the choice between life or death for a woman carrying a child that could kill her. These are horrible choices to have to make, no matter the reasoning or cicumstances behind them.
Planned Parenthood is healthcare. They have saved me more than once. I’ve gone to them when I didn’t have healthcare and I’ve gone to them when I needed birth control and I have been so grateful to have healthcare protected for women in Kansas and Missouri.
30 years later, Shemerie is still with me, now more than ever.
Proud is the right word to describe this moment.
I think Shemerie would agree.
And I hope she’d be proud of me too.
* The song I chose for Shemerie is “Believe Me” by Dalton Day. Dalton was going to be the name of my half-brother. My step-mother, 6 months pregnant, had to give birth to a stillborn, deformed baby that same year. That’s a story for another time. I like to think they’re two connected souls floating out there in the stardust.
