Chris Rice Cooper
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Analysis
by Chris Rice Cooper
Melissa
Ohden’s
You Carried Me
a daughter’s memoir
“Pain
Too Deep To Recollect!”
Pain has
an element of blank;
It cannot
recollect
When it
began, or if it there were
A day when
it was not.
It has no
future but itself,
Its
infinite realms contain
Its past,
enlightened to perceive
No period
of pain
--Emily
Dickinson
In May of 2017 Plough Publishing
House https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/relationships/you-carried-me published
You
Carried Me a daughter’s memoir by Melissa Ohden below left http://melissaohden.com with cover photo by Jude Mooney below right
https://www.shiningdoephotography.com
and jacket design by Emily Alexander.
In late October the baby was now five
pounds and was adopted by Christian farming couple Ron and Linda Cross who
already had an adopted daughter Tammy age 4. The couple was thrilled to have another
daughter into their farmhouse in Curlew, Iowa where she was surrounded by
church-going parents, numerous relatives and animals.
They named me Melissa Ann, after a friend who had
become a quadriplegic after an accident. They admired her strength and her
tenaciousness fight for life. They hoped
for the same qualities in me.
But there were miraculous times – such as
in 1984 when Linda got pregnant. Ron and
Linda revealed the news to Melissa on her seventh birthday and she viewed
Linda’s pregnancy as a birthday present.
And when her brother Dustin was born she described her life as a big
sister as pure bliss.
She naturally became interested in her birth
parents and her parents allowed her to see the adoption papers. She learned
that both of her parents were college students, athletic, gifted.
The next seven years were financially
difficult ones for the family but Missy was thriving and found herself drawn to
the intellectual and artistic world. She
satisfied this hunger by checking out books from the Storm Lake Public Library.Above right
When she was in the seventh grade the Cross Family moved into their very first home they owned. They continued to make sure that their children attended the United Methodist Church and reared them in Biblical values.
When she was in the seventh grade the Cross Family moved into their very first home they owned. They continued to make sure that their children attended the United Methodist Church and reared them in Biblical values.
It came as a surprise when in September of 1991
Tammy revealed she was pregnant and her parents offered their support of
helping her carry the baby and raising it or giving it up for adoption; but
abortion was something they could not support.
Tammy chose to carry the baby with plans to keep
it and it was while her sister was fully pregnant that Missy and her sister got
into a heated argument. Tammy in her
anger revealed a secret about Missy’s parentage; a secret their parents only
revealed to Tammy to discourage her from having an abortion. Later that same evening Missy above left at age 15 and her mother
sat on the living room sofa.
Mom’s voice was soft and low as she took my hands in hers. “We never meant to keep this from you . . .
We should have told you when we told Tammy, but there was just no easy way . .
. We love you, honey, we’ll always love you. . .” She paused and took a deep
breath. “Missy, your birth mother had an
abortion during her pregnancy with you and you survived.”
I sat for a moment in utter disbelief – how was this even possible? And then I fell into my mom’s arms and
sobbed.
This knowledge literally threw her into an all-
consuming crisis: by the time she was 15
she was living a double life; anorexia, bulimia, alcohol (she would hide
bottles of vodka in her bedroom closet and underneath the backseat of her red
Chevy Beretta); and sex (though she was
responsible enough to use contraceptives). Above right attributed to Christal Rice Cooper.
Bulimia, alcohol, sex – these were my unholy trinity of coping mechanisms.
They dulled, but didn’t deaden, my torment.
That all this suffering was hidden from everyone who knew me seemed to
be the point – I was singularly chosen for misery; I was different, broken, unworthy.
Alone.
I couldn't bear to keep tangible evidence of my anguish and confusion.
The one healthy thing she did was to speak the
truth about being an abortion survivor, which she did right away in front of
her English class, which proved to be therapeutic; but her real freedom did not
come into being until she finally submitted completely to the Trinity God.
At long last my heart and mind turned to the One from whom I could not
hide my inner life and my secret sins – the One who alone had the power to set
me free.
I began to cling to Jesus in prayer, and as I did, I felt the guilt and
shame and self-loathing that had defined me for so long begin to slip away. Right Jesus Painting attributed to Christal Rice Cooper.
She found solace in other people’s
stories such as Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom; Alice
Walker’s The Color Purple and
particularly Alice Walker’s own personal story of having her own abortion while
in college and writing poetry to deal with her own pain; and Lois Lowry’s The Giver which helped Ohden understand that “the ability to
feel pain and suffer is part of what makes us human beings able to give and
receive love."
The secrets would almost take a full decade to
unveil and would lead to devastating truths, criminal violations, grief for the
dead, praise for the living, and the reunions that would reveal God’s ordained purpose
and love in her life.
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