What I Named the Child I Never Had: A Women's Forgiveness & Healing Journey

Pamela D. Marshall
Mar 7
5 min read

There is a particular kind of silence that lives inside a woman's body.

Not the silence of Peace. The silence of something kept. Something buried just below the surface of every smile, every role we play, every version of ourselves we present to the world while something tender, and true, waits in the dark.

This Women's History Month, I am not here to celebrate only the victories. I am here to honor the whole woman. Every cell. Every choice. Every chapter she has not yet spoken aloud.

And I am here to tell you what I named the child I never had.

The Truth That Started My Women's Forgiveness Healing Journey

My newest book, I Named Him Forgiveness: A Journey of Healing and Acceptance, did not come from a comfortable place. It came from the kind of honesty that costs something.

Within us, as women, is the sacred capacity to carry life. That truth is both powerful and humbling. I wrote this book after confronting a reality I could no longer walk around: the child developing in my womb was not responsible for the intersection that brought the egg and sperm together. Each was alive before that moment. Each carried life within it. And when they met, life continued in a new form.

For me, the spiritual realization was unavoidable.

I do not write these words in condemnation. I write them in truth. I, too, made the decision to have an abortion. But I had to confront the reality that the child growing within me was innocent of the circumstances that created that life.

So I did the only thing that could begin to heal me.

I named him.

I named him Forgiveness.

Not to erase what happened. Not to rewrite the story. But because giving him a name gave me permission to grieve what I had never allowed myself to grieve and in that grief, my women's forgiveness healing journey truly began.

When the Laws of Man Cannot Quiet the Soul

Too often, the laws of man attempt to settle questions that are far deeper than policy or politics. They may justify actions in the name of freedom, convenience, or circumstance but they cannot quiet the voice of the soul.

When we deny what is within us, we risk denying a part of ourselves.

And that is why these words became a declaration for this entire movement:

You cannot deny a part of me without denying all of me.

Power, Choice, and the Courage to Go Deeper

Do we have the right to do as we please with our bodies? I believe that with every fiber of my being.

But here is the question I dare every woman to sit with this month:

What if we chose something even greater?

What if we claimed authority over our bodies before we ever stood at the crossroads of having to destroy a part of our own being? Women's history is not only the story of what we have endured. It is the story of the power we hold, the wisdom we carry, and the courage we must summon to live in alignment with our deepest truths.

When we honor every part of ourselves the joy and the grief, the strength and the wound we honor life itself.

Acceptance as the First Step in Your Forgiveness & Healing Journey

This is where the work begins. Not in a conference room. Not on a protest line. In the quiet.

Today, sit with the parts of your story you have kept in the dark. Not to punish yourself. Not to reopen wounds for the sake of pain. But because healing cannot begin in a room where the lights are never turned on.

Acceptance is not agreement with every choice you have ever made. Acceptance is the courage to say: I was there. I made that decision. And I am still worthy of wholeness.

If you have carried silent grief over a choice made in your body a grief that perhaps never had a name today, consider giving it one. Not in shame. In truth.

Because naming what we carry is how we stop being owned by it.

The woman who stands in her full truth the Power and the pain, the freedom and the responsibility is the most free woman in the room.

You are not the worst thing you ever decided. You are the whole of everything you have survived, chosen, grieved, and grown from.

Accept her. She has been waiting for you.

Women's History Is Written in Our Choices

As we walk through Women's History Month, may we honor the women who fought for our voices, our dignity, and our freedom. Their courage reminds us that history is not only written in books. It is written in the choices we make with our lives.

May we be women who tell the truth about ourselves with compassion. Women who refuse to live in denial of our own humanity. Women who understand that power is not only the right to choose — but the wisdom to choose life, healing, and wholeness.

If you carry pain from a decision in your past, you are not alone.

Forgiveness begins the moment we stop hiding from ourselves.

And when we finally stand in the fullness of who we are — body, spirit, truth, and responsibility — we discover something that no law, no opinion, and no silence could ever take from us:

Freedom was never meant to separate us from life. Freedom was meant to help us honor it.

Because in the end, the truth remains: You cannot deny a part of me without denying all of me.

Go Thru It Because Peace Is Waiting on the Other Side

If this stirs something deep within you, I welcome you into the Go Thru It movement, a sacred, courageous space for every woman carrying weight she was never meant to carry alone. Whether it's the grief of a past decision, inherited trauma, a silenced story, or the quiet ache of never fully forgiving yourself, there is a path thru it. And on the other side?

True resilience. Deep Peace. Profound healing. Lasting freedom.

Here is how to begin your own women's forgiveness healing journey: