rachels-of-kentucky-logo2
September 29, 2018 by
Hope After Abortion
By Mail:
Rachel’s Vineyard of Bowling Green
806 Shaker Museum Road
Auburn, KY 42206
Western Kentucky Retreats:
Wendy: 270-474-4707
wendyc@hopeafterabortionky.com
FaceBook.com/hopeafterabortionky
To find a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat in other areas:
www.rachelsvineyard.org/weekend/retreat-schedule-index.aspx
On a trip to Mexico, her parents’ homeland, Rosemary Medeiros was visiting a chapel for adoration when she heard a voice say, “I have forgiven you; now forgive yourself.”
“I walked out shocked,” she said. “I knew in my heart it was the abortion I’d had 33 years earlier.”
When she was just out of high school and still living with her parents, Rosemary had become pregnant the first time she slept with her now husband, Joey. Ashamed and terrified that her father would throw her out, she and Joey had gone to a clinic for an abortion.
“I walked out of there feeling so empty,” she said. “It changed everything about me.”
After her experience in Mexico and back in the United States, Rosemary started listening to Catholic Radio. There she heard about Rachel’s Vineyard, a nationwide ministry that runs weekend retreats for women and men who seek healing after abortion.
She asked Joey to join her for the Friday-through-Sunday retreat in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco.
“Initially, I thought, ‘That’s so far in the past, why do we have to revisit it?’ ” Joey said. “But I wanted to support her, so I went. And it was a very healing experience. I was able to absorb and feel what had happened. Until then, I didn’t know how to deal with the hurt.”
The secret the two of them had shared for decades was now out in the open: They told their four grown children. And Rosemary began telling her story to help After the Choice, a ministry of the Oakland, Calif., diocese, spread the word about healing after abortion. After the Choice connects women and men suffering from post-abortion guilt and regret with spiritual healing, mostly at Rachel’s Vineyard weekend retreats.
Western Kentucky
Next Retreat:
October 23-25
in Owensboro KY area
Contact:
Wendy: 270-474-4707
wendyc@hopeafterabortionky.com
Eastern Kentucky
(Lexington area):
Contact: Gwen Hall: 606-874-9170
ghall@cdlex.org
Northern Alabama/East-Central Mississippi:
Contact: Maria: 901-489-1921
maria_vineyard@yahoo.com