A Revolution & A Love Story After Abortion
This week’s guest is Kassi Underwood. She is the founder of The Practice and the author of May Cause Love. Her international community Revolution After Abortion, is a 6-week journey to peace, confidence, and power. She teaches us to follow a path of alignment through connection and curiosity.
Kassi’s Website: https://kassiunderwood.com/
Follow Kassi on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kassiunderwood
Show Notes:
2:18 May Cause Love, An Unexpected Journey of Enlightenment After Abortion by Kassi Underwood
5:04 “If you’re listening and there’s anything you want that you’re not seeing, create it…”
5:58 “Born this way” narrative and Glennon Doyle brilliant words
6:55 “Abortion is Healthcare” narrative
8:40 “‘Abortion if Healthcare’ is so reductive to me”.... “reductive to our intellect, reductive to our capacity for growth…”
10:20 “Whenever you’re trying to convince a group of people of anything, quite often the truth gets lost”
11:29 FROM THE BOOK pg 80-
“My secret wasn’t that I had an abortion; everybody knew about that. My secret was that it had been a big deal, that I wasn’t sure mine was the right decision, that I was afraid to live the life my abortion had granted me, afraid to fly at full wingspan, and I felt I was going mad.”12:34 There’s something more than that pregnancy and that time
13:32 “I am choosing my life right now, and now I need to live full wingspan.”
14:44 If I made such a big decision for my life, what other big decisions are next and what am I going to do about them
16:37 FROM THE BOOK pg 198- The foundation of why we are so confused:
“I said things like: I made the best decision. No regrets. My body, my choice. Such was the feminist story that was already out in the world and available for me to tell. It made me feel like good feminist to tell it.But it was ridiculously problematic, that story. What that story didn’t say was, the same conservative system that set up so many of us to get pregnant by accident, was the same creepy system that made bringing a child into the world seem like a brutal thing to do. …”18:59 “I’m a huge fan of expansive choice”
20:23 “I believe those of us who choose to have an abortion, and feel the weight of these contacts are meant to be the most free people who ever walked the face of the earth”
22:20 “The whole system is a manipulation on our emotions and our minds… we’ve literally been brainwashed with these conflicting beliefs and narratives our whole lives…” How do we walk forward without resentment?
23:29 This is an opportunity to learn who I am and what it means to be human
23:42 FROM THE BOOK pg 207-
“Because women who have had an abortion have seen beneath the surface. Many know secrets about the world that nobody talks about, like that having an abortion is a wilderness, that we will actually kill in order to protect ourselves and our cubs, that the world is not safe for our bodies and our children.”
Not read but following this… “Our pain after abortion is so dangerous to the stablished order that men tried to diagnose and “explain” our pain to us. They used our pain as evidence for an argument that we needed to be protected from our own agency, that we needed to be controlled for our own good and the good of our children. If we listened to out pain and realized the world had buried us alive and then kicked our way out of the grave, if we heard what our pain wanted and followed its commands, then those men would be in serious motherf*cking trouble.”24:32 Who do I save here… I need to save someone, and let someone go
25:11 “‘Mabiki’ Culling the seeds”
27:53 “A knowing and a wisdom that can’t be read about… people who have seen the depth of life”
30:07 FROM THE BOOK pg 200-
“I saw suffering as knowing that something was wrong with the whole experience of getting pregnant and feeling that terminating it is the most loving choice, not knowing how to articulate what felt so wrong.”32:55 “What would love do?” it’s often a feeling not an intellectual choice
34:06 “Not now… I can’t give you what you need right now”
35:06 “There’s some kind of gift that wants to be actualized or expressed in every person’s abortion…there’s some expression that wants to come forth”
36:49 “What would be lost if you had brought this child forward in physical form…”
37:23 “The experience it self propelled me forward, and gave me a voice or it gave me some kind of superhuman strength or drive or desire to move forward and create something”
38:57 FROM THE BOOK pg 261/262-
“My new constitution was not a rulebook for being ‘good.’ The quest to be good was rigged anyway. My constitution was a set of guidelines for being with God.”(see book or listen to the full podcast for the Articles of Kassi’s Constitution of the United State of Me)41:33 “Grief happens anytime you have a change, make a choice, or have a loss; when is any of that not happening?”
42:35 FROM THE BOOK pg 298-
“The practice of love demands that you see peace where everyone else sees war; even when presented with evidence of war, you must see peace instead. When everyone thinks you’re bonkers for staking a claim on peace, see peace anyway. Acknowledge and comfort the suffering, speak out and alleviate the suffering in concrete ways, and ask them to see peace with you. When you cannot see peace because war is everywhere, war and angst and suffering and scarcity and evil, call upon all your superpowers and magic and prayers and arts and rituals and exercises and gods and monsters of love to help you see peace instead. But also, don’t be an idiot.”44:11 Positive Denial- “insist on the vision even as you handle and deal with the shit…”
Now go buy the book: May Cause Love, An Unexpected Journey of Enlightenment After Abortion by Kassi Underwood, AND if you want to join me in a book group please reach out amandastarkingsley@gmail.com
