You're Not Alone: Healing Through God's Grace After Abortion | 
| Author: Jennifer O'neill
Publisher: Faith Communications
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 131461
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.5
ISBN: 0757301681
Dewey Decimal Number: 241.6976
EAN: 9780757301681
ASIN: 0757301681
Publication Date: January 1, 2005
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Product Description
Whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, you probably agree on one thing: abortion hurts women, both mentally and physically. Unfortunately, both sides are guilty of ignoring the individual in favor of the higher moral ground. No more. This book is designed to help people heal from their abortions on an individual level, and to finally be able to put guilt, shame, fear, doubt and other negative feelings behind them forever. Jennifer O'Neill's approach to healing is Christ-centered, showing post-abortive women that God still loves them, and that they should therefore love themselves. She should know--she felt guilt and shame over her own abortion for years. And she is not alone in that pain. This book: - presents the symptoms of post-abortion syndrome (experienced by 80 percent of post-abortive women)
- incorporates a step-by-step, faith-based process for healing that incorporates Scripture
- provides true stories of women and men who have struggled with the affects of abortion
- includes resources for help and support
Not just for the woman herself, this book is the perfect comfort and guide for people with friends, daughters or loved ones struggling with the after-effects of abortion, whether recent or long in the past.
Key Features - Focuses on personal stories of healing from more than 25 women, including Jennifer O'Neill herself.
- Takes women through a series of feeling--guilt, shame, honesty and grieving--that ultimately lead to personal and divine forgiveness.
- The central tenet is that God always loves you, no matter what happens, a message many post-abortive women don't get from their church communities, but which they desperately need.
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| Customer Reviews:
 You're Not Alone September 7, 2005
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Wonderful Book. Easy Reading. It was a very helpful and insighting book for me.
 An inside look at the pain and struggle of abortion, and finding solace in faith August 3, 2005
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
No matter where you stand on the issue of abortion --- though I suspect most readers of this review oppose it --- there's one aspect of the issue you just can't argue with. As Jennifer O'Neill writes, "You cannot argue with someone's pain." You can dismiss it, you can minimize it, you can ignore it, but you cannot effectively use your powers of persuasion to convince other people that they are not in pain. In YOU'RE NOT ALONE, O'Neill, an actress and Cover Girl Cosmetics model, writes primarily to those women who continue to suffer from the emotional pain of abortion --- and she writes as one who has been there.
In previous books and videos and in her ongoing role as national spokesperson for the "Silent No More" abortion awareness campaign, O'Neill tells the story of her own abortion, the struggles that followed, and her ultimate reconciliation with God. Here, she gives space to the stories of other women who have likewise suffered and found hope and healing through God's forgiveness. Throughout, O'Neill uses scripture to underscore the truth that God's grace and mercy are available to everyone --- even those women who feel they've bordered on committing the unpardonable sin by aborting a child.
On that score, O'Neill does a terrific job. If you don't get a taste of God's grace and forgiveness while reading this book, well, I guess you just weren't ready for it. Because it's there for the taking. On every page. O'Neill also addresses two aspects of the post-abortion experience that often go unnoticed: the need to openly grieve for the aborted child and the need to confess the truth about a previous abortion to a spouse and children.
One of the most poignant scenes in the book relates to the need to grieve. In Japan for a film festival, O'Neill wanted to do some sightseeing and decided to visit a large Buddhist temple. In one area on the grounds were thousands upon thousands of pinwheels. Next to some were tiny mementos --- empty photo frames, knitted booties, and the like. What she was looking at was the burial ground for aborted babies, a place where people could openly mourn the loss of their own child or for all of the anonymous children lost to abortion. "Grieving is part of surviving and is an integrally crucial part of the healing process," O'Neill writes. "Grieving is not a step you can skip if you want to heal." All too often, the shame of abortion causes women to skip that step, she writes, but the repercussions will surface eventually.
O'Neill also guides women through the process of determining when, how, and if they should disclose the fact of a long-ago abortion to their current family --- their spouse and children. It's a process designed not to convince the women that they should or shouldn't, but to allow each woman to come to her own decision about how to handle the situation.
Now to the downside. This is a book that is likely to resonate with Christians only. That's not to say that a person who isn't a Christian wouldn't get anything out of it, but that person would have to be heavily steeped in Christian jargon. [Note to software developers: Please, please, create a "Christianese Check" just like spell check or grammar check.] "Stronghold" means little or nothing to someone outside the faith, and "bondage" means something you don't mention in polite society. Using plain English instead of Christianese would have helped this book immensely.
And even though O'Neill writes primarily to women who have aborted their babies, she also intends to reach their loved ones and anyone who needs a better understanding of post-abortion trauma. Well, that to me includes those pro-life activists who remain blissfully unaware of the additional pain and suffering they cause to women who are already burdened by guilt and shame. Please note: I did not say all activists. I mean those who are so blinded by their zeal to protect the unborn that they disregard the suffering of those who failed to protect their own unborn. O'Neill devotes precious little space to that problem, and it's a big one.
She also states that "abortion is not a comfortable subject for most sermons," implying that pastors shy away from addressing the issue. But that sure hasn't been my experience, and I've seen more than one woman slip out of church in tears as a pastor railed against those heinous sinners who abort their babies. A book on healing after abortion needs to include the topic of "healing from the pain inflicted on you by your alleged brothers and sisters in Christ."
Look, any book that gets a woman past the pain of abortion and into the arms of God ["Christianese Check" needed!] is worth reading. I just hope this book finds a wider audience than the Christians who understand the lingo, because there are plenty of women out there who may be put off by the jargon but not by the promise of healing.
An excellent guide to healing after abortion. April 21, 2005
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
This book is about Jennifer O'Neill's abortion and the path she has followed since her abortion to find emotional and spiritual resolution. The book includes shorter stories about the experiences of a number of other women. Readers who have had abortions will find themselves able to identify with these stories. Jennifer O'Neill also talks about the steps that are important in healing after abortion, and about the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, which is a group of women speaking in public about their own abortions in order to raise public awareness about the negative emotional aftermath of abortion.
This book is a pleasure to read, comforting, informative, and well-written.
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