You Carried Me: A Daughter’s Memoir

“Your birth mother had an abortion during her pregnancy with you and you survived.” This was the secret Melissa Ohden discovered when she was in high school. “The people who had conceived me had also tried to destroy me.” Her grandmother, “a nurse, had been in the room–she had assisted in her own daughter’s abortion!” When she was born alive, her grandmother left her to die. It was this revelation that inspired Ohden’s “treasure hunt for the peace that could only come from knowing the truth” of her identity. “My mind was racing over all the cul-de-sacs and dead ends I had encountered while trying to find out who I was, where I came from, and what had driven my birth mother to abort me…For years I had been trying to go back to the beginning to discover my true identity…I had been looking in the wrong place. My true identity didn't come from my birth parents, but from my Creator. I was a child of God and that meant I was never–not even for a second–unwanted.” “The first edition of this book was dedicated to all who have carried me through the years…Every tear I shed…in the midst of my own pain, I couldn’t stop thinking about the women who have abortions–and about the woman who had carried me…At one time I would have been angry that the newborn me had been cruelly deprived of the comfort of my birth mother's voice and arms. Now, though, with my own daughter nestled securely against my breast, I felt a surge of compassion for the woman who had carried me, and for what she had lost…God’s grace transformed my anger to grief, for myself and for the woman who had carried me.” “Life may not look anything like we expected it to, or anything like we want it to, but God's plans for us are so much greater than we can usually comprehend. If you look closely, you'll see his fingerprints all over your life. He's carried me…and he's carried you. We all have yet to see where he might carry us next.”