The Nine Months After: Making Meaning of Abortion and the Alchemy of Return

Abortion is not the end of a story — it’s a portal.

For many, the days after are marked by silence, confusion, and even relief that feels guilty for existing. But beneath all of that lives something deeper: a reorganization of self. A body that has crossed thresholds does not simply “go back to normal.”

It begins a new cycle — nine months of invisible transformation that rarely gets named.

At Self-Guided Abortion, we believe the experience doesn’t stop at the final cramp or the clinic door. It continues, reshaping who you are, how you love, and how you understand life itself. The nine months that follow can be a gestation of another kind — the becoming of someone who has chosen.

1. The First Moon: Descent and Honesty

In the first weeks, the body returns to itself. Blood clears. Hormones recalibrate. But the psyche lingers in the in-between.

It’s common to feel “fine” one moment and cracked open the next.

This is the descent phase — where the truth of the experience begins to surface.

Some people find themselves revisiting the decision again and again, asking: Did I do the right thing?

The deeper question beneath it is usually: Can I trust myself?

Meaning-making begins when you stop trying to rationalize and start listening. The first moon after abortion isn’t about clarity — it’s about honesty.

Let your feelings exist without censor. Write them. Burn them. Speak to someone who won’t try to fix them.

2. The Second and Third Moons: Cleansing and Integration

Around two to three months in, a new rhythm starts to form.

Your period might return. Energy shifts. Dreams become vivid.

This is the time to cleanse — not through punishment or “detoxing,” but through ritual attention.

Cleanse your space, your relationships, your digital life. Let go of what keeps you small or ashamed. The abortion has already reset something inside you; now you align the outside to match.

Integration is spiritual digestion. It’s when you stop thinking this happened to me and begin realizing this shaped me.

3. The Middle Months: Reclamation and Expansion

By four to six months, many people notice a new creative surge.

You might feel drawn to movement, art, study, or even activism. This is not a coincidence — it’s redirection. The same life force that would have grown in your womb now moves outward, seeking form through your voice, your hands, your vision.

In the old matriarchal traditions, this was known as returning to power — when a woman who had released life became the seer, the healer, the truth-teller.

If you’ve ever had an urge to change your work, end a relationship, move countries, or start something that finally feels true — this is that energy. It’s the Mother re-entering your system through creation rather than reproduction.

4. The Final Trimester: Rebirth of Self

By seven to nine months, something remarkable happens.

What was once private becomes integrated. You may start talking about your abortion more openly, or seeing it with a softer lens.

You realize you’re not carrying a secret — you’re carrying a story.

This is the rebirth phase.

The old self who made the decision has fulfilled her role.

The new self — the one who understands the sacredness of agency — emerges.

Some people describe it as emotional peace; others as sharpened intuition, a refusal to apologize for their truth.

It’s not about forgetting — it’s about metabolizing.

> “Every abortion is a birth of consciousness.”

— Self-Guided Abortion principle

The same biology that can create a human can also create wisdom.

The nine months after abortion can be as powerful as any pregnancy — if we let them.

Making Meaning Beyond the Machine

The modern world gives us scripts: guilt or relief, shame or empowerment. But the real meaning is not binary. It’s layered, cyclical, wild.

In patriarchal culture, we’ve been trained to treat abortion as something to “get over.”

In matriarchal consciousness, it is something to learn from.

A teacher in the body. A rite that rearranges the architecture of selfhood.

You do not need to justify your abortion to make it sacred. You only need to stay awake to what it’s teaching you.

Rituals for the Nine-Month Return

Here are ways to honor the transformation:

Month 1: Write a letter to your body. Thank you for carrying you through.

Month 3: Plant something that grows. Let it remind you that endings feed beginnings.

Month 5: Revisit your decision from a place of compassion, not defense.

Month 7: Create or destroy something symbolic — a painting, a piece of writing, an altar.

Month 9: Mark the day with intention: light a candle, dance, or tell your story out loud.

Meaning is not automatic; it’s made through attention.

The Afterlife of Choice

Every abortion story has its own rhythm, but all carry this potential: to turn rupture into renewal. To move from survival to authorship.

The nine months that follow are not about “healing back” — they’re about evolving forward.

You are not returning to who you were before. You are becoming someone who knows what it means to choose life — your own.

Self-Guided Abortion exists for this reason: to hold space for the transformation that happens after the choice, to remind you that you are both the altar and the priestess, the one who ends and the one who begins.

Because the body remembers.

And the soul keeps growing.