Nine years after having an abortion, Amanda Englund decided to share her experience, and her life completely changed.
In a conversation with HuffPost Live, Englund explained her choice to speak out through The Abortion Diary podcast, which describes itself as "an innovative response to a deep craving for connection and community building amongst people who have had abortion experiences." It's an outlet Englund didn't realize she needed.
"I feel like I didn’t realize how much I needed to tell this story until it was happening," she said. "And how I felt afterwards really showed me a part of myself that had stopped kind of living after the abortion experience."
Others speaking through The Abortion Diary share sentiments like "I have never once regretted it" and "Almost every woman I know has had an abortion." For Englund, finally opening up about her experience made a small, but influential, change in her day-to-day life.
"It just reopened a part of my life that I had closed so firmly," she said. "I feel like whenever you close something like that, other things are affected, other parts of yourself are affected. … It’s more of a subtle inward change that I experienced."
While few of her peers noticed the difference, Englund said that after processing her decision, she has fully embraced her sexuality in a new way.
"It’s been nine years, so I’ve had a long time to really heal from it. But it’s just sort of my own self and how I relate to my body and how I feel about myself as a sexual person," she said. "I’m having a lot better sex these days, and I know that it’s from telling that story and starting that path of healing."
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