 Giving life a second chance | ||||
| By NADINE WILSON All Woman writer Monday, June 30, 2008 |
WITH a warm smile that belies her years of struggle and hardship, Christina Milford easily gains the confidence of pregnant women in distress who come to seek her advice at the Pregnancy Resource Centre of Jamaica in Montego Bay, St James, for which she is the founding director.
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| MILFORD...[as an unwed mother] you were made to feel like a second class citizen (Photo:Alan Lewin) |
The fact that she herself had contemplated an abortion after becoming pregnant after a rape at age 18, has contributed to her saving and restoring many lives as she counsels women who feel as hopeless as she was when she found out she was pregnant.
For her then, she thought pregnancy could not have happened at a worse time as she was in the process of sealing her career as a missionary nurse, a dream she had since she was a little girl.
"I didn't expect that I would get pregnant, even when I was pregnant I was in denial, it could not be, it could not possibly be," she tells All Woman. "I remained in that state of denial for a long time."
Milford, who was a pre-trained teacher at the time, said the day she was raped was the same day she had an interview with a group from the Ministry of Health about her desire to become a nurse. She had gone to Kingston for the interview and had met the young man who invited her out for a movie. She accepted because he convinced her that he lived near her uncle. It was after that night that she found out this wasn't the case. Her unfortunate experience not only hampered her chances of going to England to study, but her dreams of seeing her parents who had migrated to England when she was a baby, leaving her and her two older siblings to be raised by paternal grandparents.
"My father said that his mother advised him that he needed to go and seek something better for his children because by then there were three little ones and he was just 25 years old," she says. Her mother joined him five years after.
"I thought I could get my training in England and in that way I could kill two birds with one stone. I was in the process of executing that plan when I met this young man who decided it didn't matter what I said or did, he was going to have sex with me anyway," she says.
The same day Milford found out she was pregnant was the same day she found out she was chosen to study to be a nurse in England.
She kept the fact that she was raped a secret, only confiding in a close friend, but it eventually reached the ears of her brother who in a state of anger advised her to get an abortion.
"I didn't know about abortion, I thought it would solve my problem, that much I knew. So I packed my bags. I put in my six nighties, I didn't know a thing, I didn't know what it would entail, I figured it was just hospitalisation. They (brother and friends) said if I went and told them exactly what happened, I would get a free abortion so I said okay."
But with the pregnancy having reached three months at the time, the doctor discouraged her from going through the procedure.
Speaking of her experience then she says, "I got to the place, pushed by my circumstances, where I thought this is what I had to do, thankfully it is not today. Because today's doctor would have aborted my child, but that day that doctor said 'this is too far gone, don't try to do it'."
Today, the son whose life she almost ended is an engineer with his bachelor's and master's degrees and a family of his own.
"I know that a child in a rape situation is like an atonement for that terrible act. I don't know how the Lord had planned to turn it around, but somehow he turned around something that was bad to make something that is wonderful," she says.
Her son only learnt of the circumstances surrounding his birth when he was in his 20s.
"I sat him down and I told him what happened and he said, 'mommy, you telling me that this man raped you', and I said yes, and he said, 'I don't want to talk about it anymore', and he was just very upset. We just never spoke about the issue since then."
But as if being raped and pregnant with no father for her child was not bad enough, Milford said the level of discrimination she received as an unmarried mother in her time only helped to worsen her situation. The level of alienation she felt resulting from her circumstances left her feeling lonely and this is what she believed is attributable to her having another son out of wedlock.
"I was very lonely when my second son's father came along. He took a very persistent approach. He would offer me rides and even though I refused, he persisted. And then I finally took a ride and we became involved."
Though the decision to have a second child was not planned, she vehemently refused to do an abortion as was advised by the young man, instead she chose to raise her two sons alone. But this was not easy.
"You were made to feel like a second class citizen. You are young and you are beautiful and you are desirable, however, when the men discovered that you have a child or two, then you are not quite as desirable anymore. And because you are a Christian, you won't submit to certain things that others might do to keep this other person interested," she says. "So you feel this sense of being left behind because you have what they call baggage."
But her younger son Kavon says his mother did not raise them alone as she had the full support of her Heavenly Father. Shortly after he was born, his mother decided to become a Christian and so both sons were raised in the church.
"He (God) was always there, He is the one responsible for her vision and got her to do what she is doing now," he tells All Woman.
But despite her new-found faith in God at the time, Milford admits to not carrying her sons with a sense of pride, she also did not speak to them about their fathers. This was borne from her fear that she would be forced to say something negative about them. "I didn't want to poison my sons' minds," she says.
In order to support herself and her sons, she worked with local telephone provider, Cable and Wireless overseeing their computer network in St Ann and Portland until her position was made redundant in 2000 after spending 27 years with the company.
Shortly after, she went to work in St James with Christ for the Nation, an organisation that trained missionaries, but when they closed down a year after, her position there was made redundant also.
It was at this point that she was encouraged to attend Bible School in Tennessee where she planned to pursue a four-year degree in theology. As fate would have it, she met some representatives from Care Net, an organisation that started pregnancy centres in the United States of America when she moved to Atlanta to live with her brother shortly after. She also met a Jamaican lady who operated a centre in Florida who invited her to stay with her. She was able to gain the experience of counselling women who wanted to abort their children and learn how a pregnancy resource centre was operated. This experience she said was invaluable.
"I had my whole thinking revolutionised. Because I was thinking, 'how people so wicked, how they could be killing these babies'. But through training with the experience, I discovered that is not wicked them wicked, they just don't have any help and they just think this is what they have to do," she says.
Armed with this experience, when Milford came back in 2004, she started counselling young women who were thinking about abortion.
It wasn't until 2006 that she actually built the resource centre in Montego Bay and a home for some of the women she counsels with the assistance of another charity organisation known as Share Hope International. Her resource centre not only offers free counselling to abortive women, but AIDS patients too, and also offers free pregnancy tests for those who suspect that they might be carrying a child.
Milford says some of the women she counsels are post abortive and counselling can be challenging at this period as they are affected spiritually, physically and emotionally by the loss of their child.
It is for this reason that she is currently pursuing her degree in counselling to be more effective in her ministry.
With such a busy life, Milford admits to not having enough time to engage in hobbies. Most of her time is spent overseeing the work at the home, counselling young women and studying.
This is a fact that her son is not happy with. "It is her vision so I have to support her, but it taking up too much of her time so she hardly gets time for herself. I think she pushes herself too hard though and I try to talk to her about it but she won't listen," he said.
Despite her struggles, Milford, who says she had stopped dreaming after she was raped, says she has lived a very fulfilling life.
"I am thankful for every path that I have been on because it has allowed me to become who I am now. When you have passed through, then you become stronger and when you are healed, you can help somebody else.
allwoman@jamaicaobserver.com
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