After the Story - Choices Like Rivers Episode 8
After the Story - Choices Like Rivers Episode 8
This podcast discusses each chapter of Choices Like Rivers and each episode is posted directly after the book episode. This corresponds to Chapter 4 Section 1.
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Sharon and Patty did become friends. I believe Sharon was drawn into the friendship because Patty was more mature than the other girls at the school. She felt a kinship to Patty because she had been pregnant, even though she couldn’t bear to disclose that fact to her.
Here was a woman who was pregnant and chose to have her child. How would she feel about Sharon if she knew that she had aborted her unborn baby?
Patty also felt close to Sharon. Something drew them together and they became very close.
I would say it is probably true that Sharon did live vicariously through Patty and her pregnancy. It was a bittersweet existence. Getting to experience the pregnancy while still slightly on the outskirts.
That is very clear in this hospital scene. Relieved that Patty reached for her and drew her in, Sharon was still panicked over what to expect during the delivery.
In this time period it was hit and miss whether the father participated in the delivery. Most did not want to. Lenny was shell shocked and waited in the waiting room.
As soon as the new baby was in Patty’s arms Sharon felt the truth of her past come flooding back. A wall, that had secretly been there all the time, reared its ugly head and Sharon firmly felt the distance between her and Patty’s life.
Lenny was ushered in and Sharon was out. She stumbled to the waiting room in fresh pain. The pain of the abortion that she had worked so hard to suppress came flooding back.
But, she was Patty and Lenny’s friend and once the delivery was over and everything had settled, they wanted to share the experience and their new son with Sharon.
She fell instantly in love with the new baby boy, Evan. Holding him so quickly after his birth bonded her even firmer to him.
As the nurse ushered her out and she looked back to see the new family unit, she felt like the true outsider that she was.
Back then a woman did stay in the hospital longer after delivery. And during that time, Sharon came as often as she could. As one would assume, she was over the top excited about baby Evan.
During the time in the hospital Sharon was consumed by visiting and then planning the coming home party. However as soon as the party was over, loneliness washed over her.
She was still living at home with her parents since she was going to school and could not afford a place of her own.
Here we see the beginnings of an on going problem for Sharon. The need to drink the wine came from the need to wash away the pain.
One glass turned into an entire bottle. We saw this same behavior when she got Molly Sue to bed that first night and it contributed to her lack of response when Molly Sue woke frightened in the night.
Does Sharon become an alcoholic or does she just use the drinking to medicate her pain? Many things can be used to medicate pain such as eating, gambling, shopping and so many other activities.
Without learning to evaluate and allow your pain to be healed, it will only fester and abscess. Just as a person might take medication for a long term illness, Sharon medicated her painful emotional abscess with drinking.
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