A Life Affirmed

Humanity Through a Lens: The League of Utah Writers 2026 Anthology

AMY CLAIRE

“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”—RALPH W. EMERSON

Part 1

The chapel smelled of aging hymnals and far too much perfume, as if reverence and bad taste had been forced to coexist. My hand rested on my belly, which had taken on a life of its own, with persistent flutters and kicks as if staging a silent protest against church etiquette. My dress clung to me in all the wrong places, daring me to free myself without drawing attention as I waited for the sacrament meeting to begin.

“Claire, would you mind stepping into the hall to talk with me for a moment?” Sister Mabel’s voice broke through the prelude music, her usual composure softened by an unexpected tenderness. The request tightened something inside me, a knot of anxiety stirring in my stomach.

“Sure,” I whispered, rising slowly from the pew and following her out.

“Claire, you’ve been on the Primary presidency’s mind a lot lately." She folded her hands, pausing. “We’ve been praying for you and about you,” she continued, her gaze steady with warm, unfeigned sincerity.

“Oh.” I swallowed, my throat tight, confused by her meaning.

“You've been asked to serve as the nursery music leader.” Her tone was gentle and patient.

Completely caught off guard, my breath faltered. Nothing about my unwed pregnancy had prepared me. “You want me?” My voice was small, uncertain.

“Yes, Claire. We’d be truly honored to have you.” Her smile was both genuine and steadfast.

In a community where pregnancy outside of marriage was both socially and religiously shameful, I became the subject of months of hushed whispers and averted stares, yet Sister Mabel, shaped by that same culture, chose to see me through a different lens, offering me a place to belong despite the ways I had fallen short. She acted in quiet defiance, extending a lifeline to the broken, guided by the conviction that one soul mattered more than the inevitable scorn of the many.

For the first time in what felt like ages, I stood taller, even if only a fraction. I was more than a twenty-year-old unwed girl with a belly that would not lie. I was still a person of worth with purpose and gifts to share. I pressed my hand to my face, the sting of unshed tears sharp against my skin. “I… um… yes. I’d love to.”

Relief softened her features as she gave my arm a reassuring squeeze. “The little ones will be so lucky to have you, Claire.” Her eyes lit with joy as she turned to take her seat. In that moment, I dared to believe that perhaps God hadn't forgotten me after all.

As my delivery date neared, the notion that keeping my baby was selfish pressed in from all sides. I had hoped that external resources would provide clear and impartial guidance as I confronted the agonizing, deeply personal decision that would shape my entire future. Yet, I encountered the unilateral certainty of a religious framework whose intentions I did not believe were overtly malicious, but whose ecclesiastical authority conferred unquestioned legitimacy upon counsel in matters for which they had no formal training, education, or expertise.

Immersed in this hierarchy, particularly under the influence of my father, my bishop, and my new social services representative, I internalized the belief that, as a young woman, I was ill-equipped to navigate such a profound decision.

My father’s judgment arrived veiled in sanctimony, each word steeped in a hypocrisy so jarring it hollowed out everything around me. He claimed he would never date a woman with a child, casting the notion of keeping my baby as a scarlet letter. His stance was subtle but effective, laced with comical irony. My mother had dated him, a divorcee and father of two young children whom he had abandoned, yet I was somehow the undesirable prospect. His words nourished fear where love and support should have taken root.

Every conversation with the bishop overseeing my repentance process wound through me like a river of fire, each word igniting a tempest of emotion that left me doubting both my own intuition and the personal revelation I was entitled to receive from God yet never encouraged to seek. Even as he bore witness to my trembling body and uncontainable streams of tears as I pleaded for another alternative, he remained steadfast in his belief that keeping my child was selfish.

Since I had chosen not to marry the father, whose actions toward me made the relationship unsafe, I was unable to provide both a mother and a father for my child. Thus, the bishop declared adoption the only responsible course. He also recommended that I read The Miracle of Forgiveness to contemplate the gravity of my moral transgressions. Redemption served as the stated goal, but shame became the lesson I could not escape. By the time I finished, the real miracle seemed to be whether I could ever truly be forgiven.

When I first met Tom, my new LDS Social Services representative, I was twenty-seven weeks along in my pregnancy. Though calm on the surface, he radiated an unyielding resolve, every word and gesture propelled by a single purpose. He said it over and over, "I know it’s hard, Claire, but you need to do what’s best for the baby.” Each time, I fought to hold back the question clawing at my throat. Why had no one ever considered that I might be what was best for my baby? Even then, I knew the stigma of my unwed pregnancy had eclipsed any space for my opinion, my truth, or the life I had proven I was capable of sustaining.

I had spent two years navigating college entirely on my own, paying for tuition, rent, gas, and a car with no hand to steady me and no safety net to cushion a misstep. I had also been emotionally accountable for myself most of my life, learning to endure, adapt, and survive, lessons in self-reliance that left no illusions about depending on anyone else as a single mother. Yet somehow all of these strengths were overlooked, dismissed as though they had no bearing on the situation I faced.

The intent to convince me that only one rational choice existed reached its peak when I was presented with several Church‑produced instructional films about “Adoption and Unwed Parents.” The videos were part of a broader Church educational effort to make members aware of what the leadership "expected" regarding chastity and family structure in such situations. Rather than documenting reality, the reels sought to persuade, and I perceived their purpose as steering choices to align with Church policy, leaving no room for neutrality.

Each montage felt meticulously designed to unsettle me, spotlighting only the bleakest outcomes for mothers who kept their babies. Every image carried a discreet insistence that my judgment, my capability, and my heart were insufficient. I wept inconsolably, a spectator to a strategically engineered agenda that amplified my fears, deepened my sense of inadequacy, and planted the doubt taking root within me, ensuring adoption seemed inevitable.

Never once was I shown any depiction of the aftermath of giving up a child, nor was it ever addressed how I might endure the emptiness that would likely engulf me for the rest of my life, particularly given my age and unwavering belief that I could care for my baby. Bereft of guidance or information on how to objectively consider both options as viable, I faced a life-altering decision stripped of the tools or resources to navigate it wisely.

Around my third visit, Tom suggested that my parents join our next session so we could review the couples available to adopt my baby together. I felt a mixture of gratitude and disappointment when my parents so readily accepted the invitation, relieved not to confront the unthinkable alone, yet heartbroken by the lack of hesitation they displayed in letting go of their first grandchild, a response so devoid of emotion it seemed almost transactional to them.

When we arrived that late afternoon, Tom placed what looked like a scrapbook on the table. Its pages were filled with smiling couples eager to be chosen, each photograph quietly hinting at the future already imagined for my baby. Calm and untroubled, Tom waited, as though selecting a family for my child were no more complicated than choosing wallpaper for a nursery.

With each profile I read, the pressure tightened, and my heart fractured a little more. I felt compelled, pushed toward a choice that betrayed every instinct, overshadowed by the hope of strangers. My sacrifice was assumed, and my desires were rendered irrelevant in a role I was made to believe I had no right to claim.

Against all logic, I allowed my father to sway me into deciding that Tony and Shelli were the couple best suited to raising my child. His choice was based on a fleeting impression—that Tony’s amiable nature was sufficient to determine a matter of such monumental consequence. It was drawn from only a few pictures and a brief bio, as if it were no more significant than choosing which neighbor to invite to a barbecue rather than the man who would raise his grandchild.

My mother remained largely reserved throughout the process, as she had with nearly everything concerning my pregnancy. I was the specter of her past in the flesh, retracing the very footsteps she had walked at my same age, my pregnancy outside of marriage mirroring her own. Even when I had vowed to be different from her, to be wiser, to do better, I had not. Her words from that dreadful day I left for college flooded back, exacting their cruel irony. “Everything I hate about myself I see in you.” It was the explanation she had once given for telling all of my siblings that she loved them while never saying those words to me.

Tears filled my eyes the day I met Tony and Shelli, each one a painful reminder of how powerless I felt. Burdened by the demands of expectation, I walked a path I had been led to believe would earn my redemption.

I bore deep empathy for them, knowing they were blind to the storm raging within me and likely unaware I had never wanted to place my baby for adoption. We were trapped in a story none of us authored, woven from fibers of sorrow far crueler than hope should ever be.

Their yearning for a child, like my desperate longing to keep mine, had been shaped by a system that offered promise with one hand and heartbreak with the other. Yet even as I mourned for all of us ensnared in such a desolate narrative, I remained attuned to the shadowed architects behind the curtain, threading fate through each turn of the script.

And so I focused on the tender mercies, gifted by people like Sister Mabel, who joined me on that first Sunday to sing with the nursery children. A smile played at her lips as I clapped to the rhythm, my foot gently guiding the tempo. Wide-eyed and radiant, the little ones turned to me, their tiny voices rising in a symphony of delight that danced through the room like sunlight after a rain-soaked morning.

In that little room, a quiet sense of purpose stirred within me, grounded in the simple grace of being welcomed without question and accepted without condition. Among innocent hands and open hearts unhardened by the world's sharp edges, I found a fleeting but precious refuge where the heaviness could not reach me.

Notes to Claire,

Witnessing Sister Mabel stand against entrenched cognitive patterns and orthodox precepts to trust an unwed, pregnant girl when almost no one else did became a lasting internal reference. She courageously affirmed your sense of worth at a time when condemnation seemed to be the prevailing language. Her example modeled principled attentiveness, nurturing a seed of possibility and inclusion that endured despite an environment where inflexible protocols had long fostered a tendency toward judgment rather than compassion.

That treasured source of validation offered a psychological refuge amid the pervasive constraints you still navigated. Encased within a religious culture that tied spiritual rank to perceived expertise, you were subject to instruction that far exceeded the actual competence of those providing it. This shaped ingrained expectations and reinforced the belief that compliance was the price of atonement. Reading The Miracle of Forgiveness served only to intensify the fear and shame you had already assimilated. This was further compounded by the outcome-oriented framework of the LDS social services adoption program, whose predetermined assumptions afforded minimal space for personal agency.

Though you were aware that your presence was more often met with criticism from your parents, it is understandable that you clung to the faint hope that their first grandchild might shift that dynamic. That longing ultimately went unfulfilled, as your father continued to erode your confidence and self-regard, while your mother stayed largely silent, likely operating from her own shame and instinctively deferring to the patriarchal structure. This further deepened the emotional distance you carried within your family system.

“What is chosen in uncertainty often becomes the shape of a life.”—ANONYMOUS

Part 2

Seven months in, I hardly recognized myself. My nose seemed to have doubled in size, my once-slender fingers had ballooned like overstuffed sausages, and my ankles disappeared beneath swollen ridges of skin, as though they belonged to something that had floated ashore from a watery grave. A simple press of my finger into my feet left an indentation that lingered far longer than seemed reasonable. My legs were functional in theory but devoid of feeling. Tying my shoes or getting dressed required heroic levels of determination, and walking retired in favor of waddling. I had traded the earlier trimesters, defined by agonizing nausea and vomiting, for yet another reminder that pregnancy was not my body’s preferred state.

I contemplated what was happening to me as I lay in bed, a willing hostage in a body that had clearly turned against me. My “cankles,” as I had come to call them, rested on a pillow as though it made any difference. My face was puffed like a poorly made soufflé, my movement confined to stillness, as though trapped in a bad movie that refused to end.

Dr. Berry, the next-door neighbor and a chiropractor whose practice was part of his home, caught wind of my concerns and offered what help he could. His professional ethics would not allow him to remain a bystander, unlike Dr. Padilla, the small-town physician who served as my primary doctor throughout my pregnancy and who had largely dismissed my escalating symptoms. Recognizing that my condition required serious attention, Dr. Berry took my blood pressure. When the numbers flashed 201 over 118, a heavy stillness fell between us, the reading pressing down like a warning I could not ignore. He urged me to contact Dr. Padilla immediately, explaining that my systolic level was in the severe hypertensive crisis range, an ominous marker of preeclampsia threatening both my baby and me.

Though Dr. Padilla had brushed aside my previous cries for help, I believed this time he could not ignore the inarguable truth of my blood pressure reading. I went to the emergency room, where the nurse confirmed my dangerously high numbers and contacted Dr. Padilla, but to no avail. He ignored his responsibility to safeguard patient welfare and prevent harm, a shameful mockery of those who upheld their oath, like Dr. Berry.

Dr. Padilla regarded me less as his patient and more as a nuisance to be managed. He diagnosed me over the phone, never once coming to see me in person despite the hospital being mere miles from his home. The nurse relayed that I had preeclampsia, formerly known as toxemia, and assigned me strict bed rest for the remainder of my pregnancy.

The following days stretched into weeks as I surrendered myself to immobility. I could be found in one of two places: the family room recliner or my bed. Still, the swelling clung to my body like a hidden menace, rendering even the simple act of standing to brush my teeth perilous.

With the alarming blood pressure levels ignored and continuing to worsen, Dr. Berry insisted I pursue a second opinion. My mother contacted the medical staff in the closest city to our small rural town, informing them that I was 34 weeks pregnant and that my blood pressure readings over the past several weeks had been dangerously elevated.

Shock was evident in their voices, concern threaded with disbelief as they expressed astonishment that I had not already suffered a stroke. Without hesitation, they dispatched an ambulance, its sirens splitting the stillness of the night as it arrived just after 8:00 p.m. to take me eighty minutes to the larger city hospital. The paramedics encouraged me to stay calm as they checked my vitals, but their words did little to soothe the fear inside me.

With every passing mile, I felt the fragile weight of two lives, my own and the tiny one inside me, our worlds poised to be altered by a decision arriving six weeks ahead of schedule. My anxiety intensified as I remembered Tom explaining that once news of my labor reached him, he would call Tony and Shelli to the hospital, car seat in hand, waiting nearby for the moment the baby was cleared to be taken home.

Yet in the deafening hush between each heartbeat on the monitor, a fragile relief seeped through the turmoil, as if some unseen hand, fate, or force beyond comprehension had intervened. Going into labor so prematurely had provided a hidden fold of time where my deepest instincts long denied could remain untouched and uncompromised by those who claimed to know better than I did.

Because Tom, Tony, and Shelli would not be expecting notification of my labor so early, they would not be waiting at the hospital to influence or cast doubt on what came next.

As the hospital lights fractured the darkened sky, the ambulance rolled into the emergency entrance, and the doors opened with urgent precision. The paramedics lowered the gurney and wheeled me inside. Dr. Carter, the on-call physician, checked my blood pressure, still alarmingly high, before performing a cervical exam, only to discover I was already in labor.

My body had spoken, and whether I was ready or not, my child was about to enter the world. The severity of what I was experiencing became apparent when the doctor explained that an epidural was too risky, leaving me to endure childbirth entirely unmedicated. Already in a critical and tenuous condition, I would have to proceed without pain management, with no prior preparation or education through birthing classes or otherwise. The lack of both choice and readiness sharpened the reality of what lay ahead.

As I braced for the unknown, the room pulsed with urgency as nurses and doctors worked in rapid coordination around me. They attached the fetal heart rate monitor, placed IV lines for fluids, and started medications like magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures, then administered oxygen.

The birth pangs began as a mild tightening that deepened into a burning sensation. One after another, they crashed through me like an unforgiving tide, the pain swelling into a breathless ache that stretched on, carving its way through both my body and spirit. Time quickly lost its shape, and just when I thought I had nothing left to give, a hush settled over the room. Dr. Carter’s voice broke through at 11:33 a.m., announcing the birth of a baby boy. The delicate life that had defied the odds for seven and a half months had at last arrived.

The nurse placed all six pounds, three ounces, and eighteen inches of wonder into my arms. The sound of his cries slipped past the agony still shuddering through me, replacing it with a rising sense of hope as I took in his impossibly small countenance, a love so encompassing that it threatened to break me open. He was a miracle held together by something I believed only divinity could explain.

In that sacred moment, time seemed to stand still, and nothing else existed but him. Our heartbeats synchronized, our lives forever intertwined, and everything softened into the quiet assurance in his trusting eyes. I etched every delicate feature into memory, from the tips of his toes to his rosy lips, the softness of his skin, and the tiny fingers curled around mine. He was perfection made real, a living testament to a mother’s boundless devotion and unyielding resolve. A deep, unwavering sense of purpose settled over me as I realized that with his first breath, he had woven meaning into my life far greater than anything I had ever known.

That peace quickly collapsed under the urgent beeping of monitors tracking my baby’s vitals. The room erupted into frantic motion as the medical team whisked him away to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The nurse explained that, due to his prematurity, his lungs were struggling to transition to life outside the womb, and each breath required a fight his body was still learning to win. I could only watch as they carried him farther down the hallway. Helpless, I longed to follow.

At the same time, my body began to fail. Alarms signaled that my blood pressure, dangerously high throughout labor, swung violently low after the placenta was delivered. As I transitioned out of the preeclampsia state, what little stability I had left was stripped away. In waves of searing abdominal pain, several large clots passed as my uterus contracted with a force that felt like labor all over again. Concern over significant blood loss increased as my blood pressure continued to fluctuate.

Once I was medically stable, I was moved out of the delivery room and into a hospital room, where I learned that my sweet baby had stopped breathing on two separate occasions. Because he was born preterm, he was unable to feed orally and required fluids, medications, and nutrition delivered intravenously. To help stabilize him, a small IV was placed in a vein atop his scalp, where it could be more reliably secured given the immaturity of his vascular system at birth.

In the days that followed, my baby remained in the NICU while my body began to reverse the effects of the preeclampsia. I watched as the fluid that had accumulated in my tissues was gradually pulled back into circulation and eliminated. The swelling rapidly resolved, and the familiar contours of my face and the slender lines of my form reappeared. I lost nearly sixty pounds during my hospital stay, returning fully to my pre-pregnancy weight.

As I witnessed my physical metamorphosis, I could not help but marvel at the intrinsic resilience of my body, which, despite the depths of trauma, still found the will to heal and begin again.

With that transition, a steady truth took root within me: I was not at the mercy of my past. I could rewrite my narrative and move forward with renewed purpose. Yet even as this understanding settled in, each passing moment narrowed the window for making the biggest decision of my life.

Sleep evaded me that final night in the hospital, my thoughts circling the what ifs, each thread of consequence unraveling like a tapestry in my hands, every cost suspended within the choice of whether I would keep my baby boy or surrender him to Tony and Shelli. I didn’t know if I was allowed to choose love, to choose him, to choose myself. It felt like a mountain of sorrow pressed against my chest, each breath strained beneath the weight of a future I dared not claim.

Unable to calm the storm within, I returned to the one constant I had known, where unwavering, steadfast love always waited. God, who saw me in my entirety, had borne silent witness to every heartache, every moment of solitude, even when I no longer recognized myself.

I closed my eyes and bowed my head, pouring out my heart, not for certainty, but for permission to be my baby’s mother, knowing I could never reconcile the thought of giving my little boy away with the fierce maternal love burning within me. I opened the deepest chambers of my soul, letting the raw, unguarded truth rise like incense, trusting He would hear the sincerity of my prayer. I sought His affirmation in my decision to keep him, that it was not born of selfishness but of devotion in its purest, most tender form.

“Please, God,” I whispered, a quiet offering of hope. “Grant me the blessing to be his mother and the wisdom to know that You accept my will.” Tears traced my cheeks as silence settled in, heavy against my heart.

Reassurance poured over me, gentle and boundless, like sunlight through stained glass, cradling my weary frame in a warmth I had never known. “Claire, you can keep your baby if that is what you choose. Within you lies the fortitude, resilience, and courage to be the mother he needs.”

The fear and doubt that had held me captive for so long finally loosened their grip as that divine confirmation filled every corner of my soul with an unshakable sense of purpose. With it, the sterile hospital walls dissolved until only something sacred, something infinitely greater than me, remained.

My son remained in the NICU for a total of 14 days. During that time, he required a nasogastric (NG) tube for feeding due to significant feeding intolerance with projectile vomiting, making it difficult for him to retain feeds and sustain adequate nutrition. His bilirubin levels rose significantly, requiring intense phototherapy to lower them. He remained in a heated incubator with supplemental oxygen support as needed, under close monitoring as his tiny body slowly learned the rhythms it had been born too soon to weather. When he was discharged from the NICU, I brought him home at 5 pounds, 13 ounces, a fragile but resilient bundle of life I already loved beyond measure.

Notes to Claire,

The steady presence of individuals such as your neighbor and the city medical team, who acted swiftly in moments of crisis and worked to restore stability when it had been compromised, stood in sharp contrast to the small-town physician overseeing your pregnancy, whose clinical obligations left essential aspects of patient support unaddressed within the same system.

Through this experience, it became evident that credentials did not inherently ensure adherence to oath-bound standards. Rather, they revealed a disparity between institutional designation and the lived enactment of professional conduct. Amid this physiological instability, what remains clear is how fully your safety and your child’s were carried by those upholding the contours of their medical duty, alongside expressions of ordinary human decency. Together, these forces ultimately preserved both your lives.

Once the physical emergencies subsided, you faced an internal reckoning that could no longer be measured or resolved through external intervention. You did not dismiss what had been presented to you, nor did you allow yourself to be confined by it. Your decision shifted from outside viewpoints to what could be trusted within. Through prayer and faith in God, you moved beyond expectation into a deeper knowing that no longer relied on data or proof.