Supporting abortion healing across cultures. Learn how culture shapes abortion healing, grief, communication, and help-seeking—and how cultural humility can help providers offer safer, more responsive support.
Every person who seeks abortion healing support brings more than an abortion experience into the room. They also bring a lifetime of relationships, beliefs, traditions, expectations, family dynamics, and cultural messages that shape how they understand themselves and what healing may look like.
In this Quarterly Facilitator Training, Support After Abortion Healing Support Specialist Karin Barbito and Men’s Healing Coordinator Nyles Pinckney explored how culture can influence grief, communication, help-seeking, trust, and the ways people make meaning of their experiences.
The goal, Karin emphasized, is not to become an expert in every culture. That would be impossible. Rather, facilitators can become more curious, compassionate, and intentional about creating spaces where people feel safe enough to begin healing.
OVERVIEW
Karin began by noting that no two healing journeys look exactly alike. Even when two people have experienced similar circumstances, the beliefs, relationships, expectations, and cultural messages surrounding those experiences may be entirely different.
Nyles explained that culture can influence how someone understands pain, whether asking for help feels acceptable, how emotions are expressed, and even whether they are expressed at all.
Throughout the training, Karin and Nyles focused on four areas:
- Understanding cultural influences on abortion experiences and healing journeys
- Recognizing common cultural barriers to seeking support
- Learning how to adapt support while maintaining program integrity
- Practicing culturally responsive facilitation skills
WHY CULTURE MATTERS IN ABORTION HEALING
Culture is more than a person’s background. It can shape how someone understands a painful experience, how they cope, and whether talking about it feels safe.
Two people may have similar abortion experiences but respond very differently, and the beliefs and messages they have received throughout their lives play a role. One participant may begin sharing openly during a first session, while another may need weeks before speaking about what happened.
“Neither response is better than the other,” Nyles emphasized. They are simply different ways of processing.
Culture may also influence trust. Someone who has previously felt misunderstood or dismissed because of their background may enter a healing environment cautiously, unsure whether this will be another place where part of their experience is overlooked.
For facilitators, culturally responsive support does not require knowing everything about every group or tradition. Instead, it means staying curious, asking thoughtful questions, and resisting assumptions.
As Nyles explained, healing is better supported when participants do not feel that they must “leave part of themselves at the door.”
CHAT FEEDBACK: WHAT CULTURAL MESSAGES DID YOU HEAR GROWING UP?
To illustrate how early cultural messages can become deeply ingrained, Karin shared several messages she remembered from her own upbringing: men and women have different roles, do not talk back, marriage is for life, never quit, and life is not always fair.
She then invited attendees to consider the messages they heard growing up.
Participants shared examples including:
- “Sex is for marriage.”
- “Mental health problems are not real.”
- “We don’t need to share the bad things going on with others.”
- “Children should be seen and not heard.”
- “Boys don’t cry.”
- “Avoid serious conversations.”
- “Pretend everything is okay.”
- “Don’t show your emotions.”
Others described families where hard things remained private, problems were handled internally, or emotional expression was discouraged altogether.
These messages can become so familiar that people may not initially recognize them as cultural influences at all. Yet they can affect how someone later approaches grief, vulnerability, asking for help, or talking about an abortion experience.
CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON ABORTION HEALING
Nyles expanded the conversation by exploring several influences that may surround a participant’s abortion experience.
Belief systems can shape how someone understands responsibility, justice, identity, forgiveness, meaning, grief, and healing. Rather than assuming what a person believes, facilitators can allow the participant’s own worldview to guide the conversation.
Family expectations may influence what is considered acceptable to discuss. In some families, abortion may never have been spoken about at all. In others, there may be an expectation that the experience remains secret.
Gender roles can also shape emotional expression. A man may have been taught that grieving openly is weakness, while a woman may feel responsible for carrying everyone else’s emotions while setting aside her own.
Cultures and families also differ in their norms around emotional expression. Some people process experiences aloud, while others have learned that emotions are private.
Faith and spirituality may be a source of hope and restoration for one person, a source of shame for another, or an area associated with past hurt.
Finally, help-seeking behaviors vary widely. Some people reach for support quickly. Others may live with their experience for years or decades before believing that support is available for them—or that they are allowed to receive it.
The facilitator’s task is not to determine what any of these influences should mean for a participant. It is to remain curious about what they actually mean to that individual.
Healing begins when people feel understood, respected, and safe.
CHAT FEEDBACK: CULTURAL FACTORS IMPACTING CLIENTS
Attendees were then invited to reflect on cultural factors they had witnessed affecting participants’ healing journeys.
Responses highlighted a wide range of experiences: family secrecy, religious beliefs, rural communities, military culture, gender expectations, generational abortion experiences, educational priorities, fear of judgment, and messages minimizing abortion’s emotional impact.
Some participants described people who had internalized messages such as abortion being “not a big deal,” while simultaneously feeling deeply sad or alone. Others had encountered individuals who feared that family members would reject them if they knew, or who believed they were undeserving of forgiveness.
Several responses also highlighted how cultural norms can affect whether people believe healing support is necessary in the first place.
Nyles added a male perspective drawing from both his work and personal experience. He described the isolation some men experience when they do not believe there is a safe place to talk about their abortion experience or do not understand their own role and emotions surrounding it.
For Nyles, this included guilt, regret, anger, and at one point believing that he did not deserve forgiveness or support because of how badly he felt.
His experience underscored an important theme of the training: cultural expectations can shape not only how people grieve, but whether they believe they are permitted to grieve or receive care at all.
UNDERSTANDING CULTURAL HUMILITY & CULTURAL COMPETENCE
Early in her career, Karin shared, she believed that if she learned enough about different cultures, she might eventually know what every client needed.
The clients themselves quickly challenged that idea.
No amount of information about a culture can tell a facilitator everything about the individual sitting in front of them. Two people may share the same ethnicity, faith, community, or family background and still understand their experiences in very different ways.
Cultural competence can help facilitators develop knowledge and skills for interacting effectively across cultural differences. Cultural humility, however, reminds us that we never arrive at a point where there is nothing more to learn.
It is an ongoing posture of openness, reflection, curiosity, and willingness to let participants be the experts on their own stories.
FOUR WAYS TO GROW CULTURAL HUMILITY
Karin identified four practices that can strengthen cultural humility.
Continue learning
Cultural humility is not a certificate or a training that can be completed and checked off a list. Every participant can teach facilitators something new if they are willing to listen.
Choose curiosity instead of assumption
Every facilitator brings personal experiences, beliefs, values, and assumptions into the room. Cultural humility requires recognizing those influences and preventing them from interfering with the ability to serve someone well.
Practice self-reflection
Curiosity toward others is strengthened by awareness of ourselves. Understanding the lenses we bring into a conversation can help us notice when we are interpreting someone else’s experience through our own expectations.
Empower clients
A facilitator may be viewed as the expert in the room, but the participant remains the expert on their own experience.
Rather than directing someone’s healing journey, facilitators can listen, honor lived experience, invite the participant’s perspective, and work alongside them.
Sometimes one of the most useful things a facilitator can say is simply: “Help me understand.”
CHAT FEEDBACK: BENEFITS OF PRACTICING CULTURAL HUMILITY
When attendees were asked about the benefits of cultural humility, their responses included greater empathy, stronger listening skills, increased trust, personal growth, openness, and greater willingness among participants to share honestly.
One attendee noted that when clients recognize genuine interest from a facilitator, they may become much more open.
Karin reflected that differences do not have to prevent meaningful connection. In fact, approaching those differences with respect can help create deeper connection.
The key takeaway was simple:
We do not need to be experts in someone’s culture to support them effectively.
COMMON CULTURAL BARRIERS TO ABORTION HEALING
Cultural barriers can function like invisible walls between a person and the support they may need.
Nyles identified several examples:
- Stigma and shame
- Family secrecy
- Religious condemnation
- Fear of community judgment
- Language differences
- Distrust of helping organizations
- Gender expectations
- One-size-fits-all approaches to healing
Facilitators may not always know why a particular barrier exists, and they do not necessarily need to.
What matters is how they respond when someone hesitates, becomes quiet, pulls back, or appears to resist support.
Nyles encouraged facilitators to reconsider the idea of “resistance.”
What may appear as resistance could actually be a form of protection.
Someone may have learned that silence is safer, vulnerability creates risk, or sharing a painful experience has consequences. Behaviors that now appear to interfere with healing may once have helped that person protect themselves from shame, judgment, rejection, or further hurt.
The facilitator’s role is not to force someone through that protective wall. It is to build enough safety and trust that the person may eventually decide they no longer need it.
RECOGNIZING DIFFERENT EXPRESSIONS OF GRIEF
Just as culture affects communication, it can also affect how grief appears.
Some people express emotion openly. Others become quiet, distant, angry, numb, busy, or seemingly unaffected.
Karin reminded attendees not to measure another person’s grief according to how they themselves would express it.
To demonstrate how easily assumptions form, attendees were shown images of people with different facial expressions and asked what the individuals might be feeling.
Participants suggested possibilities ranging from numbness and skepticism to shame, guardedness, sarcasm, distrust, and pain hidden beneath a composed exterior.
One attendee suggested that a woman in one image might be watching the facilitator’s reaction first to determine whether she could trust them.
That observation captured the point of the exercise: many interpretations may appear plausible, but without asking the person, they remain interpretations.
The takeaway:
Avoid measuring healing by emotional display.
COMMUNICATION SKILLS ACROSS CULTURES
Words, questions, and listening habits can all affect whether participants feel safe enough to share.
Nyles offered several communication practices for bridging cultural differences:
- Ask, don’t assume.
- Listen for values and beliefs.
- Use person-centered language.
- Respect different communication styles.
- Reflect what you hear.
- Allow for silence.
“Allow for silence” immediately became one of the most popular responses in the chat.
Karin acknowledged how uncomfortable silence can feel for facilitators. There can be an impulse to fill the space by talking, offering a tissue, or changing the subject. Yet immediately interrupting a quiet moment can take away a participant’s opportunity to sit with what has surfaced.
“I work every day to become comfortable with being uncomfortable,” Karin shared.
For Nyles, the communication skill that stood out most was “Ask, don’t assume.”
Whether working with athletes as a coach or supporting clients, he tries to lead with compassion and curiosity, allowing the other person freedom to speak rather than beginning from a predetermined interpretation of their experience.
EXERCISE: REFRAME THE QUESTIONS
Attendees then practiced turning potentially judgmental questions into more compassionate, open-ended ones.
The first example of a bad question was:
“Don’t you think you should have done something different?”
The reframed version was:
“When you look back now, what things influenced you?”
The second example of a bad question was:
“What is still making you upset after all these years?”
Attendees offered alternatives such as asking what still hurts, what comes up when the person thinks about the experience, or what they are feeling now.
The suggested reframe was:
“How has this experience continued to affect you over time?”
The difference is not merely wording. The original questions contain assumptions: that the person should have acted differently, or that enough time has passed that they should no longer be struggling.
The reframed questions create room for the participant to explain their experience without first having to defend it.
Karin also encouraged caution with questions beginning with “Why did you…?” Even when judgment is not intended, “why” questions can sometimes sound as though the person is being asked to justify themselves.
Alternatives such as “What was that like for you?” or “What was happening for you at that time?” communicate curiosity instead of evaluation.
The goal is not to analyze someone’s choices. It is to understand their experience.
CULTURE: MANY DIVERSE INFLUENCES
Culture includes far more than ethnicity, religion, or language.
Nyles outlined many influences that can affect how someone understands abortion, grief, guilt, shame, forgiveness, purpose, and hope:
Family and community may influence expectations around privacy, conflict, emotional expression, and support.
Race, ethnicity, and heritage can intersect with community expectations, discrimination, and trust in healthcare or helping professionals.
Geographical region may affect anonymity, access to support, and local attitudes toward abortion.
Generation and age may influence comfort with conversations about mental health, emotions, or seeking outside help.
Gender roles and expectations can shape beliefs about strength, vulnerability, grief, and asking for support.
Socioeconomic and educational background may influence access to services, resources, and available forms of support.
Language and immigration experiences can affect communication, emotional expression, and a person’s comfort navigating services.
Faith and spirituality may influence guilt, grief, forgiveness, hope, or a person’s understanding of healing.
Professional cultures, including fields such as healthcare, the military, or law enforcement, may create strong expectations around privacy, composure, self-reliance, and emotional expression.
No single factor explains a person. Each participant brings a unique combination of influences.
Rather than trying to determine which ones matter in advance, Nyles recommended simply asking:
“Is there anything about your background, values, family, community, or beliefs affecting how you experience this?”
If someone identifies an influence, the facilitator can follow with:
“Tell me more about what that means for you.”
These questions allow the participant—not the facilitator—to identify what is meaningful.
CHAT EXERCISE: CULTURAL SCENARIOS
Attendees considered the following scenario:
A participant joins a healing group but rarely speaks. She says, “In my family, we don’t talk about these things. We just move on.”
Nyles noted that family norms surrounding emotion immediately stood out to him. The participant may have learned that painful experiences remain private, that discussing them is inappropriate, or that family struggles should be kept secret to avoid shame or protect the family’s reputation.
Attendees similarly identified family expectations and family shame as possible influences.
But the purpose of the exercise was not to correctly diagnose why the participant was quiet. Those possibilities should create questions, not conclusions.
The key message:
The goal is not to be an expert in every belief system, but to listen with curiosity, respect, and cultural humility. Don’t assume. Ask.
BUILDING SUPPORTIVE ABORTION HEALING ENVIRONMENTS
Once facilitators understand the importance of culture and cultural humility, the next question is how to translate those principles into the healing environment itself.
Karin emphasized that belonging is often communicated through small things: how someone is greeted, the language used, the assumptions avoided, and the willingness of facilitators to listen.
A supportive environment communicates:
You belong here.
Your story matters.
You are safe to share here.
Karin encouraged facilitators to ask themselves:
“Would someone from a different background feel they belong here?”
Saying that everyone is welcome is not necessarily the same as creating an environment where everyone experiences belonging.
Participants bring their culture, family, beliefs, values, history, and personal experiences into the healing space. A truly supportive environment allows them to bring those parts of themselves without feeling that they must hide, change, or minimize them to fit in.
PRACTICAL WAYS TO REDUCE CULTURAL BARRIERS IN ABORTION HEALING
Karin offered several concrete ways facilitators can reduce cultural barriers.
Use welcoming language. Words can communicate whether someone is genuinely invited into the conversation.
Avoid assumptions and stereotypes. Cultural knowledge should never replace seeing the individual.
Offer diverse referral options. Not every participant will connect with the same form of support, so multiple pathways can better honor individual beliefs, needs, and preferences.
Consider accessibility. This may include language, communication style, readability, or whether resources are realistically available to the people being served.
Ask for feedback. The people receiving support can help facilitators understand whether their needs are actually being met.
At the center of these practices is emotional safety. Vulnerability becomes much more possible when someone believes they will be heard, respected, and cared for.
CHAT FEEDBACK: ONE THING I’LL DO DIFFERENTLY NOW
To close the teaching portion of the training, attendees were asked to complete the sentence:
“One thing I will do differently as a facilitator after today’s training is…”
Karin reflected that she wants to become even more intentional about allowing people to be where they are without placing expectations on where she thinks they should be.
Because healing providers naturally want to see people feel better and grow stronger, it can be easy to develop expectations about where a participant “should” be after six weeks, twelve weeks, or another period of time.
Her reminder: no expectations.
Nyles returned to one of his central takeaways: ask, don’t assume. He also wants to remain increasingly aware of cultural differences and belief systems while staying curious enough to learn from the people he supports.
Attendees shared commitments including:
- Approaching clients with greater empathy
- Becoming more mindful of language
- Using more “what” and “how” questions
- Avoiding unnecessary “why” questions
- Becoming more curious about cultural perspectives
- Remembering that vulnerability begins with emotional safety
Karin and Nyles closed with four key takeaways:
Culture shapes healing experiences.
Cultural humility is more important than cultural expertise.
Healing support should be adaptable and participant-centered.
Meeting people where they are creates a greater opportunity for healing.
Q&A
Q: WHAT IF A CLIENT DOESN’T SHOW TRADITIONAL SIGNS OF GRIEF? HOW CAN WE FIND OUT WHAT MAY BE HAPPENING BENEATH THE SURFACE?
A: Nyles emphasized that grief does not always look like visible sadness or tears. In his own experience, it appeared as isolation, anger, and irritability. Others may stay busy, minimize their experience, or seem emotionally disconnected as ways of coping.
Rather than assuming someone is not grieving, facilitators can remain curious and use open-ended questions such as:
“How has this experience affected you?”
or
“What has this experience been like for you over time?”
The goal is to allow the participant to describe their internal experience rather than asking their outward behavior to prove what they are feeling.
Q&A: HOW CAN PROVIDERS SUPPORT SOMEONE WHO HAS BEEN TAUGHT TO KEEP PAINFUL EXPERIENCES PRIVATE?
A: Karin explained that someone who has learned through family, culture, religion, or past experiences to keep pain private may enter abortion healing cautiously.
Rather than treating that caution as something to overcome immediately, providers can respect the protective pattern while creating an environment where sharing remains optional.
Helpful approaches include:
- Building trust gradually
- Giving participants control over what they share and when
- Normalizing a wide range of emotional responses
- Reinforcing confidentiality
Trust does not appear simply because people have entered the same room. It develops through repeated experiences of safety, respect, and consistency.
Q: WHAT ARE RESPECTFUL WAYS TO ASK ABOUT SOMEONE’S SPIRITUAL BELIEFS?
A: Karin encouraged facilitators to begin by listening carefully to the language participants already use rather than assuming a belief system based on identity or background.
A facilitator might simply ask whether the person would like to share more about their beliefs.
When encountering a tradition they know little about, Karin suggested that genuine curiosity can be appropriate:
“I don’t know much about your beliefs, and I’d really like to learn. Could you share what’s important to you?”
The facilitator does not need to share the participant’s beliefs in order to respect them. The aim is to understand what those beliefs mean to the person receiving support.
Q: WHAT IF A CLIENT FEELS DISCONNECTED FROM THEIR FAITH COMMUNITY BECAUSE OF THEIR ABORTION EXPERIENCE?
A: Nyles acknowledged that fear, shame, and uncertainty about how others will respond can leave people feeling disconnected from a faith community or unsure whether they still belong there.
Drawing from his own experience growing up in South Carolina’s Bible Belt and later processing his abortion experience, he emphasized that facilitators do not need to resolve that relationship for the participant.
Their role is first to provide a safe place where the person can speak honestly about those feelings without judgment.
By listening, acknowledging the experience, and allowing the participant to explore what they need, facilitators can support healing without deciding for them what faith, community, forgiveness, or belonging should look like.
Q&A: PLEASE EXPLAIN PERSON-CENTERED LANGUAGE
This response has been revised for accuracy and clarity following the live Q&A.
A: Person-centered language is part of trauma-informed care. It recognizes that the person has the right and ability to decide what they want to share, how they describe their experience, and what they want to do next.
In conversation, that can mean:
- giving them room to choose whether to answer or go deeper
- avoiding language that tells them what they should feel, believe, or do
- offering possibilities or invitations rather than directing them
- allowing them to define their own experience and needs
- asking permission around discussing sensitive topics or before offering information or expertise
- Using language that stays focused on that person, not the provider
- supporting their decisions about next steps
For example:
- Not person-centered language: “Tell me about your abortion loss.”
The word “loss” assigns a label to their experience. And “tell me” shifts the focus to the provider. It also gives a directive that can feel like pressure.
Instead, a person-centered invitation might sound like: “Would you like to share what your abortion experience was like for you?”
“Would you like to share” — that’s invitation, it respects agency (they can say yes, no, or not yet). “What your abortion experience was like for you” doesn’t assign meaning, and leaves room for them to explain in their own words and feelings. - Instead of “You’re carrying a lot of regret,” you could say “Would you like to talk about what feelings have come up for you?”
- Instead of “You need healing, you can start our xyz program,” you might say “Would you like me to share some different support options so you can see what might feel most helpful to you right now?”
FINAL TAKEAWAY
Culturally responsive support is not about knowing everything about every person who walks into a healing space. It is about recognizing that each person brings a unique combination of beliefs, relationships, expectations, experiences, and cultural influences—and allowing those realities to shape how we listen and respond.
Cultural humility asks facilitators to replace certainty with curiosity. Instead of deciding what grief should look like, what healing should mean, or why someone is responding a certain way, we can ask thoughtful questions, listen for what matters to them, and give them room to define their own experience.
When participants do not have to adapt themselves to fit our expectations, they have more freedom to bring their whole story into the room. And that kind of safety, respect, and genuine curiosity can create the conditions where healing has room to grow.
© Support After Abortion
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© Support After Abortion