Lapeer mother, author tells story of hope after unplanned college pregnancy

Lapeer — Chaunie Brusie had it all planned out.

Set to graduate in May 2008 with a nursing degree from Saginaw Valley State University, Brusie was engaged to her soon-to-be husband, Ben, ready to start her career as a registered nurse.

In her senior year, the plan changed, throwing Bruise into a cycle of doubt, shame and feeling lost. Bruise, a committed cradle Catholic, discovered she was pregnant.

“Finding out I was pregnant was rough on me, spiritually and emotionally,” Brusie said. “I had a hard time dealing with the sense of shame of getting pregnant before getting married, and I was in a state of denial.”

Still in school, Bruise looked for support at the SVSU health care center on campus, hoping to find information about insurance, pregnancy resources, where to go for monetary support and a place to ask all the questions a young, unexpected mother might have. What she found was less than ideal.

“It was the worst experience in my life,” Bruise said. “There was no privacy on campus. I was just standing there at the counter and people were staring at me. I took the test, and it became positive. I just didn’t know what to do.”

Brusie said the tiny blue lines on the pregnancy test — later to become the namesake of her blog and book — forced her into a “fight or flight” mode of not knowing what she wanted to do. She wanted to keep her child, but discovered her college health care system was inadequate for caring for young mothers.

“The director of the college medical resources didn’t know anything about resources for young mothers,” Bruise said. “She said, ‘I can’t help you,’ and she left. I was in a state of shock.”

Luckily, Brusie knew another group on campus she could turn to; she had interned with them the summer before her ordeal.

Feminists for Life is a pro-woman, pro-life group at SVSU for which Brusie had volunteered and considered herself a passionate member.

“The prevailing thought behind the group is, if you are for abortion, you’re anti-woman,” Brusie said. “Their focus was on eliminating the root causes of abortion. In high school, I was doing a lot of pro-life causes, but I felt I wasn’t doing a lot — mostly I was making people angry.”

The group adopted Brusie’s cause, encouraging her every step of the way and directing her to the resources she needed to carry out a successful pregnancy while staying in school, something Brusie now says young mothers desperately need.

“I feel like (some) pro-lifers are asking women to do the impossible,” Brusie said. “We need to create a culture of caring for and supporting mothers throughout the entire pregnancy. We need to change the conversation about abortion, change what it means to have an unplanned pregnancy and young motherhood.”

Brusie said she was thankful to be in a committed relationship and had the support of Feminists for Life behind her, but acknowledged many young mothers don’t have that.

From her own experiences carrying to term an unplanned pregnancy — long stares at the grocery store, people questioning her intelligence, snickers about how she and her baby will be stuck in a cycle of poverty — Brusie feels many pro-life advocates don’t understand the ordeals young mothers face. Being against abortion only scratches the surface of the pro-life message, Brusie said.

“Having a baby doesn’t mean you have to be trapped in poverty,” Brusie said. “We need to create systems to support young mothers, to show them they aren’t alone. We need to remove the stigma about unplanned pregnancy and give young mothers the resources they need.”

Brusie gave birth to her first child, Ada, on May 17, 2008, one week after graduating from SVSU. With her husband still in school, Brusie began interviewing with the hospitals soon after giving birth, and secured a job to support her young family.

She has given birth to three other children, Mya, Jake and Sara, and the family belongs to Immaculate Conception Parish in Lapeer.

Brusie admits her unplanned pregnancy was a spiritually dark time for her.

“I didn’t know how to reconcile being happy about my baby, when that baby came from sin,” Bruise said. “I went through a spiritually dark time. I talked to my priest, got the forgiveness component. Forgiveness and compassion are the biggest things I drew from my faith.”

Brusie wanted to share her story with other mothers, so she started her blog, tinybluelines.com.

“I started the blog with the intention of if becoming a book,” Brusie said. “I did one-on-one interviews with people I knew, took material from the blog from other mothers and their experiences. Eventually, I did a book proposal.”

Since the book with the same name came out in 2010, Brusie has received positive feedback from other mothers. She now is a full-time, at-home writer for eight different websites, having been published in the New York Times and Huffington Post, and speaks to young women about empowerment and how abortion is not the only option for unplanned pregnancies.

From all her experiences, Brusie has an important message for pro-lifers and feminists about the need to support young mother holistically — otherwise, they’re set up for failure.

“The idea that pregnancy is an inconvenience is wrong, and it’s demeaning to women,” Bruise said. “Nothing is more natural than life. Nothing is more feminist than to say, ‘Hey, I’m going through this, you need to change your conception of society for me.’

“When I went through my pregnancy, it wasn’t a black and white, ‘Abortion is wrong, don’t do it.’ Instead, we need to empower these young women to show them the positives of motherhood and they can have successful careers.

“We shouldn’t make it that hard to be a young mother and support herself. That’s what it really means to be pro-life: to care for the mother and the baby before and after birth.”