The woman whose baby was brutally cut from her womb during an attack last March is now speaking out about the experience.
“It’s really been crippling,” Michelle Wilkins, 27, told People of her ordeal. “There was this confusion of how to handle it because physically I’m good. I’m still a very young person and so I felt this drive to live, but so much within me was just so tired and exhausted and overwhelmed with everything that I’ve experienced.”
Dynel Lane, the woman who killed Wilkins’ baby, was convicted of murder in February.
It was during Lane’s trial that Wilkins says she felt in touch with her anger. “I don’t mean anger like blinding or all consuming because I still maintain a perspective of her humanity, my humanity, and how we are connected by that,” she said. “But we also make choices which have consequences and in her case those consequences caused a lot of pain.”
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Write to Tessa Berenson Rogers at tessa.Rogers@time.com