Body Image

By Sara A.

I love my body.  But I am still learning to like it.  Still learning to own it.  Over the course of the last 4 years it has been through so much.  It has carried two pregnancies, birthed two healthy beautiful boys and has nourished those boys for at least 13 months each.  In total, my body has been shared with another being for almost 4 years straight.

While I've been amazed and humbled by all that my body has been capable of, this process has left me feeling disconnected and distant from my body.  I look in the mirror and no longer recognize the body that I see reflected back to me.  Nor do I feel as comfortable in my own skin as I did before having kids.  

I think it all comes back to ownership.  I've given my body away.  For better or worse, it belongs to my children now.  It bears the marks that they have left behind.  This is what allows me to love it.  I love that I am so intimately connected to them.  That they have branded me for life.  Their marks are better and more cherished than any tattoo or piercing. They are real.  They are raw.

But loving the process and liking the outcome are very different things.  I'm having a hard time reconciling that the scars that brought me such joy are also responsible for making me feel so self-aware.  I am jealous of the women who flaunt their jiggly, scarred, real post-baby bodies and proudly exclaim that "THIS IS TRUE BEAUTY."   The women who can embrace with such courage these new vessels they've acquired.

I want to be that woman.  In my heart I am that women.   But in my head, I still want to do something about the stretch marks on my stomach and the pouch that seems to be a constant reminder that "you are a mom now."  

In all honesty, I think the truth is that my discomfort with the physical changes is really just a reflection of the profound inner changes I have gone through since having children. Pregnancy and parenting rock your world, physically and emotionally.  My emotional world is a land mine.  When I think of all the ways this world can (and in all likelihood will) hurt my children I am an absolute mess.  It is a feeling of complete and utter vulnerability.  I've never been in charge of the world, but before having children I at least had a sense that I had some control over it.  Since having kids, that veil has been lifted.

So, in the end, I focus on the physical.  I try to grasp at the last bit of control that I have. The only thing I might be able to control.  My body.