I gave birth to my daughter one year ago this month, and unlike many of my peers; I had done very little to whip my body back into any other shape but tired. While others around me were gliding back into their pre-baby panties I was still wearing my maternity stretch pants. Using the extra width of the belly band as a sort of Love-Handle-Sucker-Inner. Life had gotten the best of me. Due to some post baby health complications, being part of a blended family with a special needs child, and the fact that I love food more than I love beach bodies; I was left feeling pretty down about my body this past year. Then, as I was swimming laps at the local gym it occurred to me. Have I ever really loved my body, like ever?
As far as I can remember back I was always waiting for the big break where I would be seen as beautiful. Like beauty was going to finally invite me into her club after a few hard years of acne, or excess weight, or the general awkward years of puberty. I never looked like what in my mind beauty was supposed to be, so therefore I was an outsider. Not a member of the club.
"Next year I will have better skin, next year I will wear a bikini, next year I will wear clothes that bleed style." Then the kids came and it all went to crap. I was in my mid-20s with my first, so I bounced back kind of sorta ok. I have never been a small girl, and I thought that small meant beautiful so I was already at a disadvantage. But my age allowed my post-partum body to slowly suck itself back in to what I thought was a semi-presentable state. The second child came in my mid-thirties, and well, I suppose I had buried the bikini dream for good.
So I started going to the gym about five months ago. The first day I arrived shuffled meekly past all the bronzed goddess bodies standing nude and secure in front of their lockers, cozied up inside the one and only changing room with a curtain and slipped out of my clothes and into my swimsuit. My no frills, plain jane, purely functional lap swimming swim suit. Then I wrapped a towel around my waste to cover my thighs and waddled off to the pool. I dropped the towel as close to the ledge as possible and jumped in to start swimming off years and years of built up body resentment. It did not work. The weight was not going anywhere. But something else happened. That time in the water, moving my body, feeling the sensations as I splashed around began to change my mind. Weeks of creeping to the corner change room past the women who I thought had better bodies than I started to become redundant. How was I going to change my body if I could not change my mind? If I never believed for a second that I could be beautiful the way I was, how was I ever going to believe I would be beautiful with how I wanted to be? It had to come from the inside out, all change does. I had been hiding in that corner for twenty-five years wishing to look like someone I would never be, I had to drop that towel.
So the next day, walking through the locker room past all the pretty people I pulled over at a locker...slowly pulled my shirt over my head, slipped out of my pants, nervously stepped out of my undergarments and stood exposed outside of the change room. Among all types of women, bold and beautiful and brave enough to just be who they were. There at the gym to treat themselves right, to feel better, meet and exceed goals. Nobody stared, no one made a comment, I was just like everyone else. I slid into my swimsuit and walked humbly to the pool, no towel...thighs doing what thighs do when a woman walks. Walked to the ledge, and jumped in.
I am thirty-five years old. I have spent two thirds of my life body shaming my own self. Since the moment society handed me a Barbie Doll I began to believe I was not good enough unless I looked like her. But I have yet to see Barbie have a baby, or go through surgery, or struggle to raise a family of four. it. It has survived many storms, and even though my head and heart have grown weary at times, my body has never let me down. So I decided to make a promise that day in the pool. To love the skin, I am in, whatever shape it decides to take; because the beautiful thing about it is that it is mine. It belongs to me, just like the babies it made. And the best thing I can do for my kids is to love and nurture them into exactly who they were meant to be; the same goes for me. Too much time has gone by hiding in the shadows, it is time to start loving all the stuff that makes me me, and strut my way into the future with love and confidence.