See me at fourteen years old. I monitored every single bite of food that passed into my mouth. I ran my hands along my stomach to see how it felt to be one bite bigger. Each bite of food felt like a threat. At the end of the meal, I would turn sideways in the mirror to assess the damages. How much my hip bones protruded from my body and how much my belly caved in determined how I felt about myself. It made me feel sick to see what food did to me. Sometimes I panicked seeing my belly with a meal of food in it. Eating felt like a big mistake.
I only felt good about myself in periods when I wasn’t eating, and even then, I was never quite as good as I wanted to be. Confidence and acceptance of myself were always a little out of reach, a few pounds away.
I told myself that once I got to that elusive point of perfection, then someone would notice me. Then someone would love me. Then someone would care. Then I would feel good about myself. I could love myself then.
My confidence didn’t improve. In fact, I would never be good enough.
I’m about 16 years and 60 pounds over that girl. A whole lot of life has happened in between.
Getting my life in shape
For months I’ve seen health coaches and magazines advertising, “Feel confident by the pool this summer. Do THIS to get in shape.” It’s nothing new. It happens every year. This year it feels particularly ridiculous, though.
This year I’m like, “Whoa. Chill. I’m in therapy. I’m trying to get my life in shape. I’m working on big things like healing from emotional and sexual abuse, retraining the way I talk to myself, learning to cultivate healthy relationships. I’m coming into my identity as someone’s mother and processing the transition from maiden to mother. I’m keeping a child alive and helping him learn what it means to be human. The way my body looks in a swimsuit is at the very bottom of my list of things that need my attention.”
Could I actually just erase it from the list? Because I’m working really hard to not let my confidence and self-worth hinge on the gaze of others. How my body looks has been on my list of things to worry about for…oh, say 20 out of my 30 years. I don’t think it’s worth my time anymore.
A mother’s body and emotions
In many ways this year I have felt like a stranger to myself. A stranger in a strange land.
My body does not feel like the body I knew before the baby. Some nights I wake up with my breasts engorged with milk, like hard balloons full of sand and gravel. Other times they feel floppy like the bags of icing you squeeze to make designs on cakes, and my stomach is spongy, like dough rising. My feet are a different size and will probably never fit in the shoes I wore before pregnancy.
Fluctuating hormones have changed what it feels like to live in my head and heart.
Issues I thought I had resolved, parts of me I thought had healed, were cracked open again.
Worrying about what I look like in a bikini? Pshhh…please. Get behind me, Satan.
I can’t worry about my beach body right now. I have too much else to get in order.
Instead of worrying about my bikini body, how about I give some attention to this season’s emotions? The part that tells me that I deserve to wear any swimsuit I want and feel good about myself even if I haven’t tried to sculpt my body for this season. The part that tells me I have a strong, capable body that birthed a child and isn’t required to look a certain way. The part that tells me that I eat lots of nutrient-rich, fresh foods, and I don’t need to feel guilty about the chocolate and wine.
The world keeps coming at me telling me all these cosmetic changes I need to make while I’m trying to repair a foundation. Curb appeal is not my priority. First things first. Let’s build a house we can live in. A shelter. A safe place. A place where life happens. We’re doing major renovations. Gutting some spaces. Rewiring. I’m watching YouTube videos along the way to figure out what the hell I’m doing. I have books strewn all over the place with creased spines and underlined passages and stars and notes in the margins. Each and every day I need to phone a friend. This is time-consuming, life-changing WORK.
Take care of yourself
Health is important. I’m not saying don’t take care of yourself. Please take care of yourself. If you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of other people you love well. And don’t just do it for them. Take care of yourself for YOU–because you deserve it.
I wish we could see on the outside all the work that we do on the inside because I’m at the emotional gym every day working out, flushing out toxins, building my strength and endurance for healthy thought patterns, becoming healthier and healthier. I am boosting my immunity to self-doubt by making sure I feed myself with nourishing, affirming thoughts.
Summer bod? Nah, Look at my summer resilience! Look at my self-care and the alone time I make for myself. Look at the way I keep finding words to put on the page even when I am exhausted and just want to watch Broad City.
We can’t show before and after pictures of all the inner work we’ve done. I wish we could. I wish mental health were as valued and openly shared as physical health.
“I’m cutting out carbs to get ready for bikini season,” she says.
“Oh, good! I’m cutting out saying ‘yes’ to social invitations out of fear of disappointing people,” I say.
“I’ve shed 10 pounds!” she says.
“Awesome! I have shed 10 years of guilt!” I chime in.
I’m not trying to dismiss the value of physical health and pushing yourself to meet goals. I know that with physical training can come the building of other character traits like discipline, confidence in your abilities, emotional strengthening along with physical strengthening.
Some day when other areas of my life level out, I may find a lot of satisfaction in meeting physical goals. So far, whenever I have tried to set those kinds of goals for myself, it has involved a lot of unhealthy thinking. My inner state has not been healthy enough to approach the outer body work in a constructive way. I have gone into perfectionist machine mode. It becomes about achievement, achievement, achievement. Proving I’m good enough. And often times I have left the process feeling like I had one more bit of evidence that deep down I was a stinkin’ undisciplined, no-good, failure.
Celebrating how I feel rather than how I look
My husband, Lloyd, used to respond to the idea of “being fit” or “getting in shape” by saying things like, “be fit for what?” or “be in good enough shape to do what?” That helped me put things in perspective.
I decided I wanted to feel good moving in my body. I wanted to feel fit enough to take long walks, hike, dance to my heart’s content. I wanted to have an active life full of playful motion, like hula hooping. I wanted my body to feel limber and well-oiled, the way it does when I do yoga regularly. These days I want to be in good enough shape to have the energy and stamina to play with my toddler, chasing him around, lifting him overhead, and springing up off the floor with ease.
I wouldn’t say that I like the way my body looks right now in a bathing suit. It looks overweight to me, but I also can’t remember a time when my body didn’t look overweight to me in a bathing suit.
But do I like how I feel? Yes. Yes I do.
When I look at pictures of myself in my bathing suit now I feel a little disappointed and think, “Damn, I thought I looked better than that because I feel so good.” Then I think, “Hey, girl. This is easy. Just forget about how you look in this picture and keep feeling good.” Problem solved!
I wish it could end there. But I have to keep reminding myself of these things over and over and over. I have to keep letting go of what society prioritizes over and over. I have accepted that it is normal to need to ground myself in these thoughts time and time again and that it is not a sign of weakness that they never seem to stick permanently.
I’m not “letting myself go”
My body may look and feel different than it was pre-baby, but I haven’t let go of myself. I haven’t let go of my desire to take care of myself or feel good about myself. In fact, I take better care of myself than I ever have. My body, my mind, my spirit. All are tended to. It took being pregnant and having another person’s health depend so much on mine in order for me to learn how to take care of myself with proper rest, nutrition, and moderate exercise.
What I have let go of is the idea that the way my body looks should be the most important measure of how well I take care of myself. I’ve let go of the pressure to wear a certain size or be a certain weight. I’ve let go of pushing my body beyond healthy limits in order to keep up with a too busy life. I’ve let go of relying on Western medicine to tell me what’s wrong with me and started listening to my body’s messages of the food and lifestyle habits that make it feel good.
I let the way I feel in my body guide me.
Give yourself permission to let go of what needs letting go, too.
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