Learning to love my body

When I was a kid I was always very skinny, so much so that I was even teased for it. I was blessed to be raised by a mother that did not speak badly about her body and was a good example for me. As a teenager and young adult I retained my fast metabolism and although I had dealt with body image issues like any young person it wasn't until after the birth of my second child that I became increasingly self conscious and even ashamed of how I looked. After my first child was born I had diastasis recti (separation of the stomach muscles) and did not seek the help I needed to repair it. It of course did not help that my second child was ten pounds at birth and my stomach had stretched to its limit! Again I didn't do much physical therapy to fix the separation in my stomach so I ended up with a little "pooch", the technical term us Mom's have for post baby stomach. ;) I was aware of the change in my body for sure and it bothered me a little but it wasn’t until someone asked me if I was pregnant (when I wasn’t) that it REALLY started to get to me. At the time, Zoe (my second) was about two and I was working at a Physical Therapy clinic. So, lucky for me I had some really great PT’s around me to give me tips on how to exercise without hurting myself and how to work on bringing my muscles back together. However, the fact that someone thought I was pregnant and had the nerve to say it out loud was always in the back of my mind. Throughout the several years following I was asked this question in various ways multiple times and was never pregnant when they asked. This crushed me. Although I had been raised by a mother that did not pass on a negative view of her body to me, I did of course grow up in a society that shouted it at me daily.



A couple weeks ago I listened to a podcast that changed my life and inspired me to share my personal story in this way. In her podcast For the Love, Jen Hatmaker interviewed Hillary Mcbride author of Mothers, Daughters and Body Image. In the interview Hillary said,



“...we live in a very toxic society which has constructed a very unhealthy, unattainable ideal for the female body and anything different than the ideal is considered shameful and bad.”



She said that only the sexualized parts of a woman body are okay to be bigger and the rest has to be “disappearing”. I admit that our culture has improved slightly when it comes to the expectation to look like Barbie, in that they have changed how Barbie looks a bit...but the issue remains that there are unattainable expectations placed on women from all directions. When movie stars have babies they have personal trainers that work with them 24/7 to get their bodies “back to normal” because they are paid to look “good” and these ridiculous standards are then expected of all women, and who came up with what “good” and “normal” are anyway? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that after a woman has a baby she should not work hard to repair her stomach and exercise and eating healthy should be goals we all have...but I think we should all also learn to love our bodies the way they are. The Bible tells us to “Love your neighbor as yourself”, which is the second greatest commandment, the first being “Love the Lord your God”. In this interview Hillary talks about how women talk badly about their bodies, in fact they even bond over these conversations. One might say “I hate how big my arms look” and her friend might respond with “you look great but I hate my thighs”. We have a horrible tendency to put ourselves down. When Jesus commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves, that means we actually have to love ourselves. WOW...mind blown. Imagine hanging out with your girlfriends and saying good and positive things about your bodies. Does this mean you’re prideful and conceited? I don’t think so. I think by doing this we would be setting a good example for our daughters. When our daughters hear us speaking badly about our bodies they are learning how to view themselves. When our sons hear us saying negative things about the way we look are they creating a picture in their mind of what their “ideal” woman should not look like? Possibly.



So here’s what I’ve started doing...when I look at my soft stomach that sticks out I remind myself that I carried four lives inside there. When I think of all the times someone has asked me if I’m pregnant and I’m tempted to think my stomach should be perfectly flat and toned, I give myself grace and love the same way I would to a friend. No thanks to the world and society I live in, this will be an ongoing, life long battle. I will have days that I need to wear something to suck in my belly so I can look “good” in a dress. I will be tempted to hate that it will likely never look like it did before my children. But day by day I have noticed that I look down a little less, it does not consume me as it did and most importantly I believe I’m learning to love and accept myself the way I am. I have three girls now and I feel an immense pressure to counter what the world tells them in any and every way I can. When TV, magazines, commercials, fashion, movie stars and many more sources are saying they are not good enough, skinny enough or pretty enough as they are, I must say the opposite. I can only hope and pray that my voice is louder but what I know for sure is that they will only listen if they see me treating myself with the same grace, love and acceptance that I tell them to have.