My Body, the 'Mom-Body'

I remember the moment I first began to hate my body.

I had just finished fifth grade and, by some miracle, had made it onto the sixth grade cheerleading squad. On the first Saturday of summer vacation, we had uniform fittings.

The school multi-purpose room had been transformed into a brightly lit, antiseptic smelling dressing room. Toward the back, near the windows, was a row of tables covered in an assortment of red and gray cheer skirts, tops and warm-ups. Handwritten signs divided the tables by size.

Most of my friends headed over to the 0-3 table without hesitation. A small handful went over to the table marked 5-7. The table with the 7-9 sign remained unoccupied, as did the 11-13 table.

Until I showed up. 

I wandered over to the 7-9 table, ears hot, cheeks red, a ball of hot lead resting in my stomach. I knew right away that I was at the wrong table. I moved all the way down to my right, further separating myself from my friends at the other end of the room.  I quickly grabbed the first skirt and top I could from the small selection of size 13s that sat untouched on the last table. I clutched the uniform in my sweaty palms and scooted back to the 7-9 table, pretending to sort through the assortment before me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched my skinny girlfriends strip down to their skivvies, seemingly without any inhibitions at all. I heard choruses of “Oh my God, you look so cute” and “Ugh, this skirt makes my butt look so big!”

I stared in disbelief at their tiny thighs that obviously never touched each other. I noticed how one of them bent over her skirt and nothing hung over the waistband, her flesh never even seeming to move. I watched them stretch and reach and marvelled that there was no wiggling or shaking or jiggling anywhere. They were all so compact.

I didn’t try anything on. There was no way I was stripping down in front of those toothpicks. I refused to let them see my body as it really was, full of grotesque movement and spilling out all over the edges. If the size 13 uniform didn’t fit, I reasoned, I’d just drop out of cheerleading altogether.

I tossed my hair and sailed past my friends. “You guys, I gotta go. My dad is being lame and we have to go to a stupid thing at his work.”

I made a goofy face, my friends laughed, and as soon as I was convinced that no one knew my size 13 secret, I took off, my crumpled uniform stuffed deep inside my backpack.

Once home, I undressed and tried on my new uniform.

I exhaled. It fit. I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized I would be able to remain on the squad.

I spent the next year of my life hating my thighs and comparing them to all the other thighs on the squad. I wondered if I was really the only one whose thighs rubbed together when they walked. I constantly pulled on my top, so as not to reveal my fleshy belly. I covered up with my cheerleading jacket, so no one would notice the excess fat on my arms that jiggled when I raised my hand in class.

So it began.

I waged war against my body for the rest of my childhood and into my young adult life, eventually starving it down to eighty pounds, but still never feeling thin enough.

I created rituals around my eating, chewing each bite for two minutes (timed on a stopwatch) until the food was like liquid in my mouth.  I ate condiments like they were meals and began waking up earlier and earlier so I could run longer and longer before heading off to school.

I spent my high school years in and out of the eating disorder unit at Stanford Hospital. I'd spend a few days or weeks at the hospital, keeping secrets from my therapists, drawing one or two of my feelings and bonding with the other girls on the unit that were also forced to be there. Immediately following my discharge due to "sufficient weight gain" and "healthier attitudes toward food," I'd set out to lose all the weight I had gained and maybe a few extra pounds for good measure.

This cycle would be repeated over and over again, until I was finally released from the program at the age of eighteen and was free to self-destruct to my heart’s content.

I missed my high school prom and my graduation, convinced I was too fat to attend. I was likely somewhere around ninety pounds at the time. At some point, I began to realize that I would never be thin enough.

I felt afraid, alone and trapped. I was certain that if I continued on the path I was on, I would die before I turned thirty.

Then, some ten years or so after the war began, it began to end.

It happened on my way to becoming a mother. 

With this new life growing inside me, I grew to trust and believe with every fiber of my being that mine was a life worth living. My baby would need a mother. He would need a strong and healthy woman to raise him. I knew, under no uncertain terms, that I had to get well. Staying stuck in this cycle of despair and hopelessness was no longer an option. I had to heal.

During my pregnancy, I began my journey to health. My unborn child gave me a reason to live until I could eventually be my own reason to live.

I noticed my face becoming fuller, my belly getting rounder, my breasts swelling to unprecedented proportions! I had a husband who did nothing but compliment my fuller figure. I had a baby inside me that appreciated the healthy food I was learning to feed myself. He kicked and grew and thrived in my growing body.

After my son was born, I began to see my thighs in a gentler light. I discovered that I was not my cellulite or my stretch marks or my jiggly parts. I was not my baby weight or my round cheeks.

I was a woman who had just become a mother. I even started to think that I was–gasp!–beautiful. My body was strong and capable–it gave life! That little life lit up at the sight of me, despite all of my body's imperfections that I had spent so much of my life’s energy focusing on.

It's not to say that I don’t sometimes still look in the mirror and wish my breasts would climb back up just a little closer to my chin. I might occasionally roll my eyes at the sight of the cellulite that will forever cling to the back of my thighs, regardless of how many fitness classes I teach each week. 

But now I know how to just let it go. 

I recognize that these breasts fed my son for almost two years. They have earned the right to take a break. I thank my thighs for helping me lug my sleeping baby in his infant carseat up and down three flights of stairs when we lived on the top floor of Valley View Apartments all those years ago.

Today, my body and I are at peace. We enjoy treats and rest and exercise and beer. We work hard and play hard and stop to give piggyback rides. We walk with confidence, knowing that this is the body of a mother.

What could possibly be more beautiful than that?