This is, perhaps, more personal and raw than what I normally share, but that's motherhood. Very personal. Very raw. And in becoming a mother your boundaries completely change. It's hard after one, two, three people have stretched your skin and passed through your body to consider much of anything off-limits. So here you go, my scarred, none-too-trim stomach.
My mother always claimed that she didn't get any stretch marks during her pregnancies, but I find that these days, when I see myself in a mirror, the crepe that stares back at me is all too familiar. Why did she say she didn't stretch?
Being a mother comes with extra responsibility to accept my body for what it is and what it has done and can still do. It's not just about me, it's about what I'm projecting onto my children, how they will perceive women's bodies and maybe their own.
I like the awareness of mothers' bodies being built by Bonnie Crowder. I'm inspired and challenged by the work of "fat awareness" advocates like Elizabeth. I struggle with feeling bulgy and unattractive in my own clothing even while I admire the beauty of other women with a variety of body types. I weigh how much to change (like my tending-toward-sweet-tooth eating habits) and how much to just embrace (like breasts put to work for six-and-a-half years, and counting).
Way back in the beginning of my internetty parenting existence, I saw a woman refer to her stretch marks as "tiger stripes". They were, she said, "marks of a fierce, wild woman." I earned these stripes, I was - and still am - a fierce, wild woman. The marks are part of who I am, a souvenir of my entry into maternity. There is a metaphor in them - the flexibility I sometimes lack, the way parenthood forces me to change (especially for Reese, who went sideways and skewed me unevenly). They tie me to my past, and perhaps they ease my transition into the future.
How have you had to stretch? What marks did it leave on you?
