I have felt bad about myself for the majority of the summer.
I have felt guilty for my “lack of activity”.
Here is the thing...I like neither heat nor bright sunlight.
Once autumn is in full swing I plan to spend epic amounts of time outdoors. I
will exercise and I will keep a much cleaner house. I will dress for the day even when going
nowhere and I will open the curtains and embrace the world. Till then, I plan
to live in cool pajamas in front of two fans in my air conditioned house with
my curtains pulled tight. When I leave to go for groceries or to work at the
church I plan to run from car air conditioning to church/Wal-Mart air
conditioning while wearing sunscreen, weather inappropriate clothing (Because
no one wants to see my post-baby body in a tank top and shorty shorts. Covering
up is my service to the world.) and the darkest sunglasses imaginable. All this
to say, I HATE SUMMER.
I have decided to stop feeling guilty about my inactivity
this summer. I have a chronic illness, I have a baby and I’m sensitive to heat.
I am doing what I can to survive. Now, having said this, don’t think I haven’t
kept my family in clean clothes and well fed with what is usually really healthy
food. It’s just that if it isn’t necessary, I’m putting it off. The house is
sanitary…but with a toddler whose main goal in life is to destroy, eat,
disassemble or climb anything in her purview it’s hard to keep up with when you
have fatigue issues. My main goal is to keep her alive, healthy and
well-developed emotionally. If the formerly perfectly organized basket of
diapering supplies winds up splattered across the floor I prefer to use my
energy to be in a good mood for her instead of trying to reorganize it 32 times
during the day. She will just take it as a challenge to pull out all the
diapers and spread them across the room again.
In addition to no longer feeling guilty for a cluttered
house, I plan to stop feeling guilty about my body not being as thin as it was
when I got married. That dress size took starvation…and I need the energy that
food provides in order to keep up with the Lil’ Miss. Also, I plan to no longer
look in the mirror at my stretch marks and C-section scar and sigh in disgust.
Stretch marks are a beautiful thing even if our culture disdains them.
I have decided to start calling mine my “warrior marks”. I
have had a difficult time dealing with my changed body and coming to terms with
it. While yes, it is a constant reminder of the beautiful child I carried
within my body (and the C-section scar is a reminder of how you cannot truly
control anything in life, especially not your children) it is sometimes
difficult to look at myself without feeling somehow disappointed with myself
for my appearance…like I should be better than to have these marks or to not
have lost the weight.
Our culture has “learned” what motherhood looks like from
celebrities who spend thousands on reconstructive surgery, trainers and laser
treatments. This is disingenuous and creates an unfair expectation of ourselves
and each other. It doesn’t matter that we know they’ve had work done. When we
see a famous size 2 back in her jeans two weeks after giving birth it makes us
look in the mirror and think all sorts of negative things about ourselves. It
doesn’t matter that I have NEVER fit in a size 8, let alone a size 2. A part of
me sees these hyper skinny moms in the tabloids, showing their air brushed abs
and going on and on about how “I breast fed and the weight just FELL off…” and
I want to scratch their eyes out.
We have a little extra skin, we have a few extra scars and we
have a few extra pounds (or more than a few…) and you know what…that’s is okay…we
did something amazing and our body went through trauma to do it. Women should wear
these beautiful warrior marks proudly to remind us of the incredible thing we
created--life.
