I went to my first hot yoga class since I had a tiny (kinda) human cut out of me… only seven weeks ago. When I first laid down my mat I was hyper aware of everyone around me, assuming they were judging the loose skin that settled around my belly as harshly as I have been. I was afraid that when I fall into my forward fold all anyone will see is the extra weight that didn’t just “fall off” during birth. So I moved to a spot in the back.
About fifteen minutes into class, the intsructor told us to flip ours dogs. For those non-yogis reading, that is essentially a full backbend with one arm extended over your head. My new fear of having my stitches rip apart came over me and suddenly all I could feel was the fabric of my leggings rubbing against my incision. As stupid as it sounds, that is the moment so many things sunk in. I just had my body sliced open and a human pulled out (from the left side of my uterus apparently because that is where the searing and unbearable pain mostly is). How the fuck could I expect to be healed seven weeks later?
For the majority of my life, I have been my bodies worst friend. I have treated her like she’s gum on the bottom of my shoe that I can’t scrape off. I stuck my fingers down my throat for the first time at age thirteen. When that didn’t work I just stopped feeding her for a while. I was playing soccer competitively then, so when I inevitably collapsed in the middle of practice, I knew I couldn’t keep that up either.
So I ran and I ran, and I ran. Until my toenails would cut into the skin of my other toes and my socks would be soaked in blood. I would eat, feel guilt, and then run. I would run until I shook the guilt, until I felt happy with myself. But I never was. I was just an unhealthy size 2 that was starving.
When you hate yourself as much as I did as a teenager it’s like standing in the middle of a minefield trying to navigate your way around using a broken compass. With no clear path or direction, things blow up in your face. That’s how it felt when I discovered binge eating. hiding food wrappers under other trash in the bin. Late night drive through meals after not eating all day because eating in front of people was more stressful than expelling it from my body in the dark.
College didn’t feel any better. It felt like suffocating in a sea of beautiful and superficial sorority standards and being judged by shallow frat guys who could probably stand to turn the mirror back on themselves once in a while. It felt like never being quite enough 100% of the time.
At age twenty-three, for the first time in my life, I gave myself a break. I focused on my health, not my size. I prioritized my health and fitness in the way that it’s meant to be practiced. I worked out because I wanted to do right by my body, not hurt her.
Then at twenty-seven years old I decided she was going to carry a child - so she did.
When things went sideways, she ended up on an operating table to be cut open. Now seven weeks later I realize I have done nothing but push her to recovery and to “bounce back” as quickly as possible. My god, I hate that fucking phrase. SO. MUCH. I would never say such a demeaning thing to another woman… yet here I am saying it to myself. Talk about societally engrained bullshit.
For so long I have been angry with my body for not doing what I asked of her... but in that moment, I realized she has survived all that I have asked of her.
If my body was strong enough to survive the hell I have spent my life putting her through, she deserved much more kindness than I offer her.
In the middle of that yoga class, I looked at the loose skin around my stomach with admiration because seven weeks ago that stomach was home, a food source, a growing place for my beautiful and healthy baby girl. the most precious thing on this planet I asked my body to give me, and she did.
My pregnancy may have left me with a new and different body, but in a way, it gave me back a body that society stripped me of too young. A body that could do anything.
She also endured that 102-degree yoga practice with humble strength and agility. She showed me that once again I do not deserve her… yet I have her.
My god, how lucky am I.
