Warrior Sunshine

I have a friend I met a few years before my son was born. A true warrior and a sunshine, imagine the dynamite combo. She has a third grader who is just the kind of boy I want my son to be, funny, gentle, sensitive and happy. She has raised him mostly by herself, while going to graduate school and working and being a vibrant present friend to everyone around her. Oh and this girl knows how to have fun!

As soon as I met her I thought to my self.. I want to be this kind of mama! Strong, proud, productive, positive and empathetic. The way she raised her son just made me want to be cared for by her! Her outside appearance is also as radius as her inside beauty, the kind of beauty that just shines through a smile, contagious, honest, unapologetic.  Or so I thought.

One hot sunny afternoon we meet at a friend's house to soak in her pool. Three women, one mama. I hadn't yet seen a young body changed by birth, and certainly I had no idea what mine could look like one day. As my warrior sunshine friend took off her clothes she soon apologized for the stretchmarks on her stomach and for the loose skin she had left on a once tonic perfect body. I was surprised, first to see that she had imperfections (or so what I once had thought of as being "imperfect") and then by the fact that here she was apologizing for something that she was, something that she had gained in the process of becoming the amazing mama I so aspired to be one day.

Forward to 2 years later, there I am delivering a 9.2lb baby boy who has just taken my body on a 0-360 revolution. I never had a slim figure (not since I hit puberty, anyway) and I was ready to embrace motherhood, however it manifested to me. In theory, in principle... I had enough of a feminist backbone to accept, embrace, own who I was becoming... in theory, in principle...

Around 8 months into my pregnancy my perfect bump and smooth skin began to crack. Sunshine rays started to come out of my belly button and spreading to my belly. I looked like I had a sun forming, smacked in the middle of my bump. I started applying anti-stretch mark lotion even more ferociously than before and I started to wonder... would I look like her? and would I apologize for it? what else did I have to come to grip with?

All along my husband kept down playing my concerns, "so what? why do YOU care? isn't this what feminism is against?You look beautiful, just own it!". I just shook my head and protested that he didn't get it, and neither did I.
Motherhood takes you for a spin. So many things change and so drastically and so rapidly that you have no time, rest, and intellect clarity to react to everything with the grace and love you were once capable of. Your breasts are sore, but that baby suckling looks so beautiful... your skin is loose and floppy but you can hold that baby on your hip like you were built around him, your hair is falling but when he curls it with his fingers it is excatly how it should be.

Then life goes on, your baby grows and you are no longer forgiven for looking like a mess, not by yourself not by the world around you. This time when my bump grew again and my stretchmarks began to design that sunshine around my belly button, my son traces them with his little finger, placing his toy car on them, like they are there for his wonder and entertainment. As I watch him do this I am overwhelmed with the sense of connection my body has to his. I am grateful for all that I have done to generate such beauty and I AM beautiful because of it. My beauty, once flat, expanded around me like rays of a sun and it is stronger and fuller then my mind was ever capable of understanding and it stretched beyond me.

My warrior sunshine friend YOU are beautiful and so am I.