What’s this obsession with the “post-baby body?” Can I just say- who the fuck cares?
Don’t get me wrong. I, too, marvel at the body’s ability to transform itself. Your body deserves your admiration and gratitude. No doubt.
But by obsessing over how flat your stomach is, you might be missing the real opportunity that birth and postpartum present. A rite of passage- the rebirth of the Self.
We often think of motherhood as a hierarchy. But the truth is, this sacred relationship between mother and child is one of mutual unfoldment. If you’re paying attention, if you’re willing, when you birth your baby, your baby births you.
As you bring a child into the world (however it happens, be it homebirth by candlelight or under surgical spotlights) you are rebirthed as a mother. It’s explosive and radical. It’s a mandatory revolution. It’s the embodiment of the paradox of creation/destruction. A total surrender and a potent uprising.
Birth explodes you and takes you down to parts. Melts down your armor. Tools fall from your hands. You’re left naked. Wide-eyed. Pressed down to your essence like a wildflower under glass.
You see your strength and your shadows. You marvel at the miracle of this new life – the greatest windfall you can receive. You mourn the loss of your former Self. You are full. You are empty. You are the magnetic center of the universe. You are lost to the world.
And when you are thoroughly dismantled, broken down to bits, untethered and wandering…then comes the call to reintegrate all the parts of you that have been far-flung. To search and gather everything back up in your arms like kindling. To take an inventory. What serves. What stays. What goes. To build a fire to warm yourself by, sacrificing what needs to be sacrificed to fuel the future. Sustaining what needs to be sustained so you can become a more refined incarnation, a closer approximation to your highest Self.
I’ve become a mother three times now, and a new woman emerges each time. I’ve felt the charge of new beginnings. The disorientation. The possibilities. The excitement. But also the prerequisite uncertainty about who I will be now. What I will keep, what I will gain, what I will give up. And I remind myself of the need for patience as I cross the bridge and navigate life as a newly minted Mother of three.
Now that’s a fucking postpartum transformation, people.
