A Love Letter to My Postpartum Body

I want to treat this postpartum body like my favorite pair of sneakers. 

I want to love it more with age the way I do when my high-tops get scuffs on the toes and the rubber in the soles starts to wear. To celebrate its lived-in look and all the ways it bears the marks of a life well-loved. 

I want smile lines from belly laughs and stretch marks that show I grew. Forehead wrinkles because I care. I want strong arms from a lifetime’s worth of rocking babies and pushing swings and mixing after-school cookies. Freckles because we made the most of every sunny day together.

I want to look in the mirror and behold with gratitude this walking miracle. These breasts that sustain and nourish. This belly that stretched and expanded to make space for new life. These legs that dance and jump and carry us mile after mile together. 

What a shame it would be to get to the end of this life and realize I wasted my precious moments on attempts to cover up proof that I lived it. What a shame it would be to try to avoid the cracks and marks and grooves—reminders that this body isn’t just mine, it’s the very first place my baby called home.

This journey is beautiful, refining, stretching. May my body be living proof of all of it.