MOM-BOD: My epic journey

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve always known I was meant to be a female, and a sassy one at that. Oddly enough, I desired to be short with blonde hair and, for some reason, my vision always had me wearing a college hoodie. If I’m being honest with myself, I think this stems from one of the many Road Rules or Real World episodes I grew up watching.. but even so, it stuck. Yet, even though the exact image I so yearned for myself came to fruition, I have always battled to love every inch of myself, never being comfortable in my own skin.

My obstacles I’ve always faced in the mirror are:

• I don’t have ankles like most people, I sport the cankles. It goes from calf directly into my heels
• I have fingers that look like Vienna sausages that swell on a regular basis
• My eyes are very squinty and uneven with my right one sagging a bit more than the left
• I have two internal ankle bones that protrude on the inside of each foot, not just one
• My earlobes are not lobey.. they look like I had a facelift and are stuck to my neck
• I’m vertically challenged being a whole 5 feet &1 inch on my best day
• I have no eyebrows and it has taken the work of Lash Boost, Micro-blading, and pencils to get them to appear
• My belly button is abnormally high. Being that I have a short torso, it looks like it’s afraid of my privates and it’s runny away to take solace amongst my chest.
• I have a pronounced widows peak that my science teacher felt the need to show the class when I was a Freshman.. like I needed any other undue attention
• I have horridly flat feet which ironically caused bad shin splits growing up
• My calves are double the size of my husbands. Grant it, I did tumble a lot in gymnastics and am a powerhouse, but it seriously looks ridiculous. I have to special order my boots just to be able to zip them up over those bad boys
• My sight is so bad, I can’t function without glasses or contacts. Otherwise, I run into walls. Scratch that.. I still run into walls when I can see but at least when I’m without my corrective lenses, I have a good excuse
• My nose is bumpy from a kindergartener breaking it during a brief stint in teaching
• I developed quickly as a teenager and the boys so kindly nicknamed my check ‘Jamaican hooters’.. oh, they were so creative
• I have a permanent scar above my lip from me trying to kiss a dog who didn’t want to be kissed.. story of my life
• Left knee from surgery as a teenager not only has caused scars, but also comes along with some fun popping noises when I bend it. It’s a fun party trick
• Enlarged bumps on my knees, otherwise known as Osgood-Schlatter disease (It is an inflammation of the area just below the knee where the tendon from the kneecap (patellar tendon) attaches to the shinbone (tibia).)

However, once I got pregnant with my son at 27, my body that I wasn’t always in love with but I had become used to, started to become all too foreign to me. I even struggled with how to walk as my widening hips made my duck waddle more like a penguin looking like it was going to topple over at any moment. I ended up gaining upwards of 65lbs during my pregnancy but for some reason, my son only weighed 7lbs when he came out. I suppose I should be grateful for not having to push out a 65lbs baby, but the residual baby weight (that I lovingly refer to as McNugget weight) became an unwanted house guest that didn’t want to leave.

I fought desperately to get back to my fighting weight, and I eventually did. Even though I was working out with a trainer, I don’t believe I lost the weight in the healthiest manner, mentally speaking. I started to look at food as the enemy rather than fuel to keep me going. Even so, I was able to keep it off for a good 3 years. However, due to changing jobs and coinciding significant upticks in my stress level, those McNugget pounds slowly found me again.

Accordingly, I found myself with these new struggles:

• I am carrying roughly 40 extra pounds which in turn categorizes me as ‘obese’ per the BMI index..however, I just like to think my skin is too big for my body
• My stomach currently looks like a voodoo doll that someone hated as I’ve had so many laparoscopic surgeries (gallbladder removal, appendix removal, and two surgeries for my hysterectomy)
• I had boobs so saggy, I had to roll them to properly place them in my bra. Every morning it was like a game of ‘Where’s Waldo’ game in trying to find my nipples so they aligned correctly. Otherwise, they would look like I had a lazy eye in my bra. Again, I totally blame James and my desire to breastfeed as they are the only place on my body where I gained those deep stretch marks that some other Mommies refer to as their Tiger Stripes
• After stopping breast feeding, they just kept growing. Although we couldn’t figure out why, I couldn’t handle the race both my left and right boob were in to get to the floor, so I recently had a breast reduction. Although I’m beyond elated with being able to walk down my steps without having to hold them, I now look like the bride of Frankenstein’s chest since
• Along with the medically necessary breast reduction, the doctors offered a tummy tuck at a significantly reduced rate.. a rate that I couldn’t say no to. So when I woke up from the surgery, I was thrilled that my mommy tummy was gone.. but found that it was replaced with this scar that I can only describe as looking like I got bit in half by a shark, but once he got a taste of me, he spit me out. It’s literally hip to hip with an occasion staple or suture popping out
• My underarms continue waving to people long after my hands stop. I think I’m trying to learn how to fly
• I have two fingers aptly referred to as my witch fingers as I broke both on different occasions playing catch with a football with my boys. I broke my pinky so bad that I almost lost it during the required surgery. We may have been looking at prosthetics options on Amazon, one for each nail color and length as a woman needs options!

So, with all of this in mind, I had a breakthrough this week. While I was having my daily morning gab-session with my workout partner and bestie, she said something that really resonated with me. She was telling me about a conversation she had with her husband regarding my confidence in the locker room and how she wished she could walk around with the same confidence. Although I am indeed walking around naked and no longer hiding in the corner changing as quickly as I can like I used to do, I think it’s pertinent to know that my sweet friend is absolutely beautiful and has a much better body than I do. This one statement has made me truly recognize that the way I look at myself has slowly evolved over time.

I feel like over the past couple of years, regardless of what I’ve seen in the mirror, I’ve started to lead with grace. I think us moms are typically giving to others but find that it’s incredibly difficult to allow grace for ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, I still have struggles with my body, this lovely vessel of mine, on a regular basis. Yet, my gratefulness to my body for what it HAS done for me is now outweighing what it HASN’T done.

(Side note: It doesn’t hurt that my ‘I don’t give an eff what people think of me’ continues to increase on a regular basis as well)

As time goes on, the more I not only accept who I am and what makes me different, but I start to truly appreciate those differences. I’m doing what I can to embrace the knowledge that I’m perfectly and wonderfully made. Those scars are my stripes that I’ve earned, it’s my proof of survival and reminder not everyone is as blessed. What makes you different, what makes you unique is what will make you stand out from the crowd. So, to all of you mommas out there, I wish for you endless grace, to embrace the locker room nakedness and own those differences, you cotton-headed ninny-muggins!