Personal Blog: How Motherhood and the Passage of Time has transformed my Body Image

Pregnancy has me waking up at all hours and tonight I was struck with how sad I feel at the passing of time.

I had a Gestational Diabetes test yesterday, and it took the majority of my day away

• awake since 3am
• dropping my toddler off to my dutiful mum,
• parking, sitting there for 2 hours
• 3 blood tests
• feeling hungry, tired, sick and grumpy for the rest of the day…

I thought; today was kinda wasted….

And yet day turns to night over and over – regardless of whether I made the most out of that day.

I found myself feeling sad about;

• How maybe the midnight co-sleeping cuddles with my son are about to end, and the day he comes crying to me and I can’t drop everything to comfort him because I’ll have 1 – 3 newborns demanding my attention.
• How my Dad wasn’t able to pick up the phone last night for a chat … and the day that will arrive where I won’t be able to reach him by phone ever again.
• And then what about the passage of time when I’ll leave my children on this dimension?

My fuck.

I’m almost crying thinking about dying on the children I haven’t even given birth to yet!

These pregnancy hormones are diabolical for sentimentality!

And it brought to mind this photo.

When I gave birth, all remnants of criticism about my body not only disappeared, but they were catapulted into the opposite direction of overwhelming love, respect and appreciation.

I remember thinking to myself – How could ANY mother EVER think anything negative about her body when she brought life into this world and could sustain it outside her womb with nothing less than a source of perfect nutrition from her breast?

But it wasn’t always so – I have spent a lifetime stabbing myself in the heart with words of self-loathing about my body.

At age 5 I manifested plain warts all over my face – because I was so convinced of the ugliness of my chubby round face and ringleted brown curls.

At 8 I remember looking at my thin friend who’s knees were blue from cold and thinking to myself that’s how skinny I should be too.

At 16 I stole a packet of “hydroxycut” from the supermarket I was so ashamed of my body I couldn’t bring myself to buy them at the counter

At 21 in the US on a College Volleyball Scholarship I remember looking in the mirror, calling myself disgusting and when a red tide of self-loathing washed over me I wished for a knife that could cut the fat of my thighs off.

At 28 – Every night for 2 weeks I took 1 pill of a horse steroid, a drug that bodybuilders used to burn a couple of hundred grams of extra fat. A drug that could kill you if you took 2 of them – by burning you up from the inside.

And yet with the passage of time, my cross to bear has become my greatest source of ascension.

My struggle with my perception of my body, and how I viewed my self-worth made me seek out the world’s greatest teachers, connect with incredible souls and masters of their craft and go on many a deep journey inwards until I transmuted that soul crippling pain to exquisite gratitude and joy.

Cut to last night – my 2yo son was running around with a plush dog my boyfriend gave me 13 years ago when we were on the verge of breaking up.

Today, that man is now my husband, the father of my children and still the love of my life.

What was once a symbol of pain and uncertainty, mixed with tenderness and an unwillingness to let go of what we had – now gives my son great delight. He’s claimed it as “Mine not yours!”, renamed it after our ridgeback and calls him “Bossy”.

And I guess the message of this rich dichotomy – now makes me deeply humbled by the passage of time, and mind-blowingly thankful for the wounds I carried – because of the gift of the journey that healed them.

• My mum, one of my greatest teachers, showed me that Louise Hay called those warts “little expressions of hate” that represented a belief in ugliness. She helped me heal those warts by using affirmations every day of “I am beautiful and I love and approve of myself”.
• Being ultra critical of myself drove me to many exhilarating sporting achievements and opportunities. My love of sport still brings me the joy of enduring friendship today.
• My fascination with trying to influence the human body became the passion that has forged a career I could not have found in any guidance counsellor’s book.
• Being bullied by others taught me great resilience and independence to create a life of vitality, freedom and inspiration and teach others to do the same.

This photo; but a fleeting moment of time in this journey we call life

This body – the vessel that is our one opportunity to experience it

Where this bittersweet passage of time is the only thing that gives it all value and meaning.

To know that nothing is permanent, and that’s the beauty of it – is the greatest head fuck of all!

And I guess the conclusion I draw to comfort myself is that it’s a futile exercise to think of the passing of time as wasted. Because with every perceived negative there is a positive that compliments it, with every great plot twist a climax that succeeds it.

The contrast of the two spurs us onto the next experience, and without it, we’d be stuck in the inertia of melancholy for the past, anxiety for the future and our absence from the present.

Imagine that – ignoring the gift of today, because you’re so focused on the beauty of what the past was, or the imagined discomfort of what the future might bring – so much so that you’re not present for the gift that’s unravelling in this very moment!

That would be like stressing out about having 3 kids on the way and having enough time and energy to love them all at once!

Okay! I’m out – if you got this far, thanks for joining the ride with me.

Bianca x