Something Occurs to Me (Anonymous)

4 pregnancies 1 miscarriage and 3 births.
Ages of children: 4 years, 15 months, 2 weeks old.

Having posted on here about 4 years ago after the birth of my daughter (Michaela Marks) I thought I’d revisit the site to hopefully encourage others.

I now have 3 children in total (see above), and, at the age of 37, I AM DONE!! Lol.

Like many of you, I struggled from my teen years to love my body. I did the whole thing: Anorexia, self loathing, social paranoia, trying to cover up stretch marks with clothes, makeup or self tanning cream. Tried loads of “stretchmark remedies” none of which ever worked: the only thing they work to do is give you a great way to waste your money while providing false hope – not a great investment I’ve decided. Lol. ;p

I was never “overweight” – maybe 10 or 15 lbs ever at the most – but I had stretchmarks from a very early age – purely caused by growth spurts going through puberty. Some on the back of my legs, hips, my whole backside is covered in the rascally little things. Then, when I got pregnant, my once beautiful, spotless, toned tummy got a bunch of stretchmarks too. What are you going to do though eh? Like I said … I’ve never been overweight – even through my pregnancies, so really … there was nothing I could have done to prevent any of it. (If you want to see pics, visit my link above).

I rubbed all the useless creams on: Bio-Oil, Palmers Cocoa Cream, some other stuff I can’t remember the name of – at $100 a bottle, it would be nice to remember the name: Denevoux or something like that – all products were a waste of time.

Now, here I stand, 2 weeks after the birth of my third child and I’m about 5’8 and 15 lbs away from my pre-pregnancy weight of 133. I’ll get back there – I’m not worried about it. I would post new pictures of what I look like now, but I’m too lazy to get the camera and upload them. Sufficed to say, that my tummy is a little more devastated then it was after the first baby … but at least I still have a stomach! It helps when I want to consume mass quantities of See’s Chocolate Bordeauxs. Lol. Mmmmm. Slurp!

The reason I write now though is because, in my ripe old age of 37 (lol), something occurs to me: What my body looks like really doesn’t matter.

I mean, really – who cares?

Who cares besides me?

And why do I want to waste my time self obessessing when I can use my energies and point them outwards onto other people like my children, my husband, my extended family, my friends, others who may be in need and can use my help?

With all the suffering, pain and hardships in the world – do I really want to spend even one minute of my time sweating what I look like physically? Especially when I am healthy and able bodied, and have been blessed with wonderful kids, family and friends? How self defeating and what a waste of time that would be – what a waste of time it IS for so many of us women who live in the Western world and allow ourselves to be distracted, on a daily basis, by things that ultimately really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

For example, thinking about it, the most beautiful, life filled, giving, caring person I know is an Aunt of mine whose body also happens to suffer the ravages of child birth. But when I think about her, I don’t think about her body – I think about how her existence is such a positive influence on those around her. How, to many people, she is the most amazing person they know – just due to her giving heart and her willingness to offer love and help to all around her. She is other people centered – not self centered.

This is what I want to be like too.

I am not perfect. Even if I were “perfect” I wouldn’t be perfect – not in this world. Salvador Dali said: “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it”.

We just all need to stop self obssessing and get on with life. Just get on with it. Instead of spending time in front of the mirror lamenting what “once was” – we should spend that time working for charity, or taking our children to the park, or teaching our daughters how to make a difference in the world through their loving actions towards others and not because of what they may, or may not, look like physically.

We all have fantastic potential and influence as mothers. Frankly, for me, if someone doesn’t like my stretchmarks, or belly button (which now looks more like the mouth of a wide mouthed bass than a belly button lol), those people can go “Pound Sand”. Seriously … I don’t have time for nonsense like that. I’ve got children to raise, I’ve got people to love on, I’ve got work to do, I don’t have time to worry about nonsense.

What are we going to be remembered for anyways? When it’s all said and done? We’re going to be remembered for how we affected people; we are going to be remembered for the type of people that we are/were. I’ve never seen a eulogy which stated things like: “And after having 3 kids … she had a PERFECT body”. Nope … that doesn’t happen (because having a perfect body is something that just really doesn’t matter) …

Love yourselves and your children – don’t sweat the small stuff. Get to work! :) Peace and love to you all.