This essay appears in Issue 28 of The Mockingbird magazine, now available to order.
Dear Gracie,
I’m three months postpartum and it ain’t pretty. Even though I’ve read all of the books and heard all of the stories, no one could’ve prepared me for how different I would feel in my own skin. I’m weirdly self-conscious since my body became someone else’s home to inhabit.
The other feeling that arises when I look in the mirror is guilt — guilt that I am different beyond my control, guilt that I’m exhausted, guilt that I’m worried about my appearance after my body did something miraculous for me and my family. Why am I consumed by superficiality when I ought to be grateful for a healthy childbirth? I know better than to be this way! I’m not vain — and yet, it seems maybe I am a little bit. Help?
Thanks,
Imperfectly Postpartum
Dear Imperfect,
You know, most of the time I think it’s easier for the people around us to see a miracle happening in our lives than it is for us to see it happening to us. So let’s set that M word aside for a while and not worry about it. You will look back at this time and remember it as miraculous that you brought a baby into the world. But for now, trying to remind yourself that your body is a miracle when your midriff looks like an old water mattress (speaking about myself here) is just the law. And the law kills.
Birth is also trauma. We push a midsized handbag out of our pocketbook and then get drowned in a hormonal milkshake. When it comes to the aftermath of birth, it does not really matter if you are vain or not — your body has changed in an instant. So of course your thoughts are living in the extreme.
The only true thing all of the time is our belovedness to God. And I have to believe that this is especially true for new mothers. Both because you have been through something so beautiful and intense, and because God knows how anxious your heart is. Do not listen to anything that tells you different. In his Letters to Malcolm C. S. Lewis reminds us, “If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts.”
In that, I pray you find rest — physically and emotionally.
Signed,
Gracie
