Eat of my flesh

I've been trying for sometime to write about my relationship with my body both during and after pregnancy. This is what I've come up with so far. 

My body is so different now. Sometimes it seems that the entire front of my body is tired, everything just sags a bit gives in to gravity, like a sleepy balloon. My nipples will never be the same, and I’m not even breast-feeding. There is a scar on my vagina. My anxiety lives in my shoulders and jaw, which I have to make actual physical efforts to relax. When I look in the mirror and I am fully naked it is always slightly unnerving. At first glance everything seems to be in order, but then the longer I look the less I recognize myself. But I am in love with the saggy bits and the giant nipples.

I feel…

My body is capable. Giving birth made me believe. I worship at the altar of my cervix. I have faith that my body can carry me anywhere. Moaning and dancing through 3 days of contractions converted me to the gospel of my thighs and I sing hymns in joyous rapture of my stretch marks. I can climb mountains, I can plow fields, and I am no longer intimidated by imagined physical limitations. Before pregnancy I believed that there were things I was just too fat to do or to broken too do. I do not think this anymore. I have pain but growing a person made me feel invincible. 

Oh man, the stretch mark thing is hilarious to me. I earned my first strips at the ripe age of 9 when my breasts came in and I could no more point out the ones Persephone brought me then tell you when a new dandelion grows in my front yard. 

My body still molds to her. When I hold Persephone or when I strap her to my a feel fuller, more complete. Almost as if she is a missing piece of my body and I am always saving space for her.