“You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.” 

Amy Bloom

I took my first in-person yoga class today in over two years. The last time I attended a yoga class that wasn’t virtual was probably November or December 2019. It wasn’t a fancy class. I saw it advertised through my local gym and figured I’d give it a try. I saw it as an opportunity to decompress and move my tired joints, even if it was under bright overhead lighting and with blaring workout music in the background. In the end, this class exceeded my expectations and provided elements of surprise and reflection on so many levels.

For under 55 minutes, my phone tucked away in my jacket pocket in the back of the room, I was able to arrive in the moment and just feel my body move. In the midst of my contorted, stiff, inflexible stretches, my mind floated to just how much I had taken my body for granted prior to having a child. I haven’t written much about this topic to date so bare with me.

My relationship to my body over the last 2+ years has taken on so many new layers. When I learned I was pregnant, I remember having an irrational fear that I was going to “lose” my body. It was a fear of something taking over (like a parasite) and being at the whim of new forces that were outside my control. That, in addition to terrible nausea and morning sickness. Admittedly, the irrational fears did prove somewhat true. I was taken over by forces outside my control and my body did take on a life of its own. I ultimately came to a place of acceptance though and even awe in what the body was capable of. (I could write an entire blog piece on the body and the pregnancy journey.)

What I wasn’t prepared for though were the postpartum physical and hormonal changes that would continue to play out for months (and maybe years) beyond giving birth. Even as I approach 18 months postpartum, my balance is off. I am clumsier and a little clunkier in my movements. I wasn’t flexible prior but now my back can get thrown off by just crouching to put the baby in her car seat. My neck feels stiff just about every morning and I am not a stranger to muscle spasms at random points throughout the day.

I still love the same forms of exercise. For me it’s swimming and a slow walk/run ratio I picked up years back when training for a half marathon (which feels like a lifetime ago). And maybe it’s my middle age creeping up on me, but my body just isn’t the same. It’s subtle, but I’m keenly aware of how my clothes fit differently now. A little less give, a little less stretch. My body didn’t simply bounce back. It bounced into a whole new space.

I guess what I’m talking about is that both my relationship to my body and my body itself have changed in recent years. My rare moments to exercise are no longer with an end goal of a certain figure so much as just the freedom to move…The liberation I feel when I can find a moment in the early AM to do a “cat/cow pose” or “puppy pose” before the baby stirs. My joints are stiff and most days I just long to move. I now wear sneakers almost all the time, even when I’m putzing around the house, giving my daughter a bath, or going to the grocery store. It gives me the most subtle sense of satisfaction that I’m exercising. That I’m moving, even if it’s from one room to another.

As I sit here typing away, my upper back is talking to me. It’s telling me to sit up straighter and to stand up and move around. It’s achy when I sit too long now or when I stand too long. Maybe I need to listen more and respond “thank you” every once in a while. Thank you for making yourself more aware to me in recent years. Thank you for helping me to see that I am intrinsically tied to you and you to me. That we are here together to explore the world and accept the ebbs and flows. And perhaps to slow down enough to catch an extra breath or two even when life tells us to keep going.

As I hunched over in child’s pose this morning and stayed put 5 or 6 breaths longer than instructed, I realized that perhaps I need to fully accept this new reality–This body in all it’s floppiness and less than shapely beauty. Maybe part of its purpose is not to achieve some unattainable shape or figure projected on us from external pressures, but instead to simply stretch and rest and carry us through life’s ups and downs. And maybe it’s not just my body, but my entire being that never simply “bounced back” after having a child. I have yet to get to know a new and evolving version of myself that has bounced into an entirely new way of being.