I don't think I hate my body anymore

And it is a weird, joyous feeling

A couple of years ago, I wrote this poem:

In the mirror

The women who came before me said,
'your confidence will only grow with age.'
I took this as a promise that one day I would look in the mirror and see beyond
crooked teeth; damning comments; extra handfuls of flesh
that have now grown into spaces self-assurance was supposed to.

The ease will come, it has to.
I hope that some day soon I'll meet my own eyes in the mirror and know we made it.
There'll be imperfection, still, but beauty in spite of it:
an appreciation, at least, for this unique map of skin and freckles and fat.
I'll see the quiet magic too: everything lost to the glass,
like pink sunsets etched into memory; the joy in these limbs as I cartwheel
and the time I rescued a dog from the middle of a busy road.

On reflection, we aren't there yet.
I show up with great intentions, hoping this will be the day.
This could be the day we fall in love.
But the woman in the mirror still stands there
begging to be seen.

I stumbled upon it again recently, tucked away on a now long-abandoned Instagram grid, and was startled by the ache woven into each line. I remember writing it - a little dramatically, perhaps - by candlelight, the room hushed in an amber glow, but my mind loud with longing. I was craving ease. Peace. Acceptance. A kinder way to inhabit myself. I cannot tell you how cruel I have been to myself over the years. How many mornings I would turn away from my own reflection. How many times I spoke to myself in a way I wouldn’t dare speak to anyone else. Carried shame in places that were never meant to hold it. I know I’m not alone in this. It is, sadly, something so many of us inherit. A language we learn too young.

And yet, when I first re-read this poem a couple of weeks ago, it stirred something within me. Not sorrow, but surprise. I didn’t notice as it happened, but I realise now that somewhere along the way, a softness has crept in. Something has shifted. Those words feel like they were written by someone else. I suppose, in many ways, they were.

My body, once a battleground, now feels like something else entirely. A bloom drenched in summer sunlight. A sanctuary. A universe unto itself. I remember at one of our scans, as images of my womb flickered in black and white on a small screen, voicing a concern about the baby. ‘He is living in utopia,’ the sonographer said with a smile. Utopia. Created instinctively by my body as I napped and vomited and wrote and stretched and played with my dog.

I look at myself in the mirror now, placing my palm on the curve of my stomach, and it hard to feel anything but awe I can’t quite put words to. Inside, organs are knitting themselves together. This baby is growing fingernails. He drinks; sucks his thumb. Tiny feet, yet to feel the earth, flutter against my ribs like moth wings at dusk. My body knows how to grow a heart and make it beat. Fuck. How could I not respect that?

Of course, this newfound tenderness towards my body has not arrived without complication. It feels important to say that it is easier to embrace change when the world deems it acceptable. When your shape shifts for a reason society applauds. My belly has grown, my jawline has all but disappeared, and I’m sweatier than ever. But the gaze of others has become gentler. More forgiving. The world smiles. For the first time in years, I don’t feel the need to apologise for how I look. For the way I take up space. For showing up with unwashed hair or chipped nails or shadows under my eyes. Alongside the relief and the joy of this feeling, there is a quiet undertone of grief: that there is external validation involved. That perhaps I only feel good because this is the one time in a woman’s life when she is given the grace to simply exist in her body. It’s a little sad that it took this, I think. That it took carrying another life inside me to finally offer myself the compassion I’ve been worthy of for so long.

Still, I need to hold onto this feeling. To embrace it: the ease I once yearned for. The wonder of it all. The sense that the stretch marks mapping their way across my skin are not blemishes, but art: eternal proof of expansion; of generosity; of this tiny boy living in utopia. The understanding that the weariness in my bones is not failure, but devotion. That I am giving, giving, giving.

I find myself marvelling at the architecture of it all. How the body makes room. How blood thickens and reroutes. How hips shift and widen. I can barely believe that I can brew tea, reply to Whatsapp messages, stand in the supermarket queue, and all the while, a secret choreography unfolds beneath the surface. Quiet. Resolute. Instinctive.

Pregnancy has illuminated a truth I should have known all along: this body has always been worthy. Even before the swelling and the fluttering and the grainy scans. Before it held someone else, it held me. My thoughts and dreams and worst jokes. My grief and hope. It has held friendships. Love. Cold palms in hospice rooms. It is the vessel that has had me walk across woodland floors ablaze with colour, and dance like a primary-schooler on the kitchen tiles. It has always been quite something.

As of now, I feel gratitude for my body, perhaps for the first time in my life. For all it is and all it holds. For the strength, the softness, the silence. For the vast work happening just beneath those silver slivers trailing across my skin. For the warm hush of womb and water and wonder. I do not know what will happen on on the other side of this. I suspect there will again be days I return to the mirror and long for this gentleness. Days I struggle to adjust to an ever-changing body, or lose a sense of identity altogether.

But I hope - I deeply hope - that I remember this moment. The mercy. The marvel. The way awe has risen where shame once sat. The way I meet my own eyes in the mirror and see imperfection still, but beauty, too. So much of it. Both within its golden frame, in the lines of my body, and everything else the glass can’t show me.

I am growing, in more ways than one, and I’m fine with it. I can only hope this is the start of something. A quieter triumph beneath the nurture of new life. That as my body is becoming something new, perhaps I am too.

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