Battle Scars

Motherhood. To some it is a blessing; to others a battle. But no matter how many children you have, may it be one or seven, or how many dirty butts and late nights with no sleep there are, mothers endure. So isn’t it about time that we feel like the heroes we are?

Many women struggle with how they see themselves physically everyday. So to add on stretch marks and extra rolls that weren’t there before or the new amount of sweat you make when you walk from one room to the next, the newly found loss of hair and the nonexistent control of your bladder when you sneeze, can add onto an already negative view of yourself.

Many mothers just want to feel the way they did before the baby. Go back to the empowering feeling of strutting your stuff down the beach in a two piece being completely confident in your skin. But alas the body you spent nine months creating has erased all hope of that. You slide on your two piece in hopes that it fits and inside you feel great until you look in the mirror and realize you have stretch marks.

Don’t give up, there are creams and oils and workouts that promise the release of this new found image, but do they work? How can you be sure you’re buying the right thing for you? What even are these battle scars from child birth? What happened to my beautiful body?

By definition, stretch marks are under the skin in your squishy tissue otherwise known as our fat. So ordinary lotion won’t cure your skin problem and the creams won’t solve it either. So what do we do? We accept our bodies are powerhouses and we love the way we look!

We stay patient and diligent it took our bodies at least nine months to create life! So we can give ourselves at least that long to get it back. And contrary to popular belief, those scars do fade away on their own. I am not saying don’t use lotion or don’t take care of your skin. I simply would like to make women aware that we are not defined by the way our bodies look.

So the next time you find a pile of hair on the shower floor, or you catch yourself crying over nothing into a bucket of ice cream, remember you are a hero in the eyes of your children. It is because of you that their world keeps spinning, and the most important thing of all. You earned those battle scars and you are beautiful.