New year, new you

THE beginning of a new year is a time when many strive to change bad habits or achieve certain goals.

Often our body shape or weight becomes the focus of a new year’s resolution, but should it?

Body image is how we see our physical selves and the thoughts and feelings which arise as a result. These feelings can be positive or negative or a combination of both. Our thoughts and perception on body image are influenced by many different factors too.

As a new mother you see your body transform dramatically over nine months of pregnancy, then change again afterwards. Some view this as a natural progression of understandable events, but for others these changes are alarming and can trigger negative emotions and self-consciousness.

We live in a world that makes money from our body image issues. Let’s face it, if we were all completely happy with our physical selves many businesses would not thrive.

In parenthood, and especially since the rise of social media, body image scrutiny and comparison is rife. Not only do you scroll past parents publicly sharing their delight that their child is running, when yours of the same age is barely crawling, but there are also those boasting about being back in their skinny jeans or gushing about a new diet. Most of us struggle to feel happy for those people, but rather we compare them to ourselves and are often left feeling less than worthy.

If only we could see ourselves as our children do – as the most perfect, beautiful, safe person in the world.

When we speak to children, we always try to tenderly encourage them and praise them, never pointing out physical flaws. If only we would talk to the small child within us in the same way, speaking to ourselves tenderly, with care, with encouragement and praise and never pointing out flaws.

Negative thinking about ourselves is really unhealthy and unhelpful. Our mind is like fertile soil, meaning it can quickly grow helpful and nurturing thoughts, or unhelpful and toxic thoughts, which will go on to greatly affect our mood and outlook.

Of course it is good to eat well and exercise, but I think that decision should mainly come from wanting to feel better and more energised, rather than merely wanting to change how we look. I think we need to love and accept ourselves first, then move on from there.

To explain this further, I have written a poem about the ‘mum tum’. I know all mothers have different experiences but I believe that the ‘mum tum’ is real and not something to be ashamed of. Perhaps if the pictures we saw in magazines and online were more real and less airbrushed, posed or fake, we and our children would have a healthier, more accepting mental image of a woman’s body.

Many of the pictures we see in the media have been manipulated quite dramatically to hide ‘flaws’. Isn’t it sad that a photo that we may try to measure up to, or which makes us feel inadequate, isn’t even real in the first place and that person in the photo sees a very different image when she looks in the mirror.

May this year’s resolution be to realise all of this anew and let the ‘new you’ be confident and ready to enjoy the year ahead.

There is so much more to motherhood than your tum. Read this poem. Let the words sink in and I hope in some way this is healing for you.

• Jo Le Page is a local stay at home mum and writer. You can follow her on: freshbreadandfaith.wordpress.com, instagram.com/freshbreadandfaith, facebook.com/freshbreadfaith

The Mum Tum

by Jo Le Page

The mum tum is wobbly and wrinkled with rolls.

The mum tum is saggy and stretched with folds.

The mum tum can make you feel more self aware.

‘If I wear that tight top will anyone stare?’

The mum tum can make us feel shame of our size.

We squeeze into control pants what we want to hide.

We are jealous of others who are only too happy to say

They used to have a mum tum but then it went away!

‘Why is she so slim?’ ‘What am I doing wrong?’

All too often women are singing this song.

Stretch marks or tiger stripes, call them what you choose

Either way scars are souvenirs that you never lose.

A reminder of the unspeakable gift that you grew inside.

A gift that is denied to so many who have tried and tried.

A gift that you nourished, kept safe and warm.

This gift never felt pain, shame, sadness or scorn.

A gift that once in this world to them you became

The most perfect being who could ever be named!

Your mum tum was soft where they laid their head

Comforted by your smell and the words that you said.

The very fact that this miracle was born alive

Is a blessing that to many is tragically denied.

I hope you can see how special you are.

How blessed you have been to have come this far.

To have flourished new life in the depths of your being.

To have been blessed with the growing reminder that you are daily seeing.

It is an emotional journey becoming a mum.

And the wonder of it all is so much more than your tum!

So take comfort in the knowledge that you are not alone.

When your child hugs your tum remember that was their first home.

When you look in the mirror smile and feel proud

For you have grown brand new humans for crying out loud!

My body reminds me of joy and of loss.

And how my arms ached for a baby I wanted whatever the cost.

If the cost of a baby is a sag here and there

I will take it and own it and see beauty there

Your tum is a reminder of how far you have come

On this miraculous journey of becoming a mum.