\u201cMommy?\u201d<\/p>\n
My three-year-old son stands before me on the rocky mountain path. We\u2019re in Jasper and we\u2019re hiking.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, sweetie?\u201d<\/p>\n
He looks solemn beneath his sideways ball cap. \u201cYou\u2019re beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he turns and skips away, leaving me breathless.<\/p>\n
I know my husband told him to tell me that.<\/p>\n
I know, because I\u2019ve been struggling with postpartum body image.<\/p>\n
Later, my five-year-old son tells me the same thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cMommy? You\u2019re very<\/i> beautiful,\u201d he says. I\u2019m sitting and nursing my three-month-old daughter, wondering if my stomach will ever return to \u201cnormal.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s something about a child\u2019s voice. There\u2019s something innocent and powerful, something reaching past the varicose veins and the stretch marks and the bags. It ministers to a place so often neglected — the soul.<\/p>\n
A child\u2019s voice is louder than the world\u2019s, the one telling me I need to lose weight, the one saying I should put on makeup or dye my hair or wear brand-name clothes. The one glancing enviously at other women instead of compassionately, the one that nearly killed me when I was an anorexic teenager.<\/p>\n
A child\u2019s voice is the voice of The Velveteen Rabbit<\/i>. One of my favorite books, and now one of my kids\u2019, it\u2019s the story of a rabbit who\u2019s all plush and new, who longs to be real. Who eventually gets to be real because of the love of a little boy. A boy who squeezes the rabbit tight each night and plays with him each day. As time passes the rabbit doesn\u2019t notice his fur getting faded and ratty, his stuffing coming loose and his buttons falling off, because he finally feels loved. And this love declares him beautiful. This love declares him real.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m 34 and I\u2019ve got three children, and they\u2019ve loved the plush right off me. I\u2019m not shiny and new. My eyes are lined and weary from late-night nursing and rising to hug away the nightmares. On days when I do<\/i> get to shower, I often don\u2019t have time to comb my hair because the baby starts to cry or the boys are covered in mud, and they\u2019re tramping it across the floor. Makeup is reserved for Sundays on the way to church when I have a few minutes in the car to smear it on, and even when I put on nice clothes, they soon have spit-up on them.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve got stuffing that bunches in weird places: I\u2019m flat where I used to be curvy and curvy where I used to be flat. But when I look in my children\u2019s eyes, I see love. I see a love that hugs me tight each morning and begs me to sing song after song at night, a love that never tires of me in spite of me tiring of them. A love that eats burnt toast and quietly swallows when I yell over spilled milk. A love that wipes up spilled milk and says, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Mommy,\u201d and then, \u201cI forgive you, Mommy,\u201d when I say I\u2019m<\/i> sorry.<\/p>\n
This is real, friends.<\/p>\n
All of it.<\/p>\n
It is true and good and beautiful. Don\u2019t let the mirror fool you. You\u2019ve never looked more stunning.<\/p>\n
Emily T. Wierenga is an award-winning journalist, blogger, commissioned artist and columnist, as well as the author of five books including the memoir\u00a0Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look<\/a> (Baker Books). She lives in Alberta, Canada with her husband and two sons. For more info, please visit emilywierenga.com<\/a>. Find her on Twitter<\/a> or Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cMommy?\u201d My three-year-old son stands before me on the rocky mountain path. We\u2019re in Jasper and we\u2019re hiking. \u201cYes, sweetie?\u201d He looks solemn beneath his sideways ball cap. \u201cYou\u2019re beautiful.\u201d Then he turns and skips away, leaving me breathless. I know my husband told him to tell me that. I know, because I\u2019ve been struggling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":3610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,102],"tags":[168,170,145,26,33,156,169,55,121,36],"class_list":["post-675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-relationships","tag-body-image","tag-emily","tag-encouraging","tag-family","tag-identity","tag-inspirational","tag-kids","tag-mom","tag-new-baby","tag-relationships"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}