This post is hard to write, but it is important to write. I have reached a milestone in my life and that is something worth talking about. We, as women, beat ourselves up. We abuse our bodies to get what we think is the perfect body. We are not happy no matter how hard we work. Yet, it has taken pregnancy for me to learn that what we have been given is already perfect. We make life and that is beyond any level of beauty we will find on the cover of a magazine or strutting down a runway. Embrace it ladies; every curve, line, and stretched piece of skin. It is gorgeous!

I have always hated my body. If it wasn’t my short wide feet, it was my crooked fingernail or round tummy. It was my thighs that got wider when I sat down and my hips that stuck out just a little too far. There is a birthmark above my left breast that looks like a small rash. There is a hair that grows on my chin and needs to be plucked. There are faded stretch marks on my hips and belly that came from a growth spurt in high school. There are freckles everywhere…..everywhere! My boobs are slightly uneven and my knees are permanently scarred from soccer. I have always looked in the mirror and hated what I saw.

To alter my body, I have spent thousands on diet pills, creams, books, tapes, and gym memberships. In high school and college, I took laxatives like candy. I have done three Master Cleanses. I have juiced without eating. I have fasted. I’ve done, South Beach, Atkins, Paleo, Weight Watchers, Slim Fast, and even Deal-a-Meal. I have been vegetarian and vegan and carb free. I have gained weight and lost weight and been highly successful at both. Even at my lowest weight, I still found something wrong with my body. There was nothing that made me happy with myself. I experienced a sexual assault in my twenties that made me fuller of self-hatred and guilt.

As a result, it took me a long time to be open to love. I have tried my hardest to hide my body and not share it with anyone. I have lacked the confidence needed to fall into a close relationship. I was thirty before I felt comfortable enough with someone to be intimate. Even then, I still never felt quite right with myself.

Four years ago, my father was diagnosed with cancer and I was broken.  I felt totally helpless and useless and wanted to do anything I could to save him. I am not a doctor, so I turned to charity races. I began running and could not be stopped. I had never run a race in my life and started with a half marathon to raise money for cancer research. I was not able to save my dad through running, but I have completed 3 half marathons, two full marathons, a 10-miler, and some 5Ks here and there. Running has become my therapy and has created a total body transformation. However, I still looked in the mirror and was unhappy with what I saw. I still found myself angry when I just couldn’t run as fast as I wanted to or train as much as I wanted to. I blamed it on my deficient body.

The other day, I woke up. I looked down over my body and saw my little toes. They were beautiful. I saw my hips. They are spreading to get ready for my baby and they are perfectly rounded. I saw my thickening thighs: the thighs that are forming so that they can support my ever-growing belly. I saw my growing breasts that will nourish my child. I saw my ribs sticking out just below my blossoming breasts and just above my swelling belly. It was all covered in freckles, but it was totally gorgeous. I looked last at my belly. That place that I had worked so hard on to get flat and tight was now bubbled up and moving around. It was the home to a miraculous human life. This body that I have detested and tortured is making another body. It is creating a life that is different than any other life that has come before it. That, to me, is astounding. Suddenly, without pause, I loved my body. There was no longer anything to see but beauty.