The Belly Blues

I have a love/hate relationship with my belly. She’s perfectly imperfect, yet i’m always wanting for her to just be perfect. Damn. She’s so not. I even cut her once, hoping to make her perfect, but it didn’t work, and really, what’s perfect anyway? The perfect job, the perfect relationship, the perfect…what? Just because it looks ideal on the outside, doesn’t mean it is on the inside. Recent events in the news remind us how even those who seem like they have the most extraordinary lives are vulnerable. This is nothing new for me on so many levels – I have a hard time exposing my belly because it exposes all the raw parts of myself: shame, vulnerability, fear, hate…but then here I am revealing her anyway, and it feels simultaneously freeing and scary. I confess, I actually asked my photographer friend to touch up some photos. “Hey,” I asked, “can you smooth out all the wrinkles around my belly button, take away the stretch marks and the bumps and make the love handles go away?” And then I took it back, remembering how I got all of those imperfections. And how truthful I want to be, how real and raw and myself that I want to be, to break out of a place of perfection so that I don’t have to cover up or pretend. So here I am, no touch ups, wrinkly belly and all…scars of life from my two pregnancies that brought forth the two most amazing humans on the planet, my deepest loves. And then there’s the consequences of more than a few extra pieces of chocolate, and too many days sleeping in instead of working out…so yeah, this belly. I’ll take the imperfections because it speaks of what I’ve lived, of who I am, of where I’ve been, of mistakes, real life, real love. I’m learning to be ok with it so here she is and here I am. Now you know. The truth is out and so am I. Wrinkly belly and all.