Of Bellydance and Baby, or How I learned to Love My Body

I think I was about 11 or so when, like most other girls, I started to feel self-conscious and even embarassed by my body. I was a "tomboy" at that age, and I looked like it. Through middle school I read Seventeen Magazine, compartmentalized my body into segments, learned what was wrong with each one. I completed high school with a laundry list of what I perceived to be physical defects that I felt I would never be able to fix.

It was the summer of 2000 when I took my first bellydance lesson. I had seen Fire in the Belly perform a couple of times in years past and was in awe.; I wanted to learn how to do that. At that first lesson, the teacher said something that has meant a great deal to me ever since. The objective in bellydance, she said, is to develop two things: strength and grace. Grace is kind of obvious- you just don't look good dancing without it. You also can't bellydance well if you are not strong. You must have strong stomach muscles, obviously, but you must also have strong legs and arms. There are a great number of accomplished bellydancers who have "bellies" and who can roll them in ways that just don't look possible and it's because what lies underneath that curvaceous belly is some extremely strong muscle. After taking up bellydance, I started to appreciate my body because I saw it doing beautiful things, not in spite of being curvy, but because I was curvy. I discovered that I could do something extraordinary, beautiful and powerful with what I had.

In the subsequent years, as I have continued to study and watch bellydance, I have seen women of all ages and sizes take to the stage and demonstrate these qualities beautifully. More often than not we don't have lean tummies, or long, slender legs. We have curves, some of us more than others, and we are not afraid to use them. Some of us have stretch marks, and we are not afraid to show them. Bellydance taught me to say, to myself more than anyone else, "Hey, look what my hips can do! Look what my belly can do! Look how wonderful that jiggle is!" Strength and grace: that is what we have; that is what makes us beautiful.

Fast forward 8 years and I am pregnant. I begin, as any good student would, by reading everything I can about pregnancy. I read the week-by-week books, I scour online sources and I come away with a singular feeling: dread. Those books made me paranoid about all of the things that could (but probably wouldn't) go wrong with my baby's in-utero development and birth. I've always been one to assert that information is power and the more you know, the better; however, I make an exception here. There is such a thing as too much information, at which point you can start to stress about things you don't need to stress about, which does more harm than good.

So, I stopped reading the scary books and started reading birth stories. I learned how varied the birth experience can be, that sometimes scary things do happen, but that more often than not, things go just fine, as long as you take good care of yourself. Gradually, I stopped being afraid. I learned that my body was doing everything it needed to do and that the baby was getting everything he needed. The human body, in general, is an astonishing thing and women's bodies in particular, I have discovered, are particularly remarkable. Left to its own devices, it can do some pretty far out stuff.

As my due date approached, I became more and more excited about giving birth. I felt strong and calm, I knew I had good labor support, and most of all I knew that my body could do this. And it did. Better than I even could have imagined- my delivery, from start to finish, lasted 3 hours, and it would have gone by faster if I hadn't had to hold the baby in until the OB got there!

Yeah, now I have some stretch marks- I think of them as badges that prove that I did something profound and beautiful. And nursing a hungry baby is certainly hastening the effects of gravity on my cleavage, but hey, um, you know, I'm feeding a human being with them, which is, in my book, pretty and cool. My body isn't "perfect;" I'm still short, I don't have long skinny legs, etc. etc.- but I can bring life into the world, I can nourish it and I can dance like there's no tomorrow. Moreover, I see my body as a whole; instead of a composite of imperfect parts, I see the parts as connected, as integral to the strong and graceful functioning of the whole thing. Strength and grace. That's what I have, that's what makes me beautiful.

A New Start

It's been a couple of years since I started this blog or added anything to it, but now that I have started a new chapter in my life- motherhood- I have a lot of things to say and feel the need to start anew. Becoming a mother turns your whole life upside-down. Everything about my days and nights is categorically different than before my son was born, and in many ways my perspectives and ideas have shifted accordingly.

There is an interesting paradox here, because while almost everything about my life is different (no more desk job, no more late nights out, very different social scene...), I am and I am not the same person. I still have the same needs, dreams, and fears I had before (plus a few more, now that I have a baby!); I still love doing the same things I did before and I do miss being able to go to dance class, take a spontaneous day trip, or act in a play when I feel like it. My heart is the same, it just has more love in it. My mind is the same, it just has more to tend to.

So in many ways, I am still the same Me; but from my experience of early motherhood so far it seems as though people treat you as if you are altogether a different person, not just that you have a different life situation, once you have a child. To the extent that some people I used to be social with barely seems able to say "Hello" when I see them in public. I should qualify that: people that I used to be social with who don't have children- which is almost everyone since I am the first of my friends to have a baby. It's not like I suddenly don't know how to socialize with people who don't have kids.

On the other hand, I am also very different than I was before I had a baby, and necessarily so. Aside from the obvious child-related responsibilities, worries, and joys, I feel different. I feel like I get to be a part of something totally sacred, but definitely hard. Personally, I feel like I have been given a very big challenge, but a one that is also a blessing. I don't feel like I was ever the center of my universe, but I'm definitely not now!

I also relate very differently to my body now. Granted, I have been pretty fortunate with my post-partum figure, but I really feel like I care less about my body looking a particular way; instead, I am grateful for it and what it has been able to do. I am grateful for its ability to house a growing baby and then deliver it into the world with such strength power. I am grateful for the nourishment it has provided my son before and after his birth. I don't fuss over the imperfections anymore; rather, I see it as a whole and as an incredible system that has done amazing things about which I feel really good.

So I am not the same person that I was before- but maybe "same" and "different" are inadequate terms. I am growing, developing, adding to my repertoire. Starting anew, but not from scratch.