Announcing: NOW Foundation's Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival on Wednesday, Oct. 19

"This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival" linking to: http://www.now.org/news/blogs/index.php/sayit/2011/10/19/lybd-blog-carnival-posts

BODY
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Tracing the lines and curves of my body, are the vivid images of blackberries, roses, lavender, trillium and poppies. Looking in the mirror I follow the images to tell the story of my life thus far, to remind me of all that has died and been reborn, of all that has yet to become.

Scars brand my chest, a marking of a rite of passage: the self-inflicted wound of initiation. My initiation into adulthood, my coming of age rite. I had been envisioning the markings of three lines on my chest for some time, drawing them in my notebooks, dreaming them in my mind. At the age of seventeen, recently free from home and on my own, I traveled to the northwest to visit some friends; it was there that I asked my friend and lover to brand me.

It was a cold fall night in Olympia; I prepared the fire in a small stone lined fire pit in the backyard. He prepared the branding implements, three street cleaner blades formed into descending lines. It was dark out, only the glow of the fire lit our faces. I was completely serene and in my body. I knew deep inside what I was about to do. I did not feel fear or anxiety. I was calm and peaceful. I knelt down, chest exposed, open and receiving. In successive order he placed each blade in the fire, one after the other, and he branded me.

My mouth and throat let out guttural animal sounds. Primal screams of pain and release. Like a woman giving birth, I was a girl being born a woman that night. The experience was beyond pain, after the initial searing flesh, I felt nothing, I was numb. I was a whole.
Another scar lines my abdomen, a cesarean section scar that was incised among my trillium. Brutal reality shattering my dreams; another rite of passage. A symbol of the death of a pregnancy, the death of a woman, and the birth of a mother.

My labor began on a cold snowy morning in January. I had awoken in the middle of the night to the painful rushes of contractions, nodding in and out through the surreal moments of sleep mixed with pain. I felt a mix of excitement and fear. Every night I went to bed waiting for these sensations and every morning I had woken up longing for them. Now they were here, my labor was here and I had to face the reality of birth.

I labored on and off through that day and night. Walking in the woods, laboring by the wood stove, resting in the warm fragrant waters of the birthing tub. Trying to find the peace within my body, within myself to birth this baby. My labor continued for two more days and excruciating sleepless nights. My fear and anxiety mounted. What was wrong? Why wouldn’t my cervix dilate? Why wouldn’t my uterus contract effectively? What was wrong with my body?

On the fourth afternoon I transported to the hospital. I can remember the snow falling down on the window as we drove. I can remember feeling exhausted and defeated. I just wanted the nightmare to end. I felt tortured. I was so exhausted, all I wanted was to sleep. All I wanted was to have my baby in my arms.

The hospital was a surreal disparaging experience that I completely surrendered to. I spent another night there laboring in a drug-induced haze of intervention and violation. Vaginal exams, catheters, IV’s, fetal heart monitors all adorned my body. I moved and swayed in my technological nakedness feeling so sacrificed to the birth that I had held up for myself. This was not the beautiful serene peace of a water birth at home. This was the brutal ugly reality of birth, my birth in the hospital. In the morning I was prepped for my cesarean, I had completely given up hope at this point and felt strangely settled and peaceful in the experience that lay ahead. I had surrendered to the power of birth.

Right before the operation the midwives took a picture of my trillium, beautiful and uncut across my bulging belly. Minutes later my birthroot was severed and my baby born out of it.
Through the leaves and petals she emerged. Pulled from the herbs of birthroot that had adorned her mother. Her perfect face, bloody and traumatized, crying her first breaths of life. This was how she was born into the world; this was how I was born as well. A living testament of my rite into motherhood.


There are scars from cutting and scars from pain. Sad lines of despair reminding me of all the deaths I’ve had. Scars from dreams lost: the end of a love(s), the death(s) of friends, and the birth of my daughter. Each mark illustrating my history, my past, myself. Each mark tells a story, each mark tells a part of me.

My body is a testament. It has changed and morphed shapes as I have shape shifted as well. It has carried me through and has carried life within me. My body is a map of scars and flowers, beauty and pain, death and birth. A living, breathing document of the life I’ve lived and survived. My body is a tribute and a witness to my life and myself.
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My breasts are small and sunken and adorned with the petals of lavender. Each nipple once held rings, remnants from my days of lustful maidenhood. They were removed upon the knowledge of my conception. There are subtle silvery lines illuminating the memories of my baby’s mouth, my baby’s palm, and my baby’s touch. My breasts once poured milk, swollen and red and bursting, my baby nursed on them. A new sense of touch and tenderness emerged from my breasts. Her eyes looking up at me, her eyes falling asleep on me. My days and nights spent lying with her body, her breath, and her soul there on me. My breasts sustained a life, her life. Now they sustain me in my own autonomy. A reminder of my reclamation of my body for myself again. My body my own again.

My belly is flattened now with the memories of a plumper, fuller, life carrying body. Tiny stretch marks and a crimson scar remind of the daughter I carried and birthed. Visceral body memories manifested. The first flutter of butterfly kicks like butterfly kisses. The tossing and turning of body within body, life within life. The growing, expanding body within. Images of my body, my belly changing into curvy, voluptuous Venus. My belly round and full like the moon, the physical manifestation of myself as mama.

Looking down I see the belly of a woman who has worked hard to reclaim herself and her body again. I see the belly of struggle. Of issues with eating disorders and self hate. I see the agonizing desire to be thin again and the incessant reminder to eat less; exercise more and enough is never enough. I see the years of body image struggle before and after the birth and I see the acceptance that I am slowly coming to love myself again.