A friend recently introduced me to The Shape of a Mother, a website for women to share pictures of their bodies, the good, the bad and what many of us perceive as ugly.  Here is what the creator of the site says:

It is my dream, then, to create this website where women of all ages, shapes, sizes and nationalities can share images of their bodies so it will no longer be secret. So we can finally see what women really look like sans airbrushes and plastic surgery. I think it would be nothing short of amazing if a few of our hearts are healed, or if we begin to cherish our new bodies which have done so much for the human race. What if the next generation grows up knowing how normal our bodies are? How truly awesome would that be?

I have to say I was a bit skeptical at first. It felt a bit creepy, looking at these very intimate pictures. I didn’t know what value there would be in seeing other women’s bodies who, like me, were ravaged by childbearing. In my head I “knew” other women out there look like me. But in mere moments I was completely hooked. I spent half an hour straight just looking at pictures and reading the thoughts and feelings of the women who posted them and so closely identifying with many of them. The good and the bad. The shame and frustration of the Lose Weight Exercise gain, the stretch marks, the sagging and other side effect of childbearing. But also the joy and power in knowing the strength of my own body and seeing it work so effectively to create a new life. 

Most of all, this site is like media desensitization. Instead of coming away depressed, I felt something I rarely feel: normal.  Absolutely, totally, one hundred percent NORMAL.  I looked at my own body in the mirror and thought to myself “I have a normal body. I look like most of the bodies I saw today.  I have nothing to be ashamed of.” Though I believed those ideas in my head before visiting The Shape of a Mother, I now believe them in my heart.

I also came to appreciate more fully that almost every woman feels the same way about her postpartum body. Even the ones who I would personally deem attractive or thin or beautiful. No detail escapes our scrutiny. No change is unnoticed. None of us seem to be immune. How easy it is for each one of us to feel we are somehow different from everyone else and that we are the only one who experiences our feelings. The Shape of a Mother reminded me I am not alone and that there is a sisterhood of women who have the same struggles.

I know these issues apply to women who have not been pregnant, too, and I think it is just fabulous that someone is trying to remove the shroud of shame and embarrassment that so many of us feel about our bodies in an age when we are bombarded with images that look so different from what we see in the mirror. I hope you will check it out. Whenever I am feeling down on myself about the shape of my body, I know I’ll be going back to remind myself what normal really looks like.