one-handed cartwheels

this morning i walked into the bathroom with my bra on and stopped to check out my stomach in the mirror. i don't know about you, but my stomach always looks best in the morning. i suck it in and picture myself in a bikini on a beach, but that's never going to happen, because i have the worst body image known to woman. since i had river, i've been checking my stomach out a lot. it changed a lot, and this morning, it looked normal - normal being, before i grew a baby.

back in bed, i got to thinking about one-handed cartwheels. i don't even know how this came across my mind, but i was lying there, thinking about how when i was in karate when i was 12, the karate instructor's daughter always did one-handed cartwheels. one time i asked her she learned how to do it. she said it wasn't that hard, that the first time you do it, you just have to make yourself do it - don't think about it. so i didn't think about it, and now i can do one-handed cartwheels. and then i did them a lot, to impress people. plus it was fun. she said, eventually, one day you'll be doing one-handed cartwheels, and then all of a sudden you'll just do a no-handed cartwheel without even thinking about it, which is a flip in the air i guess, and way more impressive than a one-handed cartwheel. her goal, she said, was to get to the point where she could do a flip in the air. i still can't do a no-handed cartwheel, but secretly, i made it my goal.

then i started thinking, whoa. can i even do a one-handed cartwheel anymore? i mean, i haven't even done one since river was born. the thought of even trying it seemed silly. then i wondered if that's part of what it takes to lose yourself - you forget yourself before the baby. who you are now, is who you're going to be, forever. after birth, a woman's body is bruised, torn, weak, and fragile. and i guess i've sort of kept it in my mind that that's my new body [despite the fact that i actually gave birth, and that has got to be the greatest feat known to woman or man]. so that's what made the idea of me doing a one-handed cartwheel, or wearing a bikini on a beach, much less the two together, so ridiculous. not only has my body gone through a lot the past year, but i am a mom now, and moms don't have time to do one-handed cartwheels or wear bikinis.

pregnancy has this way of making you feel like the un-sexiest person on the face of the planet, for me anyway. my cousin said pregnancy made her feel womanly and curvy and feminine, but it just made me feel achy and fat and sweaty. though despite how i felt physically, it really changed my perspective of my skin. or the skin i had. every time i hear a skinny bitch complain about her fat thighs i just want to slap her. in the kindest of ways, of course. it takes growing a baby to give you room to complain about your body. pregnancy changes you - and sometimes it's really, really hard to accept that change, and change yourself back.

my new goal is to do a one-handed cartwheel.