I Want to Accept my Mother’s Stomach
By: Kim Buchwald
Tags: Self, Body, Body Positive, Body Image, Self Love

I Want to Accept my Mother’s Stomach

By artinspiring

My stomach is my mother’s stomach. It carries with it the weight of genes and generations. Consisting of bathing suits that must be worn to cover the belly button, and spontaneous diets to eliminate lactose. My stomach is my mother’s stomach inherited from her mother, passed around the dinner table, whispered while getting dressed, told as a casual remark of worry:

“I am getting fat.” My grandmother would say over a phone call.

“I am getting fat.” My mother would say after indulging in imported cheeses.

“Fat. I am getting fat.” I say, staring at my belly in the mirror. “I am getting fat.”

My favorite memory of my grandmother from when I was a child was bath-time. It was a special event because I got to pick from the pile of bath toys novel to most three-year-olds. Plastic ships and rubber ducks. I remember preferring the tug boat. It was the end of bath-time that was my favorite though, my grandmother would dry me off with a pink fuzzy towel that matched the room’s tile warmed in the dryer. She would hold it out wide, arms spread open and I would snuggle my way forward at which point she would draw me close into her chest, giving me a deep hug. Thinking back this is how I remember my grandmother’s stomach: warm, and soft and safe.

Growing up my family had a pool which more than anyone else my mother enjoyed, lounging in the sunshine, floating. I would admire the way my mother seemed to effortlessly wear striped tankinis and dark-colored one-pieces. Photos from every summer show my mother dawning form-flattering shorts and laid back tops, fashion best suited for her beauty. Looking back, I remember the way in which I saw my mother’s clothing choices as lessons for my own and how I never once saw the stomach she saw, the body that always needed to lose something. To me, my mother’s hips and belly were her hips and belly, part of her beauty not detracting from it.

While my stomach is my mother’s stomach, beautiful, and while my stomach is my grandmother’s stomach, soft, I do not see it. I’ve inherited their same way of looking. My stomach has over the years proven to be my nemesis. It is never as toned as the rest of me nor thin. It is the first place to gain weight and the last to lose it. My stomach does not like most foods and prefers to maintain itself composed of air, rounded and uncomfortable. My stomach and I are waging a war that has lasted lifetimes and just like those who have come before me, I am alone in the fight.

I am alone in the fight because just in the way I cannot see what my mother and grandmother see in themselves, I cannot see in myself what others see. The story that exists in my head tells of what my stomach should look like and over years and with practice, that “should” has become an expectation and that expectation has become an act of preoccupation. The fight I have with my stomach is an inherited way of seeing, not the reality. Recognizing this helps me see that my stomach comes from the body I was born into, the same I admire of my mother and grandmother — Fat or thin, or not.

It would be radical to hold within myself what I saw and what I continue to see in my mother. It would be an act of love to place my hands on my hips and embrace the way in which my stomach is my mother’s stomach full of everything that she is determined, creative, and mesmerizing. The belly I have then becomes this thing that I’d rather not change because I am all the women who have come before me. I am everything I see in them, the love of a memory, countless summer nights by the pool and nurture created by nature. In this way, my mother’s stomach is my stomach and something worth celebrating rather than fighting against, beautiful, warm, soft and safe — or not.