Breaking & Blooming: The Body of a Mother

 My body broke in the becoming—
bones bending, skin stretching,
everything once tight now loose.
But from the breaking came a bloom I never saw coming.
Softer. Stronger. Sacred.
She's not who she was.
She's better. 

They don't tell you that your body will break and bloom at the same time.  

I wasn't prepared for the way my skin would stretch past its limits., for the ache in my back that would whisper in the middle of the night, or how heavy my eyes would feel from the kind of tired that coffee can't touch. 

But I also wasn't prepared for the beauty of it. 

My body broke open to bring life into the world. Bones shifted. Muscles tore. A heartbeat beside mine became more important than my own. 

And then, slowly—sometimes painfully—it began to bloom. 

Not in the way that magazines or social media might define as beautiful. Not in flat stomachs or thigh gaps or effortless bounce-backs. But in softness. In strength. In sacredness. 

My arms bloomed into a place of comfort.
My hips became a haven.
My belly, marked and mapped, became a story only I could tell. 

And though I grieved the girl I used to see in the mirror, I am learning to love the woman who stares back now—a woman who has become. 

Motherhood broke me open. And from that breaking, something wild and beautiful began to grow.

I am still blooming.