After I had each of my three babies, I vowed to never pick up a magazine with any news of “getting your body back.” Why? Because I was pretty damn busy being a mother. My body was the last thing on my mind.
So I am currently crying tears of joy over Carrie Underwood’s latest Instagram post. The one where she is 100 percent honest about being hard on herself over the bouncing back.
With this 229-word post, she says everything that every mother needs to hear. And she does it in a way that gives mothers — new and old — the kind of permission they need to just focus on the baby. And if it’s the second, third, or tenth baby, to focus on the juggling of everything that comes with life with little ones.
“I’m going to be honest, ’bouncing back’ after having Jacob has been much more difficult than after I had Isaiah and I’ve been pretty hard on myself lately,” Underwood wrote about her eight-week-old infant.
“I go into the gym and I can’t run as fast or as far. I can’t lift as much weight or do as many reps as I could a year ago. I just want to feel like myself again,” she adds, “for my body to feel the way that I know it can. As I was working out today, I realized that for the past 11(ish) months, my body has not belonged to me. It was a perfect home for Jacob. And even now it belongs to him every time he drinks his milk.”
What a fresh perspective that is. That it’s not just a mother’s heart that belongs to the new baby, but her whole physical self. I wish I’d been thinking like that 24 years ago when my first daughter was born. Jacob Bryan was born on Jan. 21, right before his big brother Isaiah turned four.
“As I prepare for red carpets and for life on tour, right now I make a promise to myself to start appreciating what my body CAN do and stop focusing on what it can’t,” she says of her new outlook. (In fact, let’s consider today — March 19 — the day that Underwood’s liberating honesty was born.)
“I promise to stop analyzing every angle and every curve and every pound and every meal.”
She ended the post by saying that she’s going to stay the path, and that one day she will reach her goals. But it will not happen over night. It’s a journey, not a race. “I’m going to take it day by day, smile at the girl in the mirror, and work out because I love this body and all it has done and will continue to do!”
