Do you look in the mirror and wish a certain part of your body wasn’t the way it was? Don’t you sometimes wish you could just tweak or delete one body part or feature? Your tummy, waist, bum, hips, boobs, stretch marks, excess skin, nose…?

Not to worry, I am like this too. Wishing my tummy could be flatter and that I did not have excess skin around my tummy. In recent times, I have however chosen to love my body as it is and appreciate why my tummy is the way it is.

I seemed to have been caught up in what I would like my midriff to look like, that I forgot important things like:

• God loves me regardless of what my body looks like
• My body does not define who I am
• I have put in a lot of work to get my tummy to look the way it does

After baby number 2, I thought it was taking a long time for my tummy to go down. Little did I know that I had diastatis recti (separation of the abdominal walls/mummy tummy). The abdominal separation was 6 fingers wide and I have managed to get it down to 1.5 fingers, that’s a great achievement that I had somehow forgotten about that.

I find that many women go through life wanting their bodies to be perfect and in the process lose focus of the important things. Health, family, joy, gratitude and so much more are way more important. There will always be some body feature that is not quite right, but that’s okay. Research reveals that as much as one quarter of one’s self-esteem is the result of how positive or negative that person’s body image is.

My tummy is still not perfect and that is okay. The excess skin is what it is, the stretch marks are my motherhood stripes, reminders of the precious ones I carried in my tummy.

I have chosen to love my body, focus on taking care of it, appreciating it for what it is and embracing the more important things in life.

Are you also struggling with body love? Start taking care of you, embracing all that you are. Love your body, take care of it, nourish it, exercise, rest, enjoy life, celebrate love……