A body that remembers

Returning to your body after birthing babies without demanding it become something new

Yesterday hubby and I signed up for a gym together and today I celebrated going to the gym for the first time since giving birth.

I celebrated the quiet victory of mapping out the logistics, arriving with both shoes on, hair in some version of a plan, and a body that felt like mine and not mine at the same time.

It started off with a complimentary physical assessment with a personal trainer. I lifted up my arms as she measured my hip, waist, chest, biceps, thighs… the whole shabam. Numbers were written down and I felt my energy honing in on the journey I’m about to walk on.

Then she asked me to squat. All five of them. Just enough to tell the truth. The only squats I’ve been doing are in my bathroom so it was time to be brave. Muscle memory is a strange thing- it waits patiently, even when you don’t think you remember it anymore.

A one minute wall sit.

A one minute plank.

Assisted push ups and crunches.

Each minute felt like a small reveal, less about strength but more about what’s familiar.

And then she paused and said casually, “did you workout a lot, I can tell you know what you’re doing.”

What I didn’t say was how nervous I was. How my confidence hadn’t kept pace with my capability. How two kids can make you forget not just what your body can do but whether you’re allowed to or expect anything at all.

After cardio, I moved to the turf area for the main workout. I slowed myself down- on purpose. There was strength where I didn’t expect it.

I wasn’t there to reclaim anything. I wasn’t proving resilience. I wasn’t striving. I wasn’t hopping on the bounce-back train. I was just a woman lifting light weights and trying to remember how to inhabit a body that has done something irreversible and wildly miraculous - still as I’m now nursing.

As I sat in the sauna to wrap up my workout session, I thought about how motherhood has quietly rewritten my definition of progress.

It’s less about intensity now and more about showing up.

Warmly,