The woman in the mirror

To the woman in the mirror, I don’t recognise you as the girl from yesterday. The lines are starting to run deep. As I trace the lines around my mouth where I have smiled so many times before, I can’t help but see the sadness that never leaves. I see the scar beside the corner of my mouth joining these lines where I had my second cancer removed. I am still here. I am reminded, but I am still here. ?

My body is not as it was. It is changed. I see the dimples across my skin, the softness in my belly, the muscle separation, the 'mama pouch' that I am so very lucky to have. It was the ‘home’ for my babies, that grew the most amazing little people who finally showed me what true love meant.?I had to change the way I viewed myself, I had to learn to be ok with the change, to appreciate that I was now in?the body of a mother and not a young woman. I see the thick jagged scar that runs beneath my mama pouch, below my belly, cut?not from child birth, but for a tumour that grew and grew to the size of a cantaloupe. The scar is now part of my story, it is part of my journey. ?

I see the strength in my arms, the only part of me that still has defined muscles, the arms that have carried my children, picked them up time and time again, giving them comfort and love. I see my ankles, no longer slender, slightly swollen. My feet, my toes; I see the osteoarthritis that became part of my story at the young age of 30 after working 2 to 3 jobs at a time for 12 years straight on my feet in low paying roles, all the way to my 38th week of pregnancy with my first born. They are slightly deformed, they don’t carry me the same way anymore, locking up if?I walk without shoes. But I am so very grateful for how they have carried me all my life and it is now my turn to be kind to them.?

I see my hair, messily thrown into a bun day in and day out. It was once a light strawberry blonde but has darkened over the years. The white hairs are becoming easier to find, another sign that I am well on my journey through life.?I see the clothes I wear, simple, comfortable, selected to make me feel safe and to feel like me. ?

I look in the mirror,?into the eyes of the woman staring back at me. In those eyes, in the depth of the blue, I see every moment, every heart ache, every trauma. It is overwhelming. The memories I see in those eyes are endless. There is joy, there is love, but there is overwhelming pain that screams louder, above all of those memories. But the sound is silenced. ?

But that is not all I see in those eyes. I see the woman who stepped up to every challenge, who opened her mind to learn more, who strived to carve out her own life. I did that. ?

I am not the me of yesterday. I am someone else, forged by fires so hot they should have consumed me, but they didn’t. I broke away all the narratives that were given to me as a woman since birth and I finally became the woman I deserved to be. I am strong. I am capable. I am deserving. And I don’t need anyone else’s validation. I am me. ?