Tina Van Winkle (32 - she/her), Theodore Meriwether (4), and Roger Archibald (3). You can view Tina’s original photo and story from 2018 here.
Austin, TX
“I had a miscarriage in 2014 at the end of the first trimester. I have a tattoo in memory of that pregnancy, and still refer to that child affectionately as "Little Moose"
How has parenthood impacted your body image?
When I participated in 4TBP last time, I was still raw and reeling from the difficult pregnancy and postpartum period with Roger. He just turned 3, and I feel I've finally moved away from just how gestating and parenting infants affected my body image, and I can now better speak to how parenthood in general has changed it. I feel simultaneously more strong and more fragile. There are days when I feel like a badass, thankful for all the things my body can do to support me and my kids. Other days I feel completely defeated and scared that my limitations and frailty will negatively impact my boys. I do know that I've really let go of worrying about how I look. I am myself, with all my freckles and stretch marks and silver hairs and the coming wrinkles. If I'm a mama house (as I used to refer to myself), I love my (slightly crumbling) facade, and I just wish the structural renovations on the inside could happen faster and paid for by medical insurance. Okay, that metaphor really didn't extend...
Teddy weaned himself one day just weeks before his fourth birthday. We were both ready; he was only nursing once a day, and would run off to play very quickly. Roger also chose this year to wean, about six weeks ago, so just shy of his third birthday. It's a strange new thing, to suddenly not be nursing a child after doing so continuously for four and a half years. My breasts have changed with pregnancy, and nursing, and are now changing again. I feel like I'm getting to know my body again, as its own entity, as my kids are more and more in their independent spheres and not nestled against me most of the time. Sometimes I marvel at how I can just not touch anyone, if I so choose!
What was your postpartum experience?
My previous narrative describes the really difficult journey I had postpartum. What's changed since November 2017, and March 2018 when my portrait and narrative were published, is that I am now divorced. My ex-wife left just a few days after my 4TBP photo was posted, and moved to another state. It was a heartbreaking, contentious process, and it took me a long time to extricate myself from the pain of a relationship that, in retrospect, was undeniably bad for me. My expectations of parenting toddlers had to shift dramatically. I know that many of the dreams I had for my family aren't realistic anymore, not in their original forms. Being a single mother is terrifying, and has pushed me to rely on others (my family, my friends, my church, my children's school) in ways that I have never felt comfortable doing before.
At its worst single motherhood is humiliating; at its best it is humbling. My children are so resilient I've had no choice but to go through this painful growth process to keep up with them. I am eternally grateful for the little moments of peace and joy we find together. I feel, every day, like the biggest burden on the people around me, but I also know it's brought me so much closer to all of them.
What is your truth?
If you have the same doubts, day after day, listen to them. If you are afraid that leaving a relationship will make you collapse--it might, but you will stand up again. Nurture yourself, and in the chaotic midst of parenting little ones, parent yourself a bit, too.
Why did you choose to participate in this movement and share your story?
I wanted to come back, not to "correct" my narrative, but to add its next chapter. My family looks different now. I'm no longer married, my children are older, I'm no longer nursing, and I'm doing some amazing things. About a year ago I contracted a bad case of viral meningitis and was hospitalized. Since then, I've been trying to find balance as my health screams for attention. Over the summer I worked three jobs, something that would have been impossible several years ago. I started graduate school for library and information science in 2018 and I will receive my master's degree in May of 2020. I've taken my kids on hikes again, made music with them, pushed myself to find reserves of energy and strength I'm still not sure I have. My children laid rose petals as I sang, blessing a space for my sister and new brother-in-law at their wedding. I wrote and performed the ceremony for a different wedding. I have beautiful new tattoos that help me see my story on my skin. I have dear new friends, dear old ones, and there are new things on the horizon. I've learned I'm not, in fact, a misanthrope.
Two years ago, when I first participated in Ash's amazing project, I thought I'd already been through the worst. I thought I'd walked through the fire and that things would look up. I've lost my cockiness about that. Parenting, and life in general, isn't linear, and its narrative (annoyingly) won't conform to literary norms.
The worst may be over, or it may be yet ahead; but I am now and I will be better. As Hamlet would say, "the readiness is all.”