Allison Staiger (36 - she/her) and Violet Adele (6)
You can view Allison’s original photo and story from 2015 here.
How has parenthood impacted your body image?
As the years go on, I am less afraid of my body, more willing to inhabit it. It's less about how I look and more about how I have learned to trust and be present in my body. I willfully neglected mentally preparing for my birth because I couldn't stand to just be in my body, or tolerate the sensations and all the rapid changes that came with pregnancy and delivery. After Violet was born, I was so overwhelmed for a few years by the physical manifestations of my emotions- I would get angry or anxious or ashamed, and my body would respond with muscle memory telling me I was unsafe. I would automatically check out of myself to cope. It was easier to separate myself from my feelings and rain judgment and shame upon that feelings-person, than to accept that person was me too. I've learned to tolerate some discomfort and bring myself back to my body, show it compassion and care instead of harm and isolation. I don't love every part of me at every moment, but I can acknowledge that I have value even then.
What was your postpartum experience?
I just wrote a whole essay on this and I still don't know how to categorize my first couple of years as a mother. It's like I took a little of column A, a little of column B and ended up with this bipolar presentation. Not bipolar in the traditional DSM diagnostic sense, but more of a vacillation between being overwhelmed and being disconnected. Feeling like a strong and loving mother, and feeling like there wasn't a job on earth for which I was worse suited. I guess I realized along the way that I just had a lot of trouble tolerating all the strong emotions that come with being a mother, even the good ones. I couldn't bear the hard stuff but I also couldn't bear the love because I felt so unworthy of this brilliant lightning bolt of a daughter I have. I would respond with rage, or I would respond with avoidance and a complete shutdown.
My therapist probably saved my life- not because I was going to harm myself or anything, but because she helped me actually engage with it, and make it one worth living (intense feelings and all), instead of one just floating by. She helped me see beyond my fixed belief that I was a horrible mother, and shone a light on the other pieces, things that weren't my fault or were put in place before I was a cognizant being- attachment, intergenerational stuff, trauma- and helped me welcome all those parts as part of me, to understand them in order to heal. Violet is still a lightning bolt, but I realized I'm her sky. And lightning bolts don't actually crack the sky in half. They just shine light on the dark parts, and help move the storm through.
What is your truth?
You're still in there.
Why did you choose to participate in this movement and share your story?
In the last four years since my first shoot, the importance of this movement has settled into my bones. I came to it as a way to sort out my complicated feelings about my body image, but it's about so much more than that. I feel a protective instinct not just to myself and my daughter, but to mothers (however you choose to define that title) as a whole. I re-directed the work I was doing as a therapist and got specialized training in maternal mental health. I stopped engaging in my own body dismantling not only because it's not good for me, or my kid, but because it was a distraction from the work that needs to be done systemically to keep all women safe and cared for. I want my daughter to do better than I did- to herself, to others, and to the world. I heard a podcast not long ago, and it said that women are so powerful that the work they do now can potentially heal seven generations before them and seven generations after them, and that's comforting to me. I hope this is a good start.