My Core, My Center, My Strength. (Intro)

Where is my core, my center, my strength?

I gave birth a little over three months ago and these are the questions I’m asking myself right now. They are all the same question but each has a different answer I think. Yeah, it confuses me too but mom brain has a way of making the pieces just fuzzy enough that they seem to fit together even if you can’t articulate how to others.

The core of my physically being is, well, gone. My abdominal muscles spent nine months getting stretched out and floppy then cut open when my son had to be born cesarean. Everything seems harder without my core. For the first few months things like sitting up or bending over or lifting anything seemed tricky if not dangerous. But now that I’ve healed from the incision the lack of strength is showing. Especially when I took my first yoga class last weekend. For as body conscious as I am I realized just how much I’d been “faking” it. It’s pretty amazing how incorrectly we can use our bodies when compensating for muscle loss or injury.

My strength. Well I see this as a two-sided coin: there is my physical strength and my emotional strength. Both seem like distant allies, comrades that once stood by me and helped protect me but maybe got lost somewhere on the journey.  You can read all the books, listen to your mother and other moms, and try to anticipate but absolutely nothing can prepare you for the relentlessness of being a first time parent. Things that were so easy one time with my soldiers of strength by me seem almost unbearable. Some days those things include climbing the basement stairs and listening to music. Shortness of breath and tears are all to frequent.

And finally my center has shifted. Well not so much shifted as disappeared. Where am I? Who am I? What was sleep like? Of all the ups and downs of pregnancy and motherhood this one is the most baffling. One day I knew my body, I knew my needs and my limits and now all of that has changed and I’m struggling to find answers.

So I’m getting back on my mat. I took my first yoga class since birth last weekend and I could feel my brain firing again. I got to know my limbs and feel my strength (or lack of strength more appropriately) again. Yoga reminded me that with each asana, and each breath we open up the chance for understanding. So I’m taking that knowledge and I’m going to explore them here in 3 parts: My core, my center, my strength both on the mat and off, both as a mother and a woman.

Stay tuned if you are interested.