Author’s Note
I knew one day he might read it. I just didn’t realize how hard it would be to hand it to him.
The most emotional part wasn’t posting my essay in front of millions of people. It was when our ten-year-old son asked to read it. Scroll to the My Body Exonerated section on the home page for a video reflection on what it means to share the truths we usually keep private —and let the people we love read them.
I thought the hardest part of publishing this essay would be knowing that millions of people could read it.
I was wrong.
The hardest part came when my son asked if he could read it.
I’ve always consciously preached self-love and positive body image to our kids. Perhaps overly so, determined that my own questioning would not become theirs. The stakes felt too high to show them the doubt. The betrayal. The darker parts of me that refused to grant approval to my body.
I could show them the grief. The sadness. The disappointment that their sister would never come home with us, that we would not become the family we had imagined.
But I told myself I would never show them that I felt responsible for all of it.
As our oldest approached his tenth birthday at the end of the school year, I submitted the essay I had been working on, then together we dove into the shallow end of summer, moving from one day to the next.
I nearly forgot about the essay.
Until my email pinged.
I had won the contest.
I couldn’t hide my joy. Tears spilled down my face and onto the kitchen floor, right in front of the kids.
“What’s going on?”
“Are you happy or sad?”
Before I had time to think, I was explaining that the essay I wrote about my body had won first place.
And, of course, the questions came. And Ray wanted to read it.
Strangers could read my words and never really know me.
But my son would.
Because he wouldn’t just see a writer. He would see his mother.
And suddenly I was thinking about what it means to write stories that other people are part of. To write about a life that is still unfolding. To put words on a page while the people inside the story are still growing and changing right alongside me.
I knew one day he might read it. I just didn’t realize how hard it would be to hand it to him. His fingers, once small and soft, now wrap around the paper—slightly more calloused, less smooth, no longer quite so little.
What will you think of me when you know just how broken I was?
How will it feel when you realize I am teaching you to love the body you were given while still learning to accept my own?
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