Someone recently asked me when I feel most beautiful.

A part of me wanted to say after a good blow dry and a professional makeup job. Another part of me wanted to say with an oversized tee shirt on and a bare freckled face.

But mostly, I feel beautiful when I choose to celebrate the skin I’m in.

The skin with spotted freckles that show my summers spent in California growing up. The skin with dark under eyes that tell my story of new and exhausting motherhood. The skin with small lines from all those soulful belly laughs over the years.

That’s the skin I want to celebrate. There’s something incredibly freeing about learning to see beauty as a reflection of experiences, that makes you want to keep on celebrating…

As a mother, my body has been shocked, stretched and strengthened, and is working its way back into something that feels the same yet so incredibly new. New curves and lines and bumps and bruises that remind me of the beautiful life I created.

People were right when they told me my body would never be the same. But what they forgot to tell me is how empowering that transition would feel. How somehow, my insecurities would become reminders of how capable my body is.

Some days we feel confident, other days we feel terribly unsure. We all have different skin, and schedules, and routines. We’re all going to heal in different ways at different moments in time. But together, we can cheer each other on and celebrate the skin we’re in. We can encourage each other to be patient in our transition, and to to celebrate our newness.

I hope we never let the expectation of hanging onto our old bodies get in the way of loving the new bodies we’re in…

Our skin reminds us of the journey we’ve been on…

When do you feel most beautiful?

Photos by Cibelle Levi