Positive Body Modification

to all the beautiful, smoking hot, interesting, educated and loving 'modified' mamas i know xxx

I've been thinking a lot about body modification, the methods and wider implications in society. Since I left my job as a shift manager at Starbucks, I have been finally free to express myself in many different ways. Although in work my tattoos were hidden as a rule (so as not to offend sensitive patrons?) they were still lurking underneath, allowing me to still retain a sense of self under my uniform. I want to say I am lucky to be self-employed, but is lucky really the right word? When my day job was impacting on my desire and need for self-expression, that can't be healthy or right.

I never used to want tattoos - I used to have a paranoid idea that if the world descended into a dystopian future and I had to change my identity, a tattoo would be something that I could always be identified by. When you meet an incredible artist and see his work, somehow identifying your body as different seems an inspired thing to do. I grew addicted to the patterns that were inscribed upon my body and the long talks, the planning and the revealing. Like my real skin was being discovered underneath.

As a person who is fairly 'modified' as people go, I am not unaware of the looks I sometimes get from people. People who were expecting somebody to look a little less like, well, me. You hear birth worker or baby class leader and I know the average person's mental image does not measure up with my face. It is interesting to try and pinpoint when I went from being completely socially acceptable to dubiously - the nose ring was okay, the chest tattoos were okay. When I finished my beautiful half-sleeve things started to change. My other piercings became the nails in the proverbial coffin of 'passing' as a respectable person. I got my mohawk for the hell of it in the dire stages of growing out my pixie cut and that was fun. I really struggle to take my appearance as seriously as others seem to!

I walked the delicate balance for a while. When my hair was long, it was easier, as I was balancing my differences with conventional femininity. My tattoos were all ones that could be covered by most clothes and some people didn't realise I had so many when they saw me in my wedding dress! From a cultural perspective, I love the idea that I could 'pass' as a normal woman based on what parts of my body were revealed at which times. It started up a really interesting dialogue with people at my wedding who were interested to know who had done the work (Ez at Moko!) and what this did to their mental pictures of brides and mothers. 

The image of the Mother is strong and pervasive. Somebody self-effacing and plain, sacrificing her looks in order to benefit her child. At the same time we are expected to conform to being Modern Women and all the time that involves: plucking, styling and shaving. "Be conventionally attractive, but not TOO attractive or you're neglecting your child" is the message I get. I agree that children are hard work, time consuming and having Judah added at least 5 years to my face! However, I really disagree that being a mother means I have to give up my personhood and sense of self. Or that having tattoos and piercings somehow makes me less able to bring up my son to be a decent person.

Going out into the big wide world as a visibly different person did come as a shock to me because when I was a stay at home mum I only socialised with my friends, who knew me pretty well. When you start going out into the world and meeting other people, other professionals and clients it's completely different. I am a fairly confident person. I have enjoyed seeing that initial reaction turn to friendship and mutual respect. I see it as a really positive thing that I can change people's perceptions of what a tattooed person is like, what a mother is allowed to 'be'. I have for many years looked very young for my age, and my knowledge about my chosen field and many many others such as literature and history has always been one of my favourite things to surprise people with.

Family have been disappointed and admonishing, as if they had partial ownership of me due to family ties. I would never dream of making somebody feel bad about what they do with their body and appearance because it is none of my business. Whether it's their hair or their weight, it doesn't make it any less rude to negatively comment about somebody's tattoos and piercings. I did not really like how I looked growing up no matter how normal and pleasing it was for everybody else. I just felt like a little drab bird.

In a way, living as a woman in the world that wants to claim ownership of my body, this is my way of taking that control back. Asserting my power and my right to my appearance fills with me with strength: my tiny F-you to everybody who believes that they own me.

I view my body as the house of my soul, but one that will one day disintegrate and return to the earth. I want to enjoy my body, to decorate it, adorn it with pictures and jewels that bring me daily pleasure and satisfaction. I will not subscribe to every small rule about what a woman should look like, no matter how strong those pressures may feel. I wake up every day with my favourite outfit on, one I designed myself, I enjoy seeing the effects clothes have on concealing and revealing different parts of my body art. 

When I think about the pressure to be skinny, to be tanned, to have long hair, to have smooth skin, I see that as a lot of hard work. It also doesn't feel like much of a choice you are making for yourself if you feel forced to conform. If you really love all these things and would do them even if you were the last person in the world, then more power to you and you enjoy yourself. To me, a busy person, tattoos and piercings are literally a one-time investment that look beautiful forever. I really don't have time to commit daily to any other standard of 'beauty'. I don't have time to straighten my unruly hair but I never forget to put my tattoos on in the morning.

To choose to be different IS a real choice - who would choose to make things uncomfortable for themselves unless it was bringing them some sense of personal satisfaction? It isn't easy to stand out and look different. If you think about it, somebody who is fake-tanned with hair extensions and a full face of makeup is actually fairly body-modified, but at some point this became the norm. If I had gone down that route of self-expression I would still be fully accepted by society or even admired for my dedication to my look. Unfortunately for me, I can't stand having a thick layer of anything on my face, my makeup runs and looks dreadful and when I weaned myself off foundation I never imagined I would like the look of my bare, freckled skin but I do and I couldn't wear it again.

Judah calls my septum ring 'mummy's pretty' with the innocence of a child and a delight for the decorative. I hope from being brought up by my husband and I he will have learnt acceptance and not to judge people based on their outward appearance or what he expects somebody in a certain role to present themselves like. When I breastfeed him he strokes the birds that fly on my chest and smiles and stops to tell me what he can see. He traces the patterns of my husbands arm with his fingers, mesmerised, and, to me, that's beautiful and those memories I will cherish forever. That juxtaposition of fierce masculine and gentle babyhood never fails to enchant me.

I don't think tattoos and piercings are for everybody, like anything else, it is a choice to do what you want with your body. But for me, they are positive ways of enjoying your earthly experience in this fleshy vehicle of your soul. They are a choice I made, one I am proud of, one that I stand by and will never let anybody make me feel bad for.

My Birth Story

The only thing I can ever remember being especially good at is being a woman. Through no particular merit of my own, as soon as I hit puberty the hormones caused my hair became long and wildly curly. I would menstruate on the same day every month. I developed breasts so early it looked comical on my child's frame. The worst part was how fine-tuned I was to every small hormonal change in my body, to the point where as an adult hormonal contraception turned me into a weeping, bleeding psychopath.

I have never feared birth. I assumed it to be part of my womanly repertoire, like arm pit hair. What did frighten me was how uncomfortable I felt in my own body. The shame I felt at the useless, floppy appendages that were my breasts and my hatred towards the boys who coveted them. Didn't they know I was just a little girl? Didn't they know how wrong I felt inside every day? I clothed myself in my sister's oversized jumpers and hid my body in the summer heat.

My upbringing did not help. I felt adrift in an anxious atmosphere of perpetual regret and guilt. I can see my family in Church, my mother and my auntie stood there, both thin and bleak. Bad things can happen to women when they try to express their sexuality. 'Babies are parasites' I was told. I knew that my mother could have been so much more than just a mother.

I'm 22, and we're in love. He took me in when I was 19 and we're going to get married. He looks me deep in the eyes and says he wants a baby and of course I do, I've wanted one since I was 16. It's an urge I can't describe, an emptiness and a compulsion. A pink, soft, fuzzy, incoherent thing to keep and to love.

The day I am due to menstruate, I wake at 6am like I did on Christmas Day as a child. I know the answer before I even look at the test. I've become that hormonal mess again and Luke says I've changed. He knows what to look for now. I wake him up to tell him, we make love and go back to sleep.

I am afraid to tell my mother. I think she will be disappointed, like if I was going to jail. But she is happy. She is mellow and possibly slightly in shock at my sister and I leaving home so young. There's no more Church, my parents are together, they are happy. We are building a family again.

I love being pregnant. I feel like I finally fit in my body. My outside now reflects how I feel inside. Beautiful. I wear oversized, floaty dresses and cycle around the city to my mother's horror. I feel like I know what I am meant to do - I am at peace. The dopey pregnancy hormones have been good to me. I simply sit, eat, marvel and wait.

I want a natural birth. I don't know why, but I do. My husband asks me what I'm trying to prove. I'm not trying to prove anything, except that women are strong. I am strong. I research the Bradley method, I read Birth Without Fear. I take Daisy Birthing classes. I know about breastfeeding, skin to skin, the effects of epidurals on labour progression and birth bonding. My overwhelming feeling is why doesn't everybody know about this? The knowledge is right there at my fingertips. Why are women in denial? We spend more time planning our weddings than births, to our detriment. But knowledge is power. I have always been a researcher, it helps me to feel in control. Now I do. I revise for my son's birth like an exam.

His due date comes, and passes. I bounce on my ball. I fear induction and machine-induced contractions. I fear the labour ward with the blood stains on the floor from my mother's memories. I wake to contractions that stop and start and need to use my breathing exercises. I pace up and down at home for hours. This lasts all Saturday, all Sunday. I don't know it yet, but I should sleep. There's a long way to go yet and I'll need my strength.

Sunday night. I'm watching Weeds, my favourite television show, rotating on my ball. The contractions come with weary predictability. My husband gets back from work at 10pm and times them on his phone. My best friend is also in labour, but further along than I am. We are messaging each other through contractions. My mother comes. I want her there but I am worried for her. The child in me still sees the fragile woman on the edge. I don't know how to feel comfortable.

I want a home birth, but it is not to be. I sob on the phone as the midwives tell me there is nobody available on call and I have to come in. I go. I am examined and dismissed. I'm only 1cm dilated and will progress better at home. I am constantly bleeding. I am probed. I am losing my shame.

We eat pizza. It gets worse. We return. We get locked outside for half an hour. I experience many intense contractions locked out in the cold car park, pacing up and down. I am contracting so hard I can't even speak. Luke is exhausted from work and sleeps on the sofa, but I don't sleep. We have work to do. I lean on the edge of the birth pool and rotate all night. From 11pm to 5am I rotate through my contractions to the Beatles discography, moving my baby down. It's so cold and surreal here. It feels like a place paused in time, separate from the rest of the world. Just my mother and I in space. My labour is a train I've boarded to a strange place where all my thoughts and preconceptions are suspended. The walls between us are dissolving. It occurs to me, as my husband sleeps, that you can only ever rely on other women. My breathing is the most incredible thing. It is keeping my head above the water. 

This phase of my labour ends with the change of shift. I am so exhausted I'm sure I can't go on. I bury my face in the bed, my bottom in the air to relieve pressure, desperate for the contractions to stop so I can sleep for an hour. I doze off for a minute or so. The midwives bring a space heater into the chilly room. I splay my legs without being asked. I am bold and unflinching as I submit to their ministrations.

I get in the birth pool and my body gets a second wind. I eat toast, laugh uncontrollably. I feel like the centrepiece of the room, all these people are here because of me. I am the main focus. I think the midwives are bored because there is nothing to do. They tell me I can go home now if I still want my home birth, but that would involve leaving the pool which I am not prepared to do. It is my happy place. I'm cracking jokes and telling stories. I feel a bit wacky. I struggled through that dark, freezing night and I'm still here now. I can do this. My stomach amuses me as he drops lower. My bump started so high and now it's fallen considerably.

Every time I go for a wee I contract in the toilet. I hate weeing into cardboard, it's so degrading. I hate getting out of the pool to be checked internally. I just want to stay in my watery haven, sinking deeper and deeper.

The waters start breaking and it's the end of my peaceful labour. Contractions pile on top of each other and I am struggling to cope. I start to cry with the overwhelming emotion. My mother speaks affirmations to me. She knows, she has been where I am now. Transition. She speaks the eternal wisdom of women, words I cannot recall. She is the only one in the room who has had a baby and only she deserves to be heard. She knows where my soul resides. I squeeze and bite my husband's hands, clinging to him like an anchor. I realise now that I have always been an animal, I was just pretending to be human. Like everybody else. That has been the source of my anguish all these years. I utter animal cries.

He is ready to be born. The signs are all there, but still they insist on checking. I weep profusely, harrowingly, as I edge out of the pool and towards the bed. Every step is agony and I put my hands between my legs as if to hold his head in. I am sure he will fall out. I see my mother is crying. I was so happy in the water, why did I have to get out? This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, these few steps. They confirm what I already know - I am fully dilated and ready.

I immerse myself back in my own blood, water and urine and it's like heaven. I have forgotten what is now needed of me. I need to find reserves of energy - from where? I have nothing left to give. I can do labour; I'm good at marathons, at perseverance. With labour you just need to cope with what is happening to you. Now I am afraid that pushing the baby out will reveal that I am actually useless. I don't even know how to push him out. They are telling me to push but everything I know is opposite. I don't feel the urge to push like I thought I would. I just feel pressure. I am so frightened that I scream. Somebody more senior appears and tells me straight - I am on a deadline. My terror at going 'upstairs' spurs me into action and I forget about tears and haemorrhoids because I do not want anything done to me. I reach for the gas and air to escape, to help detach me from my strong misgivings. I push for one hour and ten minutes, but they discount the ten minutes out of kindness, apparently. 

People are shouting in my face. His head comes out. Then shoulders. Then oh, sweet relief. He swims out like a salmon and my knees buckle. I nearly squash him but now I'm holding him and I am in complete awe.

I know that he was always going to be like this, like an old friend I was seeing again. Why is he crying? Doesn't he know I'm his mother? I thank the midwives profusely, desperate to hear praise in return. I get nothing. I put him to the breast straight away, because I remember I read it somewhere. I have to get out to deliver the placenta but his cord is so short I can barely move. Luke cuts it.

The loneliest feeling in the world is being stitched up as two people you love get to cuddle the person you love the most. I drift in and our of conversation and the jealousy I feel is as intense as hatred. I want my baby. I'm so immobile, so exposed, begrudging them every minute, every remark. The student midwife is taking forever. Where is my baby? Where is Judah? The midwives make jokes about giving me a 'designer vagina'. It just sounds so crass in this sacred space I have cultivated. I begin to feel violated. I want to go home, not spread here like a slab of meat.

After an eternity, he is back in my arms, suckling. The lady who brings the food thinks I don't speak English because of my name but really I'm just too dazed to answer her. Dazed and confused and unsteady. I breastfeed and my mother feeds me chips. We go to the room where we are supposed to sleep and Luke dresses Judah. I don't know what to do with a baby. When my dad visits I stand up and blood goes everywhere, all over the floor. My mother cleans me up in the bathroom and it occurs to me that she does not find this task distasteful, she is my mother. The love she feels for me does not change. I try to imagine myself in utero, suckling at the breast and I try to compare this with the sad, strained woman of my childhood and I become lost. I reconcile it. It is finished.

We go home and go to bed. I sleep on an old beach towel and feel grateful for my husband's unconditional love. I still look pregnant, am bleeding and leaking, pale and sagging. In contrast, Judah is perfection. He smells so incredibly good and I memorise his scent like a dog. He has a little hat and mittens and it seems laughable that everything for babies is so kitsch when their coming is so primitive and gory. A few hours ago he was smeared in blood and I was hollering. Now he looks like he dropped from a cloud. But we know the truth, he and I. It is our little secret, for now.

But even lying here, my soul housed in this unappealing body, at least now I know what my body is for. I don't have that revulsion for myself, or that empty longing I cannot explain. My body was designed to work hard, harder than any man ever has. My breasts were designed not for page 3 or teenage ogling but for nourishing life. As my son gains weight the pride I feel in those once-hated breasts astonishes me. They don't feel alien to me anymore, they ARE me. My body is serving a purpose, it is lived-in and happy.

My confidence soars. I miss the dreamy days of pregnancy but I have become a hard woman, which is infinitely more valuable. I don't have any of the same old fears. I have been tested, purified. I stand up for myself, I pay attention to politics, I get really angry for the world my son now lives in. My heart aches for women I know who have had traumatic births or face daily injustices. I become proactive.

I truly believe giving birth was as close to a spiritual experience as I could have. I felt so in touch with my base nature and connected to the earth, the Divine. 

NB: Written in September 2014. As an antenatal teacher, were I to relive my son's birth I would refuse the vaginal examinations that caused me pain and insisted on a spontaneous second stage rather than directed pushing. Both those things caused me a lot of distress. I would also insist on skin to skin with my son and not allow him to be removed from me at this point. Overall people would say I had a good labour, especially for a first-time mum, which I believe is due to the preparation I put in. I feel I was not adequately supported at transition and having more people come into the room made me panic and push too hard, thus the second-degree tearing. I would say it was a positive experience but there are many things I would still change, with even more knowledge and hindsight. Judah's heart rate stayed brilliant all through my labour which I attribute to the Daisy breathing techniques and really there was no rush for him to be born.
Love and light
 

Motherhood and Spirituality

I have always considered myself a spiritual person. As a child, growing up in a very Catholic-leaning Church of Wales, surrounded by the beautiful iconography, incense and chanting had a huge impact on my beliefs and subconscious.  When we were younger we would play with the ratty toys in the children's corner and go to the Sunday school to colour in Bible stories. The Church was full of interesting characters, gruff bearded men and sweet old ladies who bought us novelty bubble bath at Christmas. As an older child I would sit fidgeting in the front row and picking squabbles with my brother, resenting being sat on the freezing chairs every Sunday. As a young teenager the sombre rituals began to have an impact on me, in the form of guilt.

I could never reconcile myself to the role of women in the Church. Although our beliefs were heavily influenced by Mary, the songs my mother would sing as she put us to sleep were prayers to Mary and the beautiful sculptures in the Church featured her wise, calm face, she was always remote for me. Calm, beautiful Mary, accepting vessel for the Christchild. Her virtue was in her obedience and virginity and this was at odds with the raging hormonal conflict I felt inside as I began to grow to maturity. 

As a teenager I discovered alternative routes of worshipping. Although it felt hugely treacherous to deny God the Father who demanded to be the only god, I felt a yearning and a calling for a more woman-centric belief system, for a Goddess who was both dark and lightness, both loving and formidable. Not an isolated image of unattainable perfection for which I would always fall short and beat myself up about.

My friends and I dabbled in work with herbs and crystals, chants and songs (I seem to recall it involved wearing a lot of gypsy skirts which were in fashion at the time). I would sit in Church, moonstone on a string around my neck, uncomfortable, feeling like I was now betraying the Goddess I was discovering through my reading and praying. I was still unconvinced I wouldn't be condemned to burn at the end of the world. The craft we were exploring still seemed prohibited and deviant.

Our family left the Church for reasons I am not permitted to share, but involving family break down and other betrayals of trust. I started working soon after and my experience soon became forgotten as I experimented then with boys and drinking and gaining financial independence. I still had a vague acceptance of Jesus as Saviour, I got married in Church, I generally believed.

Until I fell pregnant with my son. I still held in my head the image of the pure pregnant woman, the Virgin Mary, and it pleased my notions of the archetype to be pregnant and softening into womanhood. I was pleased to be married and have a home and was confident that I would soon settle into the bustling domesticity of childrearing and homekeeping. This was comfortable for me, this was what I knew, it was ingrained in my belief system,  it seemed to me that this was my destiny.

Birth loomed on the horizon, I was eager for a natural birth, confident that my body was capable and I was doing what was best for my baby. Taking birth down to it's raw form and fulfilling it was on par with the image in my head of simple motherhood. A time before medicine, when women laboured and birthed their babies in love.

In keeping with the religious themes of this post, I will liken birthing to a baptism of fire. It took me to the brink of my capability and then back. It challenged all my notions of what it meant to be gentle and meek, to be a woman. It seemed unreal to me the amount of physical and mental work it took to bring my son into the world, the images that flashed through my mind as I delved into my deepest subconscious, my monkey brain. I time-travelled throughout my memories and made peace with all that had lain dormant. It was revealed to me then. Our role wasn't to be weak and passive, it was to be dirty and bloody and powerful. The Goddess had returned to me as I brought forth life.

When I refer to birth as 'dirty', I don't mean in the conventional sense, the way we use the word to cast shame on women's bodies and sexuality. I mean the purity of the soil and the lifegiving power of blood. Dirt as the fundamental, truthful part of our nature. Our connection with the soil and with the Mother. Just as I have always admired people who work with their hands, like my grandfather the builder, I see the honesty in dirty hands and dirty human bodies. My toddler covered in chocolate and grass stains fills me with joy as I see the results of his happy play. Dirt is not shameful, it is evidence that we are living well.

I emerged from the birthing room a warrior. exhilarated and confused. All the pent up emotion, resentment and guilt had been purged from my body and I was born anew. No longer able to reconcile myself with my old beliefs, I discarded them like a childhood book that no longer holds enchantment. 

As I began to learn about birth, my newfound passion, I kept being brought back to the Goddess. How could I be for women, and propagate women's empowerment without a belief in Her? My longing for beauty and ritual was not assuaged, the meaning I found in symbolism was integral to how I interpreted the spiritual world. Birth unites the body, mind and spirit. I began to research the Goddess, and matriarchal culture, and my mind was blown at how much of our history women have no knowledge of.

Motherhood is a deeply spiritual act. We birth another human soul at great personal cost, and are tasked with providing for that baby and raising them to adulthood. The daily grind of being a mother, of constantly putting somebody's needs before your own is the most character-building exercise I have ever had to do. No spare time is squandered, no act of love too great. On those days where the house is a mess, everybody is crying and I've made five cups of tea all gone cold, taking the time to remember the sacredness of what I am doing, the beauty and the impact of my every decision on these little one's lives. I am the Mother. I am not the clean, clinical mother with the apron tied around her waist but I am infinitely more valuable than that.

Every mother, every woman, needs a space to call her own. Maybe a beautiful desktop, or a windowsill, where she can display her things that bring her joy. It is important to remember that you can be a mother in many ways; a stepmother, an auntie, an author or any other kind of creator. All involve sacrifice, dedication and hard work.

Acquainting yourself with your animal nature, with your deep capacity to love, with your ability to give and take away life, that is what the Goddess is for me. She is peace, she is wellness, she is illness and she is sacrifice. But unlike others, she has a wild spirit and embodies all the negative and positive aspects of life. Of dirt, of mysteries, of knowing. Not a silent Virgin but a Mother and a warrior. I still see Mary as the Divine Feminine, but only one aspect of Her.