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The story of your body starts with my body.

You were our happy accident. I’d long been told that fat women have difficulty conceiving, so when I stopped using birth control in an attempt to lose weight (again), we carried on as newlyweds do, without thinking much about the consequences.

And then, there you were. Two lines on a pregnancy test, weeks of nausea, a peanut on an ultrasound.

When I recovered from the shock of being fat and pregnant, I did what I usually do when presented with something new: I crammed for motherhood the way I would for a test. I read the books. I watched the documentaries. I frequented pregnancy forums. My research told me two things: I was a medical marvel for being able to conceive at all, and I’d be signing up for a C-section the minute I set foot in a hospital because I weighed over 300 pounds.

I panicked at the thought of being cut open, so we hired a homebirth midwife to increase our chances of having a vaginal birth (she later informed me that her colleagues advised against taking me on as a patient because of my weight, advice she thankfully ignored). We listened to your strong heartbeat and watched my blood pressure as my belly grew. We tiptoed around gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia, and I continued to feel like a medical marvel.

The trauma of your birth receded when I held you for the first time. You were alive, whole, and perfect. I fell down the rabbit hole of new motherhood and lost myself in a haze of sleepless nights, and in the following months and years, my body was just another tool to keep you warm, fed, and safe.

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At every check-up, your pediatrician handed us a chart with your height and weight, remarking on how long or tall you were or how much weight you’d gained, already measuring your body against all the other bodies to see how it sized up. You hit all the milestones, teethed early, and strung complete sentences together at 18 months, and I marveled at how my fat body had produced something so pristine.

You took in everything, including my fatness. You called it out in the dressing room at Lane Bryant as I tried on new pants, or in the restroom at the grocery store. You smacked your tiny hands against my chest at the pool and laughed at the ripples it made across my skin, across the water. Your experience of my fatness was lovingly neutral and I learned to see my body through your eyes: as a caring, nurturing, playful thing rather than an intervention waiting to happen. The story of my body began to change through you.

Your experience of my fatness was lovingly neutral, and I learned to see my body through your eyes; as a caring, nurturing, playful thing, rather than an intervention waiting to happen.

Today, at thirteen, you have my sturdy legs, my soft belly, my blue eyes. You tell me that sometimes you look in the mirror and think you see glimpses of me. I remember that you are the age I was when I was put on my first diet, the age when I might have reached for a second helping at dinner and been asked, “Do you really need that?” Later, it would be doctor-prescribed calorie restriction and suggestions from well-meaning family, friends, and nutritionists. “Have you tried Weight Watchers? Atkins? South Beach?” And I simmer with rage when I think of anyone planting those seeds in your consciousness.

I think about the time I used the f-word in front of your pediatrician and she looked at me, horrified as if I’d said “fuck” instead of “fat.” “No! No, she’s not fat,” she whispered, as though my saying it aloud might make it come true, as if fatness were an evil incantation and not my state of being. Because who would wish a body that looks like mine on their daughter? 

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I will do everything in my power to protect you from a world that measures your personhood against arbitrary numbers on a chart. But will my voice be loud enough? When your doctors sow seeds of doubt about your body’s worth, will you toss them aside? When your thin friends talk about how fat they “feel,” will you correct them? When you see a fat person walking down the street, will you react with kindness or disgust?

I want you to know the joy of eating food without shame and the freedom of movement that makes you feel alive. I want you to learn to listen to your body, to really listen to what it needs and put those needs above the rest, because it’s you who has to live in it — not me, or your doctors, or your friends. I want you to remember that your path through this world will be eased by the lightness of your skin, a wealth of educational opportunities, and your family’s unconditional support, and to use that fact to change what you can for the better. I want you to be kind to others, and especially to yourself.

The story of my body is the prologue to the story you’ve just begun to write. I wish I could say that I brought you into a kinder world, but I can’t. I can only arm you with knowledge and hope you will learn to see yourself as I do: alive, whole, and perfect.