I grew up listening to my mom criticize her stomach. Having children had done this, she would say as she ran her hand over her loose stomach. Being pregnant and giving birth had changed her body forever, leaving behind stretch marks and large breasts and a stomach that jiggled and bulged. She didn’t like how her stomach looked, but she didn’t starve herself or excessively exercise. In every fitting room we shared, she commented. If only I could get rid of this, she’d say as she patted her stomach. Look at this, she said, as she shook her head and looked at her side profile in the dressing room mirror. If I didn’t have all this, these would fit better, she would say, while pulling down the pair of pants that didn’t fit. She saw, and continues to see, her stomach as a negative, a defect.

Growing up and hearing my mom speak this way, I vowed not to speak that way in front of my children. I could think about my stomach in less-than-flattering ways. I could silently wish my body looked more tone and fit. I could bite my tongue while looking at myself in a three-way-mirror and noticing how my stomach jutted out a bit. But the thoughts stayed within. Long before our son was born, I promised myself my children would never hear me utter a word of negativity or dissatisfaction with my body. I have kept my promise.

Compared to my immediate family, I was ‘the curvy one.’ I don’t think they ever referred to me that way, but that’s how I saw myself. After all, I was the only one with a rounder, fuller tush. Everyone else spoke of their flat, barely-there backsides. While I tried to accept my body as it was, it wasn’t easy. I often felt self-conscious, as if these non-flat parts of myself were over-inflated like an abnormally shaped latex balloon. But there was nothing I could do about it, except try to dress in a way that didn’t accentuate my perceived negatives, which in my case included my bottom, my thighs, and my stomach.

My relationship with my belly changed when I became pregnant and after I became a mom. My body, my belly, had done this incredibly powerful, magical, miraculous act: housed and grew and delivered a new human being onto this planet of ours. My body, one that was never the beneficiary of any superlative adjectives—the fittest, strongest, leanest—had brought forth our son. Mission complete. Afterwards, I believed my belly could look however it wanted, and for the most part, it returned to its non-flat, soft, slightly wiggly, pre-pregnancy self. Unlike celebrity moms who showcase their excessively fit abs mere weeks after giving birth, my body, my stomach, would forever show I had been pregnant and given birth to my son. And that was fine with me.

Once, when my now sixteen-year-old son was a little guy and in a Target dressing room with me, he asked about the ‘stripes’ he saw on the sides of my stomach. I told my son I had those stretch marks because my body had stretched and grown so he could stretch and grow inside of me, before he was ready to be born. I liked his word—stripes. Much better than ‘stretch marks,’ which sounds like something a favorite sweater might have after many years of wear and wash. Even now, all these years later, I smile when thinking of my son’s innocent comment—stripes. Something I had earned. Like badges of honor.

When my son was two years old, and very much into Elmo, sidewalk chalk, and using a red plastic spatula to sing along to our favorite songs, I became sick. When my son was three years old and reading letters off board books as we grocery shopped and refusing to have the restaurant sing Happy Birthday when they brought over his birthday ice cream dessert, I received my diagnosis; an autoimmune disease called Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease. My stomach was no longer of interest to me. Instead, it was my left leg. That’s where my disease made itself known—in the form of pain, weakness, and fatigue, every day and every night. I needed to focus on a leg that suddenly couldn’t walk or sit or stand or squat the way it had before. For more than a decade, I have concentrated my energy on my left leg—its level of swelling or aching or cramping. I examine my leg in the mirror, looking for signs of increased ‘wrongness.’

But within the last year and a half, my stomach has worked its way back onto my list of Things I’m Regularly Concerned About. It started off gradually. I noticed a bit of unexplained weight gain each time I stepped on the scale at my doctor’s office for our every-few-months check-in appointments. It was slight. A pound at this weigh-in. Two pounds at this weigh-in. The weight gain appeared little-by-little, hardly noticeable, like the small crack in the ceiling that I barely registered until seemingly overnight that crack expanded and spread to a significant corner that is too much, too big, to ignore.

The weight gain crept in, made itself at home, and spread itself out between my breasts and belly. I noticed pants feeling tight and found myself undoing the button on my slacks when I sat at my desk. I made my way through the pants in my closet, until one by one, each pair no longer fit, including my elastic waist, drawstring linen pants. Where they used to be loose and flowy, they were now stretched and tight.

The weight gain was a mystery to me. All my labs were stable, and my rheumatologist didn’t even mention the weight gain. Not until my ob/gyn appointment, when we discussed my lack of periods, did I learn I had reached menopause. Somehow a whole part of my life was finished, and I hadn’t completely been aware that it was happening. And now I have a larger, more pronounced stomach than I did before. A stomach that looks so different though I haven’t increased my eating and I’m definitely not housing a teeny tiny person who will one day become one of my favorite people in the world.

I had joined the club of women who look fuller and wider as they aged. Women who spoke of their weight gain, women who named their menopause-induced stomach rolls. (Wanda Sykes calls hers Esther).

I haven’t named my stomach. And I haven’t been happy to pants shop. (It’s really hard for me because of my leg). But I do now own and wear larger pants. I do now look back at photos and wonder how I could have ever doubted my attractiveness.

I’m trying not to repeat the same mistake during this phase of my life. My stomach is my stomach, and just like my left leg, there’s only so much I can do about how it looks or feels or functions.

I didn’t actively go looking for a weight gain. Just as I have had to learn that my autoimmune disease is not my fault. It happened to me. But not because of anything I did or didn’t do.

It’s easy to feel guilty about my son growing up with a mom with an invisible disability. At the same time, I hope the experience has taught him a number of lessons including, there are many things that happen in life that you have no control over. What matters, what you do have control of, is how you react to them.

My mom is almost eighty-years-old, and about a year ago when we were in a fitting room together, she still made a critical comment about her stomach. I didn’t say anything—about her stomach or my own. My stomach is just one part of my body. And my body can be frustrating—it doesn’t always work or feel the way I would like it to. But it’s mine. And for that reason alone, it deserves respect. I’ve earned my stripes.

-Wendy Kennar

Wendy Kennar is a mother, wife, writer, and former teacher. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications and anthologies, both in print and online, including the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, MomsLA.com, TheMighty.com, and Chicken Soup for the Soul, among others. You can read more from Wendy at www.wendykennar.com where she writes about books, boys, and bodies (living with an invisible disability). You can find Wendy on Instagram @wendykennar. Wendy is currently at work on a memoir-in-essays.