My belly has always been round and soft, except maybe when I was a little kid. Then it seemed tight like a drum, except right around the belly button. I’d squeeze the belly fat into a donut there. My brother was always a little chunky. He wore Husky jeans.

My parents never worked out. It was the 80s, so they didn’t worry about their parenting all the time. They usually just smoked and hung around the television. My dad smoked unfiltered Pall Malls, about two packs per day. My mom smoked Virginia Slims menthols, tucked into a little red vinyl case with a loop for the lighter, a little gold clasp on top. Sometimes they would buy weights and say, “That’s it, we are getting in shape.” I remember one set of plastic white ones, maybe about ten pounds each. My brother and I would lift them theatrically, making our neck muscles stand out, like we’d seen in cartoons.

When I was a teenager they bought a treadmill, but I don’t remember seeing them on it.

My mom always said, “I had a great body, until you kids ruined it.” She slept naked, and would get up without her robe, wincing at us. “Get up!” she would say. Her belly was round and doughy, with stretch marks, a little bit of a fleshy hang above the pudendum. Her pubic hair was black and sparse, her nipples large and brown.

I don’t remember my dad’s body without clothes. He stopped walking around naked when I was really small. He always had a bit of a belly though, except when he was quite young. He was handsome, always looked like Paul Newman and Robert Redford combined. When he was older, he looked gray and round.

I don’t remember considering my body until I developed breasts. Then I wanted it to look a certain way. My dad said, “Hey you got some bee stings there. Right on your chest.” He smirked. My anger was sadness was humiliation. I wanted to shove him.

In my teens I dated a handsome, athletic boy named Matt. We sucked on each other, but never went further than that. “You know,” he said, “you should do what Meg Donovan is doing, about twenty crunches everyday. You’d have a six pack before you know it.” He looked at me expectantly. I felt insulted, and told him so. “Just think about it,” he said. “Don’t you want to be in better shape?”

In my twenties I dated a woman who was built like Ralph Macchio. She was always encouraging me to lose weight. “Oh man, if you lost about ten pounds? You’d be a freakin’ knockout.”

I have lived my entire life after eighth grade thinking that I would be perfect if I lost a little weight. Once, in high school, I went on a two-week backpacking trip in the North Cascades in Washington State. When I came back, my legs were brown and toned, my stomach flat so that my hip bones jutted. I looked perfect. My boyfriend, a musician, said appraisingly, “Wow, you’re skinny.” He fucked me backwards and forwards for weeks, every day.

When I tried out for The Lusty Lady, I was in stellar shape. The second time I tried out for the Lusty Lady, that is. The first time, the show director said, “I can tell you need to lose a little weight around your belly and your thighs. When you do that, come back and see us.” I set out to lose weight and I did it quickly. I wanted to work there because I knew a couple women who worked there who were sexy, street-smart bisexuals.

I walked everywhere. I jumped rope while looking in the mirror. My girlfriend, the Ralph Macchio one, said, “Your belly looks better.” I started wearing crop tops and I looked fucking fit. Butch dyke jocks were starting to hit on me hardcore. I literally almost caused a traffic accident near the coffeeshop where I worked. It felt good.

I got hired at the Lusty Lady. That’s when I saw that other women weren’t perfect. Cellulite, flab, spider and varicose veins, stretch marks. We all had them. Yet we all had this sort of fluid sensuality there.

I stripped for years and I honestly don’t remember any insults hurled at me regarding my body, even though my breast size was not huge and I didn’t have a pinched little waist or anything.

After I had kids, my body really changed. My mom was right, it changes you. My first daughter’s birth was via C-section. My body bloated from water weight gain. My wound healed under a new fold of soft, white skin. My belly was extra soft. It felt like a cloud.

My second birth was triumphant, vaginal. It was hard labor and calm beauty in the morning light. My belly was larger, distended for longer. My now three-year-old loved to touch. “Squishy belly!” she said, and padded her hands like a cat into the soft flesh. Underneath, a red slit scar, like the edge of a ringworm, but stretched out in a line. The belly hung. It was softer than ever, with long lines of white up and down like zebra stripes.

My midwife diagnosed me with diastisis. It’s where your belly muscles spread. It makes your stomach stick out, like you’re still about five months along. What happened was the muscles joined together at the midline, then the uterus pushed the muscles apart. They measure the severity by how many fingers they can put into the space between the muscles. When I do a situp, three of my midwife’s fingers fit inside the gap in my belly. “Whoa, this is really significant.” She refers me to a physical therapist.

My physical therapist gets right to it. She has me sit up and says the exact same thing. Significant. She puts her gloved fingers in my vagina and gets me to do Kiegels in various ways. Clench, hold. Hold for five, four, three, two, one. Good! I go from three fingers in the space of my abdomen to two. Then one. “It will probably never close completely,” she says. I have bladder control issues, which also don’t go away. Over time, I stop doing the Kiegels, except when I sneeze. If I don’t Kiegel, I pee a little when I sneeze. My physical therapist told me to jump rope and do a Kiegel on the way down.

I tell my mom about my incontinence and she says, “Yep, that will only get worse.”

My girls love this belly more than anyone. They squish their feet and their faces in it. One day, my daughter, now six, says, “When is your belly going to be normal again?” I tell her it is normal. But inside I feel ashamed. My daughter is tiny, blonde. One day she sucks in her stomach until her ribs stick out. “Do I look really skinny?” she asks, smiling. I suck in my own breath, from fear. “You look like someone who is really… unhealthy.” She lets all the air back into her belly. “But it’s more unhealthier to be fat,” she says, “like Lumi’s aunt.” She looks at me like I have the wrong information. “I like my belly better like this,” she says, sucking it in again. I feel like I’m falling backward. I never, ever tell her I feel fat. How could she know?

Is it because I change my clothes two or three times before going out? Is it because I don’t take pictures of myself? Is it because I don’t try to dress up anymore?

One time when she comes with me to pick up Indian food, she gets distracted by a huge vase of wine bottle corks and doesn’t realize I’m waiting for her by the door. She looks at me, surprised. “Oh, it’s you,” she says. “I thought you were some weird fat lady with curly hair.” I’m not sure if I heard her right, so I ask, “What?” She looks at me for a second and says, “I thought you were some other lady with curly hair.” I feel shocked, like an exclamation point over my head — both that she can see me differently when she doesn’t think I’m her mom, and also that she can see me in such a negative way. Like her love for me compensates, or makes me look thinner. Also, I’m surprised that she knows how to edit it out. She knows that to be called fat would hurt my feelings.

I have gained about twenty pounds in two months. I’m larger than I’ve ever been. My pants are all straining against my belly. I feel like my posture has changed. I’m leading with my belly, like a cartoon mayor with a top hat and buttons around a round belly. I start posting really old pictures on Instagram for Throwback Thursday. My child’s former preschool teacher comments on one picture: “Wow, you look so tiny!!” Just like that, with two exclamation points. I want to kick her ass. But then I think, wasn’t that what I was going for? Didn’t I want people to know that I was pretty and thin before? Like if I do that I’m showing I can be that way again?

My co-workers are all on diets. I work around a bunch of women at a rehab center. They all talk about what they’re eating, what diet they’ve been on. Elizabeth is on the Atkins diet. Alice eats only protein bars for breakfast and lunch. She makes a face when she sees my sandwich. “You eat a lot of bread,” she says. “I try not to.” I eat a KIND bar one day and the new occupational therapist from New York says, “You know those have like, more calories than a candy bar, right? Like the one you’re eating right now has like 40 grams of sugar.” I look at the wrapper. “It says 14 grams.” She says, “That’s still actually a lot.” I say, “Thanks. I’m going to do a line of coke after this too, do you know how many calories are in that?” I don’t feel angry, and I am looking at her expectantly. She shrugs. “I’m just really into nutrition,” she says. Later I see her eating tortilla chips and drinking a Diet Coke. I don’t bother saying anything and feel self-congratulatory.

My friend Sandra is always working on her body. She used to be a size 12 and now she’s like a size 3. She told me this. She keeps a photo of a woman’s torso on her phone. The woman has a six-pack. “For inspiration,” she says. When she talks about the time before she lost weight, she always says, “That’s when I was really heavy.” I think to myself that I probably weigh more now than she did back then. I don’t say anything, but I feel ashamed.

Someone who works at the grocery store asks me when my baby is due. I tell her I’m not pregnant. She says, “Well, I feel about two inches tall right now,” she says. I work hard to make her feel at ease. I do look pregnant when I’m relaxed. It’s called too many donuts, haha. Oh don’t worry, you’re not the first one who has thought I was pregnant. When I get back to the car, I want to cry.

My dad says, “I don’t think you look pregnant, at all.” When he puts the truck into reverse, he says, “She’s not the sharpest tool, anyway.” This makes me want to cry more.

In the morning, I get up and take a shower. I look at myself from the side. My mind has a small battle with itself. I’m soft, and there is no denying the belly. My breasts are still high but softer after nursing two babies, four years of nursing if you add them together. My pubic hair grows wild. I lift my belly to look at my c-section scar. It’s there, white and long, just above my pubic line. I feel that it’s alright, to have this body. I’m walking to school with my daughter in the morning. I don’t stand on the scale. I try to work out, and those are the days I feel the best. I’ll probably always walk this balance between feeling shame about my body and overcoming that shame. But these few minutes in the morning, when I’m looking at myself with a clear eye, and getting ready to be in the world, is a strengthening. It’s a core. It’s a muscle being flexed. It’s giving and receiving the message, “I’m fine exactly the way I am right now.”

My husband whistles when I climb into the shower. “Hubba hubba,” he says. He doesn’t realize how great his timing is and I don’t tell him. But I feel it. I climb in. I soap myself with expensive mint soap I got on discount at Nordstrom Rack. When I get out, my body is red where the water hit and even though I know my skin will probably feel dry later I feel good. Clean. I might get zapped later with worries about how my clothes fit, might see a reflection of myself that makes me cringe. But right now, this moment, I’m getting ready to get dressed, drink some coffee, walk my daughter to school, and go to work, staying inside this body, this woman’s body that I’m in.

Erika Kleinman lives in Austin with her family. She has work published or forthcoming in The Rumpus, Salon, The Apple Valley Review, and Baltimore Review. She is Essays editor at The Nervous Breakdown.