Laura Henshaw

But I didn't want to rush.

It's so interesting.

It's like you go through this huge change mentally and then all the things that you used to do feel quite foreign.

Yeah.

And then after every time I would go, I'm like, oh, I actually feel okay.

Like you slowly, slowly build your confidence.

And it's not just with writing.

It's like every single part of you, you have to rebuild that, which has been really interesting.

I think, I mean, first of all, social media does not help in terms of like the pressure of bounce back culture, like put bounce back culture in the bin.

I think the other thing that bounce back culture makes us believe is that the postpartum experience is linear.

get back into exercise or whatever it be and then you you build up and you kind of get back to where you were before week by week it doesn't work that way at all like I feel like it's just up and down and up and down you need to be gentle on yourself I was really really good at being gentle on myself for the first two to three months and I gave myself so much grace like as we should postpartum but it was really interesting at about four months you

You start to get this, I felt like I was literally in a bubble and the world was outside.

And then all of a sudden, you feel like the world is slowly pulling you a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more.

A lot of people share body checks on Instagram postpartum, like I'm this week's, this week's, this week's.

And you can see their body getting like smaller.

And that I had to just get off my feed.

That I found really, really triggering.

Because even if you try not to compare yourself, it's really hard not to if you're saying that all the time.

And it's just letting go of any idea of who you thought you'd be or what you thought you would be at any stage because you've never done it before.

I'm just continually telling myself and for anyone listening to like give yourself grace.