If there’s one universal postpartum experience for everyone after giving birth, it would be the postpartum body acceptance struggle. Meghan Trainor is opening up about how she’s had to learn to love and accept her body after giving birth to her son, Riley, in February.
The thing is, you can be in awe of your body and everything it’s capable of when it comes to creating and sustaining life while also struggling to accept how it looks at the same time.
It’s a very conflicting experience overall, and the more we talk about it, the more we normalize it for everyone.
“I’m covered in scars and stretch marks in new places I didn’t know stretch marks could be. There’s things that aren’t going to go away ever, and I have to learn to love that,” Trainor tells PEOPLE in a new interview.
She says that after she and her husband, actor Daryl Sabara, welcomed their son earlier this year, she felt bad about herself—no matter how much Sabara loves the way she looks, she didn’t love it herself.
“I started to feel unsexy immediately. Even with my husband, the love of my life, who worships the ground I step on, who loves my body — I was like, ‘I’m not feeling it, man,'” Trainor says. “It took me a couple of weeks and therapy sessions to be like, how do I get back in the mindset of: ‘My husband loves me, and I’m hot, and everything’s okay?'”
It’s just so relatable. While everyone’s body changes in different ways during pregnancy and afterward, the bottom line is that everyone’s body does change.
Trainor’s big 2014 hit, “All About That Bass,” was a nod to her body insecurities back then, she says. The song encourages women to love their curves and bodies even if they’re not conventionally “thin.”
“A lot of people in the beginning of my career would say stuff to me in person like, ‘Well, you’re much skinnier than I thought you’d be,’ or just weird backhanded comments,” Trainor says. “So I’ve had a very weird relationship with my body for a lot of years, especially because I grew up chubby.”
It’s so hard to live up to the expectations that society places on us and our bodies. Being able to learn to love yourself in spite of those expectations is a truly remarkable feat, and Trainor should be proud of herself.
