Zibby Mag

By Elizabeth Joubert

I eyed my 5 kg dumbbells with trepidation. For seven years, which is not coincidentally the age of my daughter, I had only picked them up so I could dust them. But now I was determined that would change.

I approached the weights, set my abs, gripped their bars, and lifted. Soon, I was doing bicep curls, one after the other.

After ten on each side, I placed the weights down and grinned, feeling like a champion. I might have even pumped my fists in the air like Rocky.

Before kids, I was strong. Some mornings I would surf, paddling through pounding waves for hours. Most days, I biked the nine miles to campus for work as a marine biologist. A friend and I would usually hit the gym for thirty minutes of weights at the end of the day before I biked home. On non-bike days, I ran. I liked long distances and worked my way up from seven miles to half marathons, to eventually a marathon.

When I started dating the man who became my husband, I quickly figured out I’d met my match. On our second date, we went for a hike on a trail without an obvious endpoint, and we walked well past a reasonable time, saying to each other: let’s just see what’s around the next bend. When we eventually turned around it was very late, and we came home holding sweaty hands in the dark. Our third date was a long, hilly bike ride, and we managed to fall in love even though I wore padded bike shorts. Soon, I was teaching him to surf and he was teaching me tennis. We took up yoga and went backpacking on long weekends. Meanwhile, I continued to meet my friends for runs and weight-lifting sessions.

The woman who altered my wedding dress asked if I was going to try to get rid of the tan lines on my back. Thanks to the crossed-back tank top I wore for running and tennis, I had a big white X from shoulder to shoulder.

Would I spend time suntanning topless?

Not really my style. Could I buy a different workout shirt that would allow my whole back to tan? No! I was a graduate student living in a super-expensive city. I just laughed as this nice woman pinned up the bottom of my dress and I said, “My lifestyle tan? I’m proud to have it.”

I stayed active when I was pregnant with my kids, though I was more careful—I didn’t want to fall off my bike or get hit in the belly by my surfboard. During my first pregnancy, my husband and I went for walks and hikes and swam at the Y every morning before work. During my second, I swam some and walked a ton.

But after the birth of my second daughter, my abdomen was unrecognizable. When I leaned over, my skin and my muscles hung down from my midsection like a wrinkly, ugly purse. In the bath, if I tried to sit up, I could see my stomach—yes, the internal organ—poke through the gap in my abdominal muscles.

Like many women, I had diastasis recti following pregnancy. If I lay flat on my back, bent my knees, and lifted my chin, I could find a clear separation between the two sides of my abdominal muscles—four of my fingers fit in the gulf. Unlike most women, it didn’t heal with time and exercise.

Even after months of physical therapy, the gap between my abdominals remained 2.5 cm. I tried to get back to my exercise routines, but I didn’t have the core strength I needed. My core wasn’t supporting the rest of my body, and I suffered from back and hip pain. I couldn’t run fast, I couldn’t run far. I couldn’t lift my kids as they grew larger. I couldn’t carry my grocery caddy up the stairs.

“After the birth of my second daughter, my abdomen was unrecognizable”

To fix my stomach, I needed surgery. (An important aside on access to this medical procedure: I was lucky to live near a talented surgeon and to have excellent supplemental health insurance. If I had had to pay for the surgery out of pocket, I would have. Thankfully, my insurance covered the cost. I was outraged to find that this is not considered necessary surgery in France, where I currently live, or in the United States, where I’m from. But a hernia repair, a very similar surgery, is covered. Diastasis recti is categorized by insurers as an aesthetic problem even though it can cause hip pain, back pain, incontinence, inability to lift objects, and pain during sex. It caused all of those symptoms for me. I am outraged on behalf of all mothers that only those who can afford it can access it.)

The surgery went well and the timing couldn’t have worked out better: January 2020, two months before quarantine. However, a long recovery period was made even longer, as Covid closures meant I couldn’t go to PT for about nine months post-op. After PT, I finally had the abdominal strength I had lacked. But I didn’t want to put too much pressure on my newly recovered stomach, so I was cautious of lifting anything too heavy. I stuck to mini dumbbells for my workouts, weights so tiny they only make them in the color pink.

In early 2022, I started to take stock of how restricted I still was. My kids were a big help with this. “I wish Papa were here so he could carry my backpack,” they would say on the walk to school. Or, “Garance’s mom walks a lot faster than you.” While I’m all for people respecting their own limits and for kids carrying their own backpacks, I didn’t like feeling weak, and I certainly didn’t want my daughters to see me that way. My daughters don’t know who I was before I had them. To them, I have always been a person whose abs were damaged by childbirth.

Then I began to wonder: are my abs still damaged and delicate, or am I protecting an injury that no longer exists? After all, the surgery was supposed to repair my stomach.

Just as I was thinking about testing my abilities, I saw an Instagram video of a woman doing bicep curls. She was petite but incredibly strong—her bicep bulged with every curl. She was also middle-aged, and a mom. She was like me, but ripped. She was like me, if I lifted weights. She was like me, before kids.* It was a lightning-strike moment, and the next day was the day I picked up my largest dumbbells. After lifting heavy weight for the first time in years, I ate an egg.

For several weeks now, I’ve been squatting, lifting, curling, and thrusting, surpassing what I thought were my limits with every repetition. I’ve been eating more protein and watching my muscles grow. Confidence in my body has increased with my strength. I can now carry my daughter’s backpack to school and hoist a loaded grocery caddy up our stairs. Though my kids—whom I had hoped would break into applause when I took their backpacks from them—didn’t seem to notice, I have been celebrating all of the small physical feats I had avoided for years. Every day, I feel more like myself and closer to the model of the strong woman I’d like to be for my daughters.

This morning, I was holding both 5 kg dumbbells in one hand while I scrolled for the lifting video I wanted with the other. My daughter, who was walking by, looked at me, and said: “Maman, you’re really strong.” It’s all I wanted. That, and bulging biceps.

*Kind of, I was never that ripped.

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Elizabeth Joubert is a Californian who was a marine biologist before trading her wetsuit for pen and paper. She lives in Paris with her husband and two daughters. In a cruel twist of fate, she is gluten-free and can’t enjoy a great baguette.