Photography & Digital ArtMAR 21, 2023

The Beauty Of Stretch Marks: A Photography Project To Empower Mothers (9 Pics)

Live Wild and Free and Gabriela Zagorska

When my daughters got older and began to ask questions, I wasn’t really all that prepared for the type of questions they would ask me. Questions ranged from pretty much impossible questions like how big is space to why, why, why?

Like most parents, I did my best to navigate the barrage thrown at me at the most random times of day, but there was one question, that my youngest asked me one day, that flicked something inside of me, and planted a seed. This was the question: "What are those mummy?". Her little hand was pointing at the stretch marks on my belly. My answer was simple: they were stretch marks. Her counter-question: what are they from? Cue my rehearsed answer of how they happen when the skin stretches and then heals, like when you have a baby in your belly. She looked thoughtful for a moment, poked my belly again then asked: "Do you like them mummy?".

I had to fight the urge to complain about them, to be ashamed of them, to pull my shirt down and hide them away. But I didn’t and told her that they were a beautiful part of me because they represented something beautiful that came out of me. She pulled up her shirt and asked if she had them too, and I said that one day if she has kids she probably will. And she said, “Then I will be beautiful like you, mummy.” My heart burst, and I got my camera and took some pictures. This planted a tiny seed for what would later become the Kintsugi Mama Project.

Time passed and I learned about the Japanese art of kintsugi - mending broken pottery with gold, and that triggered my memory, and the idea grew and blossomed in my mind - what if we saw those "scars" not as imperfections, but as stories? What if we took them to be what they are – the physical marks of our body’s story – of creating life, of nurturing it, and caring for it? And what if, instead of hiding those “imperfections” we celebrated them, and repaired them with gold, the most precious element of them all? What if we took the time to see how glorious they truly are? Would we see ourselves differently? Would we revel in the power of womanhood?

This project is ongoing but I hope you will feel empowered to love your body when looking at the images I have taken so far.

More info: livewildandfree.co.uk