Staying active and getting out into nature is one of the best ways for me to manage my mental health. Living through this pandemic has been a difficult time for all of us, and I have spent the better part of this past year leaning on our Earth for support, for guidance and for whatever peace it can provide to me.
Photo by Meagan Shanahan
I have two young kids; my son is almost 5 and my daughter is 18 months. Last summer, we spent a lot of our time camping across Ontario – I was eight months postpartum and feeling strong. I had enjoyed an easy recovery from my daughters’ birth, and I had spent much of my parental leave outside walking, hiking, and exploring with her. My body was sustaining my daughter through breastfeeding and allowing her to grow bigger, stronger, healthier. My body was strong, and my body was doing everything it was supposed to do for me, except lose that baby weight. As a mom of two, my post partum body was not bouncing back visually the same way it was internally.
There are moments when we as new mothers might look at our bodies, our bodies that just completed the heroic and incredible act of bringing a new life earthside and feel that we might hate them. We may not be kind to ourselves, we may not be gentle in our words against our bodies. We may look at our stomach and wonder why we still look pregnant when we are 8 months post partum. We may look at our bodies critically and compare our bodies to other bodies with a distorted lens informing what we believe to be an active, hiking body.
Photo by Meagan Shanahan
This feeling of anger at my body, this feeling of this is not the body I want, carried through the summer with me. In particular, it was at the forefront of my mind as I strapped my baby girl into her Ergo baby carrier and took on the Booths Rock trail in Algonquin Provincial Park. It was at the forefront of my mind as I hiked with my family along the French River. It was at the forefront my mind as I sat on the beach in my bathing suit and watched as my two babies, my amazing babies that came from my body, splashed around in the lake, and built sandcastles beside me. During all of these times I was acutely aware of the size of my body and I was focused not on all the amazing ways my body had brought me to these moments but rather on the ways that my body was standing out.
Being active in nature is important to me. I want to encourage my kids and encourage others to get outside and into nature. I struggled a lot this summer with the lack of representation of bodies just like mine. The lack of representation of new mom bodies, of larger bodies, taking up space in the “get outdoors” and “get active” spheres. An active body is seen as a thin body in the media and in advertisements. We are bombarded with messaging and images depicting and promoting smaller bodies, lean muscle as the example of a healthy and active body hiking and exploring. It is damaging and it results in women not getting themselves out on a trail or exploring the wilderness. If I do not see myself reflected somewhere, I am less likely to find myself there.
My partner took some photos of me with my daughter at the top of a hike in Algonquin with a stunning vista of forest behind me. He took photos of me with my daughter in her carrier sitting beside the impressive Recollet Falls along the French River. He took photos of me nursing my baby on the shores of Georgian Bay. He captured these moments, saw them as beautiful and strong and a testament to what incredible feats my body has allowed me to do.
Photo by Meagan Shanahan
I am proud of these photos – these photos showcase me, in a larger body, hiking and exploring and promoting the importance of getting outside into nature with my family and doing it all with a baby strapped to my chest. These pictures capture my love of exploring our Earth with my children, which is one of the most important parts of who I am, a big part of my identity as a woman and as a mother. But these pictures were also hard for me to look at and a critical voice often popped up – “I am so much bigger than the other women we passed on our way along the trail”, “these photos are embarrassing, you need to lose weight and gain muscle because this is not a body for hiking”. Unkind, untrue, and painfully mean words to say to yourself as you look at a photo of you carrying your baby daughter against your body. I did not post any of those photos to social media, or share them in promotion of getting outside, exploring nature and all the beauty our Earth offers us. I looked at them often because I liked what they represented, but I did not share them.
I like to share our experiences as family exploring the outdoors, hiking different types of terrain, and capturing our family camping adventures. I do this because I hope that it is inspiring to others – I want to encourage everyone (certainly all parents with young kids but especially mothers) to get excited about exploring their local nature areas and spending their days outdoors with their kids. I want to share that a hiking body can be a larger body, and that those bodies are just as valid as smaller bodies in the outdoors. But if I do not post the photos, if I do not learn to accept my body for what it has done and where it is at and all that it supports me to do, how can I encourage others to do the same? What message am I sending to my kids, to my daughter, about what it means to be active, healthy, and welcome in the outdoors community and sphere?
Photo by Meagan Shanahan
It is a process, a never-ending body acceptance process. It involves believing that all bodies can be hiking bodies, that all body sizes are valid and valuable and have something to add to the outdoor spheres, that all bodies belong in the outdoors. It involves people like me who are taking their healthy, strong, postpartum bodies out there every week, hiking the hard hikes and exploring what nature has to offer and then sharing it proudly. It involves trusting in the strength of your body.
About the author
Meagan Shanahan is a social worker living in Hamilton Ontario, Canada with her partner Tim and their two children Theodore (5 years) and Caoimhe (18 months). She spent her childhood summers camping in the near north of Ontario and developed a lifelong connection to the stillness of a forest and the strength of a lake; connections she is now passing on to her children. Meagan and her family spend their free time exploring all of the forests, lakes and nature that Ontario has to offer within their local area and their favourite Ontario Provincial Parks throughout the province. Meagan hopes to encourage other parents, especially mothers of young kids, to get their kiddos outdoors and on the Earth as much as possible by sharing her families adventures online at www.outdoorfamilyadventuring.ca and on Instagram @outdoorfamilyadventuring.
