Ten months after giving birth to twins, I was still learning to recognize the woman staring back at me in the mirror.
My body had changed.
My stomach was softer, my face looked more tired, and some of my clothes no longer fit the way they had before pregnancy.
I was trying to be patient with myself.
My husband, Daniel, wasn’t.
“Cover yourself.”
He dropped a towel beside my plate at the water park.
I looked up, confused.
“What?”
“Put the towel around you.”
I glanced toward the table where his brother Elliot sat with his girlfriend, Jane.
Then I understood.
“Are you embarrassed by me?”
Daniel lowered his voice.
“Mona, don’t make this worse.”
That was the moment something inside me finally broke.
Because this wasn’t really about a swimsuit.
It was about ten months of comments, comparisons, and little reminders that my husband apparently preferred the body I had before carrying our daughters.
And his family was about to hear exactly what he thought of me.
Three days earlier, I had been in our kitchen trying to feed our ten-month-old twins.
Paige was smearing banana across her tray while Piper had somehow managed to remove one sock and put it in her mouth.
I laughed and took a picture.
Daniel walked in.
“Can you take one of me with them?” I asked.
