It started with her request to sign a copy of my book, BabyFat: Adventures in Motherhood, Muffin Tops, & Trying To Stay Sane.

Ashlee Wells Jackson — creative force behind the 4th Trimester Bodies Project — and I would finally be in the same physical space after years of ongoing conversations in 140 characters and status updates. 

"Of course," was my response. No matter that I would be the one driving the four hours. When you're this far north, hotel rooms and rest stops are just real life if you want to maintain contact with real life. Besides, Target and Starbucks don't exist where I live. If I want you to like me in person, I'm not about to ask you to make a first impression while navigating around Amish buggies and breaking for moose standing in the middle of the roadway.

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If I had stopped there, if nothing more had come out of my mouth, maybe signing a book and laughing over bad camera angles would be all that had happened. But I didn't. I kept talking.

"Maybe I should get naked for you, too."

There was a chuckle in response. Or, I think there was one. I'm a writer. I hear the rhythm of the voice writing the words that would be spoken if the conversation was a spoken one. I fill in the blanks with facial expressions, uuhhhmmm's and ahhhh's, and the blinks that take up the space around the words I hear in my mind.

She chuckled when she read my sentence about getting naked; eyes twinkling, probably. She knows my sense of humor. We've known each other a few years now, at least.

"Maybe not naked," she said. "Just down to your bra and panties." 

"Only if you buy me dinner first," I shot back.

And she chuckled again and I laughed out loud because I actually did Laugh. Out. Loud. I detest the LOL acronym. I know for a fact my sister never LOL's even though every single text she sends indicates otherwise. When I Laugh.Out.Loud, I actually am. Otherwise, I am merely SWMWME (Smirking While Smiling with my Eyes) or LIMH (Laughing Inside My Head).

LOL is like the push up bra of the Facebook world. We all know you're selling us more than you've actually got, so let's drop the act and just call it what it is, okay?

It was all in fun. No commitment. Just banter. But then she said "YES," and I knew the yes wasn't about the dinner joke but about the me getting down to my 'chonis thing, because, it turns out, my friend had an opening for her Portland, Maine shoot, and she was sending me a contract to sign and ... and ... 

Holy...

Crap.

This is what happens when you make a habit of pushing your own boundaries using thinly-veiled sarcasm. There's really no commitment because a No in response to your Maybe I could can be brushed off as a joke and no one gets their feelings hurt. A Yes still comes with an automatic Out because I was Totally Kidding and can quip about how I never let a date get to third base before the third date, at least, because I have STANDARDS. There's always a moment of pause when the Yes happens. The window of opportunity to wrap my arms around the Thing I Probably Really Want to Do But Am Totally Terrified Of is small.

Generally, it's understood that I am verbally agreeing, all semblance of general smart-assery lost, because Sh*t Just Got Serious, y'all. 

I'm signing the contract before I 've had a chance to process the ramifications — not because I'm an idiot, mind you, but because posing for a shoot in your well-endowed bra and Lane Bryant panties is scary shit, indeed, even for an outspoken body image activist like myself. If I even stop to think, just for a moment, I'm going to come to my senses and say, "But I was Joking," and tell the Ashlee's in my life that they'd better give that open slot to someone else, 'cuz I'm not about to put All of THIS on the internet — not when my every day is Spanxed and layered and carefully pieced together so as to maintain some semblance of containment and purposeful form. 

Even after signing the contract, though, I toyed with the idea of backing out.

My 8-year-old daughter Eliana didn't know it yet, because I needed to come to terms with the Actual Doing before I got her all jazzed up about a mother/daughter photo shoot with a famous and celebrated photographer, but she would be there, with me, celebrating herself as she is next to the mama hoping she is brave enough to do the same. 

I wrote a book about accepting the bodies we have right here and right now, the scale and Other People's Expectations be damned. I have a website celebrating our bodies and ourselves in every possible way (which I suck at keeping updated because the aforementioned book takes a lot of time to write and edit and promote upon publication). I am outspoken about my struggles with mental illness — anxiety, depression, ADHD — and my eating disordered past and ever-present body image issues.

Once it's a part of your story, it always will be. But until now, I've been able to hide myself behind words and stories that painted pictures for readers to relate to and see themselves in. 

Photo: Pauline M. Campos

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I’m not important enough for media coverage. No need to find the most flattering dress for my shape to talk about my work on daytime TV. No magazine spreads to hope the PhotoShop Fairy I usually hate sprinkles her fairy dust over to maybe make a few bulges here and a few inches there smooth out and disappear.

This is real. Black and white. No tummy-controlling undergarments. No bullshit. 

Period. 

It’s everything I stand for and nothing I’ve been brave enough to make happen. 

Until now.

Photo credit: Laura Weetzie Wilson

Before packing up the overnight duffel and looking for a hotel, I told my husband about the shoot, asked him to check out the 4th Trimester Bodies Project site, and waited for his response.

I wasn’t looking for permission, mind you, but maybe I’d been hoping for an excuse to say No — “My husband is being a giant jerk about this whole thing and I’d just rather not deal with the drama,” is way easier to say than, “Yeah, I know this is exactly what I stand for, but let’s pass on this round because I’m scared that I won’t see myself as beautiful, okay?” But he only waited for me to tell him why I had directed him to the site to begin with, because he knows me and simply nodded when I told him I had been invited to participate in the project. “You know I’d never stop you from doing something like this,” is what he said.

Left with no way out but through my fear and self-judgement, I booked the hotel room, gassed up the truck, told the excited little chingona-in-training what we were doing and why, and listened to her sing Eliana Mercedes Originals all the way to Portland about celebrating our bodies and loving who we are.

Photo: Pauline M. Campos

As we stood in the dressing room at Lane Bryant (because I’m not about to drop my pants for the world unless it’s in brand new undies, my friends), Eliana joked with me about third boobs and very solemnly pointed out the styles of panties and bras she thought fit best, so those are the ones I bought. I mentally patted myself on the back for taking the emotion out of the dressing room and replacing it with logic and reason. My audience was watching my every move and I wasn’t about to taint every future dressing room experience with tears and squished face disgust at what perceived flaws.

My todays are building the foundation for her tomorrows, after all, and while I may be far from perfect, I’m working with what I’ve got. 

“Mama,” she asked me while trying on her black leotard at our last stop before we checked in for the night in Portland, “What’s so hard about celebrating our bodies? All we have to do is appreciate what we have.”

These are the words I remembered and held onto that night, because I didn't sleep. They are the words I remembered when I stood before Ashlee in nothing but a bra and panties the next day. The words I held onto when she pointed the camera at me and asked me why I was there during the pre-shoot interview. 

“What made you want to participate in this project?” she asked me.

I looked at Eliana, waiting patiently to join me for the session. She smiled at me because she knows I am not as brave as I say I am, and that’s okay. 

Looking into my daughter’s eyes, I responded. “Because perfection is photoshopped. Because self-acceptance is reserved for the finish line. Because you can’t step on the winner’s podium until after you’ve proven your worth until after you’ve stepped on the scale. Every day, I wake up ready to teach myself to love the me that I see again. Because this little girl is my reset button. Because there was no reason that wasn’t an excuse to say no and every reason that matters to say yes.”

Photo: Pauline M. Campos

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And then we did it.

We smiled and we laughed and we posed and celebrated our way through every shot and then again while working with Ashlee to select the image used for the 4th Trimester Bodies Project. There was a headshot. There was a safe image.

Photo: Ashlee Wells Jackson

And then there was the one where I wasn’t shielding myself with my daughter’s body because I’m the one that’s supposed to be on the frontline helping her find her way, dammit. That’s what you see. This is who I am.

Photo: Ashlee Wells Jackson

We signed books for each other at the end, as planned. We hugged and smiled and selfies and hash-tagged because we don’t know when we will see each other again. I didn’t even make her buy me dinner. 

Later that night, after hours on the road in between errands on the way home, I saw the status update in my Facebook stream indicating that Ashlee had tagged me on her fan page. There were no tears. No self-deprecating tearing apart of the self I saw standing next to the future I am raising.

“Look, Eliana! It’s us!”

“We’re beautiful, mama!” She squealed with pride. She beamed. She looked into my eyes, waiting for me to answer the question she would never dare to ask.

“Yes, baby,” I smiled back and met her eyes, because I know this will be one of the moments she look back on as she grows and I need her to see that I believed the words I was saying are true.

“Yes we are.” 

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Pauline Campos is a body-image, mental health activist, and author of BabyFat: Adventures In Motherhood, Muffin tops, & Trying to Stay Sane. She is also the founder of and blogs at Aspiringmama.com.

This article was originally published at Aspiring Mama. Reprinted with permission from the author.