Embodied: A Catholic Perspective on Body Image and Healing

After welcoming our fourth daughter last spring, I found my body wasn’t looking as happy as I’d hoped. Four babies in six years had left me with stretch marks, diastasis recti, and extra pounds I didn’t want. As the Lord has taken me deeper into the healing of my body, I’ve come to understand I have to work hard toward this healing.

A Lifetime of Mixed Messages

When I was around twelve, my mother entered me into a fitness program with her. I was raised with the notion that the thinner you are, the better — that your body’s worth is based on what the scale says. My father, on the other hand, lived out a very different idea of “worth,” carrying a slew of health issues alongside frequent verbal shaming.

The constant tug-of-war between which lifestyle to choose was daunting and troubling for me as an adolescent girl, and unfortunately, it shaped most of my teen and young adult years — leaving me with deep feelings of unworthiness.

“You’re the One Who’s Bulky”

Many years later, still on this long journey to health and healing, I decided to try personal fitness training. One session, my trainer and I were discussing protein and burning fat. I mentioned I didn’t want to “bulk up” like some women do — just to be a healthier weight and gain overall strength.

Something in the air shifted. She was deeply offended by my idea of “bulky,” pointing to a picture of a muscular woman on the wall. She showed me photos of herself, flexed and strong, and asked if she looked bulky. I told her she looked beautiful.

Then she looked at me and said — loudly, in front of others — that really, I was the one who was bulky, because I had so much fat over my muscles “you can’t even see them anymore.”

That really happened. And it hit me hard.

She was right that I have fat on my body. My muscles are hidden under weight gained from years of not caring for myself the way I should have — years shaped by stress eating and nearly six years of pregnancy and breastfeeding back-to-back. My body changed a lot, and not how I imagined. But where was the grace in that moment?

This is why I show up to work hard — because I am in need of repair. But she was wrong about one thing: physical strength alone does not define being strong.

What Strength Actually Looks Like

I am strong. I am a mother of four beautiful babies. I am a survivor of childhood trauma — both emotional and sexual. I survived generational wounds that left me with very little left, and I have continued to give my yes to God in spite of it all — not perfectly, but the will has always been there.

Not to mention miscarriage, my parents’ divorce, family breakups, and the ordinary painful things this life brings. My marriage, over the last seven years, took a turn we didn’t expect. While I was welcoming all those babies, I was also undergoing recovery therapy — and eventually, so was my spouse.

We worked hard to live out the call to be total, fruitful, and faithful, even when the walls we’d built around ourselves felt thick as brick. We continued to say yes to God even when it didn’t feel good, wasn’t fun, and wasn’t convenient. It was hard. It was grueling. But it saved our marriage — and I pray, ultimately, our souls.

We were spiritually ill, in need of true medicine. Our bodies were fragmented, holding wounds that needed to be healed — wounds tangled up with addictions ranging from food to alcohol to sexual, and other various substances. Our bodies were crying out for healing. And when the body cries out, so does the soul. The two can never be separated, as we are made body and soul.

We Are Not Meant to Be Divided

That encounter with my trainer left me with a lot to reflect on. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. When we idolize things other than what we’re truly called to idolize — God himself — we find ourselves fragmented and broken, chasing an image of perfection while something grave remains lacking underneath.

That ultimate fulfillment we all search for will never be found in resistance training, in a marriage counseling session, or in any addiction waiting to be fed. Those things offer temporary relief — but true satisfaction comes only from knowing we are made for Him, love himself- Jesus.

Don’t Believe the Lies

The Father of Lies loves to convince us that women are more powerful than men, instead of equal in dignity. That our worth is in what size we wear, instead of our personhood. That we must be primed, waxed, and perfect in order to be loved.

Ladies, this is not God the Father speaking. He loves each one of us right where we are, and we don’t need to listen to the lies anymore.

Our bodies are good. Yes, sin can do terrible things, and when we don’t care for our bodies properly, we’re left with real consequences. But the same is true for the soul. When we ignore the call against sterilization or contraception, when we fall into comparison, when we feed gossip, when we neglect the sacraments — we harm our spirit. We cannot separate the two. We are embodied.

So when God calls us to heal, He’s asking us to open not only the wounds from the evil we’ve chosen, but also the wounds from the evil inflicted upon us.

A Foundation That Cannot Be Shaken

When I left the gym that day, still shaken by her words, I realized something: if we are not rooted in the One who gives us life, our foundation will be shaken — just as this woman’s was, defensive over a single word.

We are better than this. What I saw that day was a beautiful woman, fragmented like all of us — someone who has spent her career perfecting her body image, but maybe hasn’t given the same focus to her soul. Maybe she carries wounds too, I don’t know. But I do know there is freedom in loving ourselves (and others) right where we are, and in knowing: “I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me” (Phil 4:13).

We all have encounters that are hard and daunting. But Jesus did not die in vain. He wants to share His infinite Glory with each one of us — even those who reject us for our Christian values and morals.

The twelve-year-old girl inside me had a good cry in the car that day, old feelings of shame and unworthiness rising back up. But the grounded, rooted-in-Christ woman I am now is ready to move forward with resistance training — even if it’s daunting in more ways than just strengthening my body.

Discipline is fruitful. Nothing comes easy in this life, and with each stretch of discomfort, I find deeper strength. Just as the babies I’ve carried have stretched my body in order to grow, so too must we be willing to stretch ourselves into the resistance we feel, until we hit that threshold. It’s there that we find a great surprise: we are capable.

Living the Feminine Genius

Despite our differing vocations and missions in life, Christ invites us to use our talents as women to make the world a better place. He has given us an invitation to live a life of freedom — living out the Feminine Genius. But we need both parts present and committed: our spirit and our flesh.

Will you join me in accepting this great call to love?

“It is thus my hope, dear sisters, that you will reflect carefully on what it means to speak of the ‘genius of women,’ not only in order to be able to see in this phrase a specific part of God’s plan which needs to be accepted and appreciated, but also in order to let this genius be more fully expressed in the life of society as a whole, as well as in the life of the Church.”

Pope St. John Paul II, Letter to Women

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