Nobody quite prepares you for the moment you look in the mirror weeks after giving birth and don’t fully recognize what you see. The body that grew and delivered a whole human is still doing its quiet, exhausting work: healing, feeding, recovering, adjusting to a life that no longer resembles the one before. And somewhere in the middle of that, you’re supposed to just, what, bounce back?
You don’t owe anyone a bounce back. What your body did was not a inconvenience to recover from quickly, it was one of the most demanding things a human body can do. These 55 quotes are for the new moms sitting with a body they’re still getting to know, offered as a gentler alternative to the noise telling you to rush the process.
What Your Body Just Did
- “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” — Elizabeth Stone
- “There is no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.” — Jill Churchill
- “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” — Barbara Kingsolver
- “It is not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.” — Mother Teresa
- “The body is not an apology.” — Sonya Renee Taylor
- “You do not have to be good. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” — Mary Oliver
There Is No Rush Back
- “No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” — Virginia Woolf
- “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” — Anne Lamott
- “You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress simultaneously.” — Glennon Doyle
- “Self-care is how you take your power back.” — Iyanla Vanzant
- “Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
- “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” — Audre Lorde
Your Worth Was Never About Your Size
- “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
- “You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.” — Maya Angelou
- “Comparison is the thief of joy.” — Theodore Roosevelt
- “There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.” — Michelle Obama
- “Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.” — Nathaniel Branden
- “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anaïs Nin
Strength You Didn’t Know You Had
- “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius
- “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” — Mahatma Gandhi
- “Storms make trees take deeper roots.” — Dolly Parton
- “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” — Helen Keller
- “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
- “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” — William Ernest Henley
Patience With the In-Between
- “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” — Confucius
- “The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” — Anna Quindlen
- “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” — Anaïs Nin
- “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.” — Calvin Coolidge
- “I dwell in possibility.” — Emily Dickinson
- “You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
Becoming Someone New
- “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” — e.e. cummings
- “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” — Brené Brown
- “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.” — Walt Whitman
- “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” — C.S. Lewis
- “You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?” — Rumi
Love, Redefined
- “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?” — RuPaul
- “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line.” — Lucille Ball
- “Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives.” — Louise Hay
- “The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself.” — Steve Maraboli
- “how you love yourself is how you teach others to love you.” — Rupi Kaur
- “Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.” — William Shakespeare, Henry V
Grace for the Road Ahead
- “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” — Henry David Thoreau
- “The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change their future by merely changing their attitude.” — Oprah Winfrey
- “I don’t like to gamble, but if there’s one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.” — Beyoncé
- “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” — Marianne Williamson
- “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” — Nelson Mandela
- “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela
- “I really think a champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall.” — Serena Williams
The Bottom Line
Your postpartum body is not a before-and-after photo waiting to happen. It’s the body that’s currently keeping a tiny human alive, running on interrupted sleep and pure will. Give it the same patience you’d give anyone recovering from something enormous, because that’s exactly what it’s doing. Save the quotes that spoke to you, and be as kind to yourself today as you’d be to any friend in your exact position.
This article is for motivational purposes only and is not a substitute for personalized medical advice. Please consult your doctor or midwife regarding your individual postpartum recovery. Quotes are attributed to their original speakers or authors to the best of available public record.
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