QUOTE : after trying so relentlessly to recover that lost version of myself that I couldn’t stop mourning, I finally found a stopping place—and settled out at a mom size. Not a high-school-girl size, not a college-girl size, but a mature, woman’s, now-I-really-get-it size. I got stronger, and maybe trimmer, but I never actually returned—as I confess I’d been hoping—to my pre-mom self. Which made sense. Because I was not that self anymore, and I was no longer even close to that self. In the end, that was a good thing.