A Milton woman has become internationally known almost overnight after writing an inspiring blog post that resonated with fellow mothers around the globe.
The path to fame for Joanna Venditti, a busy mother of four children ages five and under, started a couple weeks ago when she wrote on her personal blog, Nesting Story, about what having kids has done to her body as well as her confidence.
Very quickly after sharing her post on Facebook, the 32-year-old said she knew her words were starting to travel far and wide.
"It just caught fire. I was watching the traffic (on my blog) and I could see almost immediately that it was growing and growing," she said. "It went crazy viral in the US first and peaked at half a million hits a day, which is insane."
The popular post — which has now garnered almost two million hits — takes an honest look at the toll that having four kids, including twins, had on Venditti and discusses how she has learned to embrace her post-baby body.
Her blog also includes a variety of photos of herself during and after her pregnancies, which she deemed important to paint an honest picture and satisfy people's curiosity.
“There have been a lot of extreme post-pregnancy celebrity photos circulated recently that made mothers feel like, 'I can never look like that.' I think people connected with the photo I posted where I'm slimming down because it's a realistic body,” she said.
“For those of us who don't have resources like the celebrities, we need to have healthy, realistic goals and be very OK with what our bodies have done for us.”
Venditti shares in the blog post how she has struggled with weight for most of her life.
“I wouldn’t say I ever had an eating disorder, but I know that my weight control was coming from a place where I felt I had to punish my body,” she wrote. “Getting pregnant and watching my belly grow while expecting our first two kids was so exciting, and I was able to drop almost every one of those 50 pounds I gained with each pregnancy. But again, it was coming from this negative and frustrating place.”
After finding out she was pregnant with twins, she said she was “kind of freaking out” about how large her belly would become. It was then she decided to disassociate her body from her mind during that pregnancy and instead think of herself as a vessel.
"Anytime I'd start panicking about my size I would say to myself, ‘You are a vessel, you are a vessel.’ It became my mantra.”
While she was able to cope with her size and weight gain during the pregnancy, it was a different story after her twin girls, now seven months old, finally arrived.
“My postpartum body was literally bruised and battered. My distracting enormous-but-adorable baby bump had been deflated and I was left with mush, bruising, swollen ankles and healing from a C-section. I had this sadness for my body,” she told her readers. “I felt so badly for it with the state it was in, and at the same time was so grateful for what it had done. It had safely created two humans and carried them for 37 weeks and four days.”
She then made a transformative decision to be kind to her body instead of punishing it, treating herself to both healthy foods and occasional indulgences without feeling guilty. She also decided to adopt a realistic exercise regime.
“I get it, I'm the thirty-something mom now with four kids and I'm really proud of that. I'm so much more confident with my body than I ever have been before,” she wrote. “Anytime I start doubting my new curves or war wounds I look around the room and ask myself, how many other people in this room grew two people inside their body at once?”
Since the blog post went viral Venditti has also become a media sensation, with major publications like People, Cosmopolitan, Women's Day and Redbook writing about her journey, not to mention the numerous other media outlets both locally and around the world that have covered the story.
“I'm so shocked. I haven't fully wrapped my head around this because here I am still in my home in Milton living day-to-day life while all of that is going on out there in the world,” she said. “It has impacted me, but it also hasn't in a way. I'm trying to compartmentalize. And I feel like I'm enjoying my children even more right now; the quietness and simplicity, and the fact my kids have no idea what's going on out there.”
Moving forward, Venditti said she wants to keep the discussion about post-partum bodies and acceptance alive through her blog and other platforms. She’s also thinking about getting a group of Milton moms together to discuss the topic and other parenting issues.
To read Venditti's blog visit nestingstory.ca.
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