One Continuous Flow

This is kinda weird to write about, but whatever.

Before I went to Uganda, my main fear was that I wouldn't be able to make myself look at private parts, both that of men and of women. I've trained myself too well to avert my eyes.

So when I saw my first childbirth, it was the strangest thing. You don't realize that a woman is one continuous thing. In Africa, they kinda tend to leave it all hanging out. In more "civilized" countries, parts are hidden, making them more coveted. It makes the breasts into a prized territory, and guys will do things just to get a glimpse of or touch them, and it's simply because they're covered up.

Then I learned something that should have been obvious, but it honestly kinda blew my mind in its simplicity. A woman's body (like any body) is one continuous flow. Granted, I have a mother, and I've seen pornographic material before, but when a good portion of the body is always covered up, you can actually begin to separate things out, as if the vagina and breasts were a whole territory separate from the woman herself, some idolized thing.

When really, once you see a woman stripped down to wearing no more than the baby that is about to burst out of her, you see her, all of her. She's not boobs. She's not a vagina. She's not a butt. She's one whole person, one continuous flow of human, with various accents and parts, but it is all a part of a whole.

Somehow, seeing all of her made it easier to realize that all of a woman easily encompasses and swallows the various parts of the woman, and you just see her.