Jess Banks schools you.

I felt it coming on yesterday: a strange, slightly alien feeling so unfamiliar, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt it.

I felt beautiful in my skin.

The sensation was so unusual that I found myself wanting to move around more, just to feel the shapes and textures that suddenly fit me. If you’ve ever rubbed your face on the silky strip of a blanket, or rolled around on really high-quality sheets, you know the feeling. And it wasn’t that I was wearing a good bra and new shoes that suit my funny narrow feet. And I wasn’t not in pain–the weather was changing, and we had a hell of a storm last night, both of which tend to bring out the odd twinges and aches.

No, I just felt beautiful in precisely this body. I still do today. I’m chalking it up to Midsummer magic. Today’s the solstice, and this is a holiday for many pagans that rejoices in the full embrace of the physical world and all its joys: strong, growing things; bright sun and warm winds; lust and passion and pleasure. I don’t know if this feeling will last after the power of the holiday has past, but I want to wallow in it now and share some uncommon thoughts.

I’m fatter now than I ever have been, though my 11-year-old son says it’s not fat, it’s Flubber, which is good. I’m 38 and I’m the mother of two. My unpredictable pain condition keeps me from exercising as much or as rigorously as I’d like to. I should stop drinking soda.

But I am a soft, voluptuous, powerful goddess. I am strong and graceful, and that strength doesn’t appear with ropey, flexing showiness; it’s hidden by smooth, rounded skin. I brace and balance, swing and glide, all without changing my outward shape. My body moves with me, not against me.

And sexy? Like you wouldn’t believe. Every curve nature ever intended graces my body: breast, hip, waist, thigh. I am made for comfort and love. I cushion soft bones. I envelop. I engulf. I protect like wings. I am full up.

I know, in the days to come, I’ll struggle again with feeling like the world wasn’t made to fit me. I’ll read the tightness and discomfort as a judgment on my size and beauty. Clothes and chairs, straps and seams will mark my skin, dent my flesh. But if I can hang onto just a bit of this Midsummer magic, I can remember that it’s not me who doesn’t fit the world; it’s what people have built onto the world that doesn’t fit beautiful, gracious, giving, comfortable me.