This is what half of the other me my body carried for the last 33 years looks like now, I am at just about halfway to my goal weight, the necklace I have on in the picture I would never have been able to wear as it would have not fit around my neck. But I am not writing about that today, I am writing about the other person I have been carrying around for longer than I care to remember, so long that she almost needed a different name, you see she had issues.
Part of this weight loss journey this time around is teaching me truths about myself and how I ended up with another whole person on my body. I learned from an early age to be an emotional overeater, my Mom did it to deal with her emotions and so I followed suit when life got the best of me, but it was in college when things got really bad for me, I started dating a guy I had meant at orientation, we ended up being in the same program and study partners our first semester. I was pretty nieve back then, but I thought I knew all there was to know about big city living, I was from Denver, Colorado but hadn’t lived there since I was 10 years old.
When we are young and nieve we tend to believe what we are told or at least I did, I believed that when my boyfriend at the time told me his parents would be home at lunch so we could go work at his house on our project, I believed him and when we got there that they must have changed their minds about coming home for lunch, they didn’t and they never did come home for lunch on any given day. Alone and in his territory he pounced and destroyed what trust I had in humankind, my no didn’t mean no to him and when it was all said and done, I pretended it never happened and began the downward spiral of building my fortress, my physical protective layer so that would never again happen to me.
So I leave college and that experience behind, move back home and have a baby, my pregnancy was complicated and I gained even more weight, 80 pounds to be exact and there are health issues with my sweet baby girl, she comes a month early to the day, is born with a bi-lateral cleft palette and hair lip, can’t latch to breastfeed, I am a single Mom and one hot mess. At this point, we are in and out of hospitals and then when my sweet baby girl is about 3 years old she contacts spinal meningitis, we rush her to our family doctor who then transports her to our local children’s hospital( the very one our daughter now works for) but that is a blog post for another time.
What does this all have to do with my gaining weight and my now weight loss journey? I recognize that in the process of building the fortress around my body in the form of fat that I brought along all the emotions I buried with eating, I did finally get counseling for what happened to me, but I continued to use food to self-soothe when my emotions ran high. A whole other person later I met my now husband and what I didn’t count on was that he would love me from the inside, out. He went through some of the side effects of dealing with being assaulted, I wish to this day it was someone I didn’t know and I wish I handled the aftermath differently but I have no regrets of bringing my sweet baby girl into this world, God knew I need her and he provided a father for her who loves her and her Mom deeply but more importantly loves God. ,
On our wedding day, my husband gave me a letter of intent to adopt, our state requires a year of marriage and almost a year from our wedding day she officially became a Daddy’s girl, but truth be told she was that from the moment they laid eyes on one another. So half of the other person I have carried around is gone as is the baggage she carried with her. This year my husband and I celebrated 27 years of marriage and this past Spring we celebrated our Daughter’s success as Children’s Miracle Network’s Dance Marathon Person of the Year! An award voted on by her peers at the Children’s Hospital she works at and her previous hospital.
What I have lost in pounds I have gained in health, love and a new lease on life!
Saved To Serve A God Styled Life,
Maggie P
God-Styled Life with Maggie P 