Just how far I've come....

This is me in 1994 (school photo that Chris Roth drew a heart around in my yearbook as a way to mock me)....

The photo was taken shortly after my mom died.  Please note the gigantic plastic glasses, the braces, the too-dark lipstick, the boyhaircut (my hair was long--when my mom died I told the hairdresser to cut it all off), and morbidly black clothing.  Also notice the double chin?

Yeah, that had been there before my mother died.  I didn't know how to deal with my mother's mother dying (while I was in the room) and so I ate.  Lump having unhealthy parents on top of it (it's peculiar to think about, but my parents rarely played games with me as a kid) and this is what you get.  I was 5'9" and the dress I'm wearing in that photo was a size 20.

Within two years of this photo being taken (I'll have to hunt for the subsequent yearbook photos) I was at my heaviest -- 5'9" and 240 lbs.  I was in 10th grade, wearing boy's skater pants, my dad's old flannels and completely oblivious to just how unhappy I was.

I was chatting with a HS classmate (who runs a modeling agency now) about how most people in my life now will never know the person in the photo you see.  Part of that girl is still with me, but for the most part I've let her go.  I've let go all of her pain, all of her grief, and all of her confusion.

It took being in front of a camera once again (a webcam, self-portraits with digital cameras) in order to see myself as beautiful, sexy, worthy.... but most of all, healed.  Because I no longer looked like a goth Janet Reno, I allowed myself to no longer feel like her.  I gave myself a little credit.  I even lost a little bit of weight.

It's funny how that happens... you forgive yourself a little bit and a little weight comes off.  You spend less time ruminating on all the things in the past that held you back or beat you down and you move forward.  The weight comes off.  I don't think i know a single fat person that doesn't feel like their extra body weight is a burden.  But there comes a day when you choose to allow a little honesty/grace/compassion/forgiveness into your life and the burden says "it's okay, you don't have to carry me anymore."

Why thank you... don't mind if I do...