Too fat. Too ugly. Too unlovable. Not enough. Broken. Passed over. Thrown away.
Discarded.
Hating yourself can manifest in alot of ways. Drinking, drugs. Promiscuity.
Food was my drug of choice. It comforted me when I was alone. It was always there.
It numbed me. And I liked that.
Then when I had my babies, I had a huge revelation. I was teaching them how to eat. I was teaching them about their relationship with food. I could decide, more or less, the way they saw food. The way they utilized it.
I have a daughter, who will learn at my hands how to nourish herself. How to see herself. And how to love herself. I was in the absolute throes of self hatred. I had no buisness teaching anyone how to care for themselves.
I needed to get healthy. And I tried conventional means- there isn't a diet I didn't try. I exercised into exhaustion. But I had broken my body beyond it's ability to heal itself and be healthy.
So I had surgery to help my body fix itself.
Nearly 2 years and a hundred pounds lost later, I am confident enough to tell you that I love myself. I love my body for what it can do- how far it has carried me. I love it for housing my babies. And I love it now for the fact that it is easier to move and easier to live in.
I am at a healthy stable weight. I can teach my daughter confidently about nutrition, because I have been educated on what the body needs and wants. She knows that some foods are fo fuel, some for pleasure. She doesn't want to overeat or numb herself with food. This is a victory in many ways.
My body is lighter and it is fueled by quality food.
However, I still struggle.
I carried the majority of my weight in my abdomen, and after losing so much, I am left with an abundance of loose skin. Unlike fat, it doesn't have alot of weight, so it sits low and pulls hard at my back.
There is no high impact cardio I can do without pain. My back aches at the end of the day.
I grappled very hard with the only solution to this problem- abdominoplasty.
In the end, I could do without the surgery to remove the skin. But as I age, it will only get worse. The pain won't go away if I cannot be rid of the source and then build the muscle back up stronger.
So on November 1st, I am scheduled for a tummy tuck.
I'm terrified of the process...because recovery is lengthy and difficult. There is pain involved. Drains, bandages, scarring.
But you know what terrifies me the most? Explaining this to my daughter.
She is 6. She is well aware of everything that goes on with me, and given her caretaker personality, there is no way she will not notice I am in pain.
And also, she has my same body type. Her build, it is just like mine. A little rounder, a little fuller. She is strong and muscular and will never be lithe.
One day she will ask me why I changed my body to not look like hers.
This is what keeps me up at night. That question. What am I teaching her?
How will I teach her to love herself if I am actively changing my body through surgery? Modifying it to be different than what it is?
I don't have the answers.
I do know this- in the end, I am choosing this to better myself. To be more active and to continue to be healthier. I have to pray that she sees this and that in her mind having a healthy momma outweighs the fact that I have undergone 2 surgeries that drastically changed the way I look.
I am hopeful that she will go running with me one day and I will be able to explain to her that all of this was worth it. I hope to be a good example to her of a woman who reaches far past her comfort zone to achieve health.
