I have been through my challenges in this life and have come through them all with an amazingly strong, positive and fulfilling opinion of myself and my life. I have to give an large amount of the credit to my mother for always believing in me. I also have to give myself a large part of the credit as well. I have had to do a lot of soul searching to get to where I am now and I LOVE ME!. What have been my challenges you wonder? Well, the same things that many other people face every day. As a child I was over weight and we never had a lot of money so I was ridiculed in school quite often. Fat, ugly, second hand clothes. Everyone believed I would end up on public assistance with many children crawling around. As a teen the teasing contiued until I took a bet from someone to see who could lose weight the quickest. I won, but not in a good way. I basically stopped eating and worked out every day. I stayed thin for several years but eventually the weight began to creep back on. I was in a relationship with a man who ended up becoming an alcoholic. He became very verbally and even sexually abusive. He told me every day how disgusting I was because I'd gained weight. At the time I was 5'7 and weighed 150 pounds. Of course, he had convinced me that I really was disgusting. After 6 years, the lightbulb came on over my head. Other men were still hitting on me so I couldn't be that bad. I decided that although I still loved him, I had to love me more and I left him. Soon after I began to date the most wonderful man Tim. I married him and began a beautiful life of love and happiness. Shortly after we began dating my mother died from Pancreatic Cancer. My dearest and longest friend was gone. Two years later, my husband died when we were in a head on collision. I was unable to walk having sustained major injuries for three months after the accident. We were both 29 years old. I had no one left but my brother and his family. Without my husband it seemed I could no longer breathe. After a year, I decided I was no longer going to be a victim of this terrible accident, I was going to be a survivor and make his death mean something. Along with memories of my mother, he is the man who helped shape who I am today. He showed me that I was sexy, beautiful, attractive and vital to this world. There really was no reason I should have survived that accident, so I set out to discover why I'd been spared and just what I still had left to do.
Here's what I have become: I am not on any kind of anti-depressant or pain medication, even though my injuries are still apparent. I am a business owner and a home owner; a member of our local Rotary Club; I am Co-Chair for our local Relay for Life event; I serve on a school board; served for a year as President of the local Boys and Girls Club Advisory Board; I worked for many years as a Domestic Violence Advocate; I have never had children of my own but after finally finding love five years after my husbands death, I have sort of become a fill in mother to my boyfriends children (their mother died of an drug overdose earlier this year); I did continue to gain weight and am now a 310 pounds (but damn, I still look good!). I do go through periods where I am at the gym religiosly, however I am not right now. Yes I am very concerned with my health as I should be, but I still love who I am, who I've become and other than health concerns wouldn't change a thing about my self. As my best friend Wendy says about me, "If I were any more confident, I would scare her."
