Reflections from the Other Side of the Mountain

It's August and time for those back-to-school days for teachers. After a talk on the Science of Happiness, I spent some time thinking about my journey toward wholeness. It made me wish I could measure the most important things I’ve lost since getting healthier. Like, I can give it to you in pounds (I won’t, but it’s more than a husky 5th Grader). And I can give it to you in dress sizes (I also won’t, but there were X’s and now there’s none). But the unmeasurable things are what I value most and, while the weight loss is obvious, the inside changes aren’t always so.

See, I can’t put a number on my loss of anxiety. I can’t list all the ways being heavy made me lose out. I can’t rate how angry I used to be. I can’t make a chart of pain because it was constant. It affected every. single. part. of my life. All I can say is that I was miserable then and today: I’m not.

Thinking about how I carried around so much extra weight is baffling to me now. How did I do that every day? Nevermind with a (sometimes fake) smile on my face.. As much as I am sad at how miserable I was, I’m also kind of amazed that I kept going. No wonder I was on the edge of falling apart all the time! It was terrible and it affected the people around me every day. Truth is, there are still a few people who treat and think of me like the unhappy b-word that I was. That’s hard. But the bad-a$$-b-word that I am now knows that the only ones I aim to please are God and myself. If they never come around, oh well!

The girl in this picture is not my hero. It’s the girl who pulled herself up off the couch, got help, and pushed through pain to live better. The best compliments I get today are not about how good I look, but about how happy and at peace I seem. Still a journey, nothing Is perfect, but I get to live my hope.