Mom. Wife. Military Life.

Let me preface this by saying this is going to ruffle some feathers. With that being said, I am going to be incredibly vulnerable in this post. If you feel triggered, I encourage you to ask yourself why, then reposition your stance toward empathy. This is mostly for my daughters, who, every day, I am learning, are watching me, and are putting pressure on themselves as a new normal emerges. This is a love letter to you.

On we go…

I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s. An era of Kate Moss- Heroin chic, low-rise jeans, juicy velour jumpsuits, and Jessica Simpson being called fat wearing size 4 “mom jeans”. We watched our moms and neighbors drink SlimFast, try out Taebo, and on occasion, a new miracle drug would come on the market that our mothers’ generation would be lining up to test out (Fen-Phen, anyone!?). A generation of women started to rise through an amplification of “skinny is not enough”.

I was a young girl who never fit a “little girl” body type. In fact, I had horrible style, I was always bigger than most kids, and overall, I was just awkward. I was bullied. I remember the names of the people in 6th grade who called me “MiMi” (from the Drew Carry Show). I remember jumping off a diving board at a pool party and people calling me Shamu. I remember I was never big enough to draw concern for my size, but I was certainly not small enough to fit “society standards”. I was always active, played a ton of sports, but my body was never made to be small. When I got braces in high school and had to have several surgeries on my mouth, it was the first time I saw that my body could shrink. It could be smaller. Smaller pants size, smaller space, smaller effort. I was also going through a horrible breakup with my early high school boyfriend, and being a dramatic teenager, plus not being able to eat, gave me results, if I’m being truly honest, I was proud of. The low-rise jeans looked good on me. This might have been the earliest awakening of what some would consider an eating disorder.

While I danced through college, my body ebbed and flowed with size. I started gaining weight after I left college and started working full-time, and around this time, I also got pregnant. As many of you know, I had a miscarriage with our first baby. A life-changing event. This led to me having two back to back healthy pregnancies where I gained a ton of weight. I was over 250lbs when I had my son.

I was so scared through pregnancy that if I did something wrong, I was going to ruin the pregnancy. I didn’t exercise, and I often ate my feelings. After I had my son, I was on a mission to be healthy. I couldn’t climb a flight of stairs without being winded, and I knew that for my kids, I wanted to be more. I hauled them in a double stroller for 3 miles a day, every day, and slowly watched the weight come off. I ate clean and busted my ass. I was able to get into really good shape and then got pregnant with my youngest. With her I continued to exercise throughout the pregnancy and gained only around 40 pounds that came off pretty darn fast. I packed the three kids up every single morning and hauled them to the base gym where the bigs would play and the baby would sleep while I worked out for 45 minutes. During this time, I also found out we were going to be making our first overseas move. After going through three deployments and numerous TDY’s I found myself getting anxious about the move. My body was also starting to shrink beyond just being healthy. When we got to Japan, the plate tumbled over for me. Jason was gone all the time, and I was balancing life alone with three tiny humans, and my mental health was going downhill. So was my relationship with food. I was walking 4 miles a day and eating 3 rice cakes and 2 peanut butter waffles for my daily meals. Coffee didn’t count. I am not going to say I never indulged in food, because I did, but it was minimally.

Here’s the ironic and incredibly painful part. I was miserable, lonely, and starving myself… and I was never told more often how wonderful I looked.

I got lost somewhere between becoming healthy and becoming skinny. Subconsiously wanting more and more from my body. Demanding it to produce a smaller verison of itself that simply couldn’t shrink anymore. I finally got help with my mental health when we got back to OKC, and started feeding my body again. I gained weight and lost the affirmation. I wasn’t hearing how great I looked anymore, which is totally okay, but then my broken mind started telling me, “it’s because you’re fat again”. Enter the next round of eating disorders. This time was trickier. I wasn’t shrinking, I was just punishing my body for not being small. It has taken a lot of work and a lot of acceptance to be where I am today. I will be recovering my whole life, and now more then ever I have a reason to.

Lets flash to now. I was sitting around the pool at my parents’ house a couple of years ago, looking around. Tons of people we love. All the familiar faces, all having similar conversations. Weight loss drugs. Everyone, and I am not exaggerating, everyone was talking about it. How they were on it or going on it. For someone who has had a past with grappling and having a hard time getting a hold of my weight, I understand the attraction to this. I get that for certain people, the drug is literally saving their lives. I have people in my life using it for that. But I also know society is taking this drug and shrinking itself into oblivion in the name of health. Look at social media, look at celebrities, look at our own friends. Let me make this very clear… do as you wish. But when is enough, enough? When do we look around and say there is a very, VERY thin line between healthy and skinny? I know the effects of these drugs are overall absolutely positive, but when does it stop? Do you remember how it felt being 10 and looking around at people, Kate-Moss skinny, and wanting to be that thin? We are doing the same thing to our daughters’ generation. You want to know how I know? It has finally come up in my. house.

I never hide things from my kids. Protect them, yes. Hide things, no. We have very open conversations about how social media is curated for them like a Michelin-star meal. It is tailored to perfection for their consumption. Nothing is real. Curvy bodies are real bodies. Cellulite is human. Acne and pores are real things. Stretch marks are okay. We practice no negative self-talk. Speak to yourself the way you would speak to a stranger. Food is not a punishment; it is a power. Everything in moderation. I say all these things just as much to them as I say them to myself, knowing every single day is another day in recovery.

I won’t go into much detail out of respect for her own privacy, but my own daughter is starting to question how she looks. The timing couldn’t be more kismet either. I was starting to feel really down on myself and fighting incredibly hard to stay on track. And just when I felt like I was going to fall, my 14-year-old started showing signs of over-conscious body awareness. It snapped me right back to reality. We had a very honest, open conversation about perception. She expressed her insecurities and I shared mine. I had her do an exercise where I asked her if she remembered things about people when we were out, and she said no, reminding her that we are our own biggest critics. But in this moment, I was reminded that our daughters AND sons are watching us. How we move, how we react, how we struggle, how we grow. I swore I would never hand my darkness to my daughters and son. I would educate them, support them, and share the things they need to know to embrace what it means to love yourself.

In a world that is shrinking, take up space. Teach our children that it’s okay to be themselves. Do what you need to be happy, but being yourself is the best version of that in whatever shape that comes in. Life can be hard and triggering (as much as I hate that word). I have fought my whole life to find balance with food and exercise, and am now surrounded by a culture praising a shot where you have no appetite. I honestly can’t see the difference sometimes. It feels confusing.

To those who are doing it, this is not a personal backhand at you. Your health and happiness should come above all else.

For those with a history of unhealthy habits and eating disorders, this society can be a fuel for a fire. It can be hard watching people shrink around you, not because you want that for yourselves, but because of past personal experiences, and not everyone gets access to that. You’re doing great.

I say all of this because we don’t know each others stories. I certainly haven’t been ready to share mine, but now I sit here with daughters stepping into womanhood in a world that is falling backwards in beauty standards and HOPE that at some point we say, enough. It’s hard enough being a woman in this world; let’s teach our girls what healthy looks like. Healthy brains, healthy habits, healthy growth. They are worthy of space in this world, no matter what size it comes in.