It’s been a couple weeks since I posted a blog!  This is always a busy time of year as my son starts school, and I usually begin another enLIGHTen Your Life! mastermind course.

This year, I have two classes beginning at once!  Double fun!

It’s also an interesting time because my birthday falls in September too.  That, combined with telling my weight loss story to my new classes, has directed me to a more introspective perspective on my journey than usual.

Losing weight permanently opened up my whole world on so many levels.  I gained confidence.  I took risks I’d never taken before.  I began to chart my own destiny in terms of work, relationships, parenting, creativity.

I literally found myself under the layer of insulation I carried for over 20 years.

Perhaps it was my birthday, but I recently thought about what I found when I lost weight from the inside out.  What was hiding underneath all that fat?

This is what I found:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I believe this photo was taken on my first birthday because you’ll notice I’m standing by the ice cream churn!  My mother used to make homemade ice cream on our birthdays.

No doubt I am waiting for ice cream!  Maybe I’ve been churning and I’m taking a break.  But this is what I see:

Smallness

Vulnerability

Aloneness

Comfortable with self/body (even wearing just a diaper!)

A sense of beauty (or at least a love of jewelry – notice the heart necklace around my neck! I still have that locket.)

Different-ness (Everyone all around me, including all my cousins, were blonde and blue eyed. My father was Ojibwe and kids at school called me by the lovely nickname “chink” – a racist reference to chinese.  I don’t recall ever feel “sameness” – I always felt different.)

Completeness

Sensitivity

And there is something else there – a sense of discernment?  A fear?  I see that I’m already looking out at the world wondering who will hurt me next.  A lot of my fat was built on self-protection.  Maybe I’d already experienced being hurt at the age of one.  Maybe I had just tried to get to the ice cream before it was finished and been punished!  Maybe I was somehow born with it.

But it’s there.

So, what is different today?  Everything and nothing.

Smallness / Vulnerability / Aloneness / Comfortable with self/body / Sense-Love of beauty / Different-ness / Completeness / Sensitivity / Fear

It’s all still there.

The only difference is today I recognize it and own it.