Identity

Robbie found a picture of me eight months pregnant yesterday. I saw him looking at it and asked, "Where's Mama? Can you show me Mama?" He looked from the picture to me three or four times, shook his head, and tossed the picture aside. My own child didn't recognize me. I know, I know. He's not even two. But he loves to show me people he knows in pictures. And he couldn't find me.

I'm getting close to "one-derland". You know, being under the 200 pound mark. Not so long ago, I would have been horrified for you to know this about me. But not so much anymore. I'm so excited to meet this goal, but I'm also having a little bit of a hard time with it.

I've spent some time trying to figure out who Erin is now. I haven't been under 200 pounds for over eight years. No one who has met me since I left Kentucky has known me that way. I'm trying to rectify who I find myself becoming with who I was for so long. It's gotten more difficult as I've realized all the things I don't like about who I have been for the past eight years. While I'm excited to shed that skin and lose all of the judgments that come with it, I'm not sure what to do with the person left.

I sing a little louder now and I smile a whole lot more. I talk to more people; I take more risks personally and professionally. But how do I forget the impact the past eight years have had on my life? Is it something that I need to forget? I know there's a certain amount of forgiveness that needs to happen on my part, and it seems like that is going to be the most difficult part. After all, how could I treat my body so horribly for so long? Perhaps I need to take the advice that I so often give my students. I cannot let my past define me. This is the opportunity of a lifetime to reinvent myself, and I don't want to spend anymore time hating who I let myself be for so long.