“I’m having an abortion tomorrow.” Her voice was flat. I gripped the phone tighter, the wind knocked out of me. “I just want to make sure I’m not going to lose my job,” she said. The twenty-something girl had carried herself with the confidence that comes from turning heads and raising eyebrows. As her HR Coordinator, I had pegged her …
The air left my lungs as I tried to calm my beating heart. “One step in front of another,” I told myself, as I inched forward. Facing me were the backs of 30 high schoolers, all laughing carelessly and engaged in riveting conversations. I alone didn’t belong. Week after week, this scenario played out as my family visited the churches that supported …
I paced the living room, trying to avoid the pantry and the fridge since I’ve learned they don’t really comfort me anyway. But this restlessness inside… I didn’t know what to do with it. There was a tightness in my chest, like the feeling I get when I should be working but I’m lingering on social media, a sense of …
Imagine what life would be like if… you could skip the brownies without feeling deprived? you felt peace and freedom at potluck dinners? you conquered the cravings that have mastered you for so long? For many of us, that life is a fantasy, something we look forward to around New Year’s Eve and swimsuit season, only to be crushed by defeat a few days later. …
I had resigned myself to a lifetime of yo-yo diets, guilt, deprivation, shame, and defeat. “I guess this is my thorn in the flesh,” I’d sigh as I’d walk toward the dessert table at a baby shower. I envied the stick-thin women with crazy metabolisms who ate whatever they wanted and still looked like skinny teenagers. But even more I envied …
