Confessions of a Daughterless Mother

To say I always battled my weight would be a lie. In fact I don't remember even knowing what my weight was until shortly after I auditioned for Disney on Ice . I was a floundering sophomore in college and until I heard the words, "As soon as you can get your weight below 120 pounds you can come join us on tour!" I am not sure I ever stepped foot on a scale. In fact, over the next ten days as I tried to lose the weight (I needed to drop 8 pounds off my already thin frame as quickly as possible to join the company at their next city), I ventured up to the hospital floor where my momma worked to use the admissions scale at the hospital.  I didn't even own a scale. That phone call started an obsessive relationship between me and The Scale. I lost the weight for  Disney  by starving and three times a day workouts, by dehydrating myself through water pills and restriction of fluids. I plummeted down in weight - obsessing over the blinking neon numbers to the exclusio

It's January. It's cold. It's Michigan, so it's also gray and snowy. The post-holiday blues, lack of sun and time outside (plus the new year hard reset on my diet and exercise that I neglected over the past few months) make this time of year difficult for me. I struggle to sleep, struggle to wake up, struggle to enjoy the days. Add in nearly 44 years, an aching, aging body, a heart that is wistful as the clock winds down to graduation and a spell of time where I actually have .... well, time ... and I am restless. Not the kind of restless that smacks some 40-somethings upside the head, where they become immediately aware of the passage of time and the fact that youth has passed them on the left and they leave their wives, divorce their husbands, change careers and buy a new red sports car.  Rather, the kind that finds me reflective, thoughtful. Even more so than usual. I was talking with one of my dearest and oldest friends (old as in we've been friends since