I’ve been struggling with my weight since I was little. And since I was little people have had absolutely no problem telling me I had a weight issue. If I had a nickel for every time I heard. “Girl, you getting big!”, “What you been eating?”, “Yall need to put that girl on a diet.”, “You need to learn to back away from the table.”, “Try this diet.”, “Eat this stuff.”, “Take these weight loss pills.”, I would be like Bill Gates rich. Ok, so maybe that’s an exaggeration, but those words did ring in my head as a child. Add that to having a older sister that was didn’t have a weight problem and being the fattest kid at school. My self image had no way of surviving those blows. 

Everyone in my life had no problems telling me just how big I was, with 3 exceptions. First my mom. I can’t remember a time my mother criticized my weight. Maybe because she had a lifelong weight problem herself and understood what it was like. When I got old enough to understand things about health, she tried to teach me and help me get healthy, but she never said one critical word to me. 

Then there was my Tee Joyce. I remember a time when I was I’d say 12 or 13, I was talking to her and my mom about my self-esteem and I made the mistake of saying that I was ugly. That infuriated her. She made me come into the bathroom and look myself in the mirror. She stood behind me and told me all these wonderful things about myself. She then made me tell myself I was beautiful. I wish I believed it.

Finally there was my grandfather. If you’ve heard Jedidiah Brown’s Bust Your Windows for Some Chicken, that was me as a child. I loved me some chicken! When ever we were driving and I’d see Popeye’s or Church’s I had to have me some chicken! Or sometimes when we were having dinner and I’d ask for more, some people would start with the, “You’ve had enough!”, “You don’t need anymore.” In both instances my grandfather’s reply would be: “Let that baby eat!” To everyone else he was enabling me, but as I was talking to my amazing friend Sherri a few minutes ago, I realized that he wasn’t trying to enable me, he was trying to affirm me. I believe my grandfather knew what those negative statements were doing to me and he was trying to get to me to see that I was fine just the way I am. He was trying to get me to not let what others thought of me effect what I thought of me. Again, I wish I listened.

These 3 people tried tremendously to get me to change the way I saw myself and change what I thought about myself. I wish I listened. I also wish they were still here so I could thank them. If it weren’t for them trying to combat the negativity, I could only imagine how worse I would be right now. I love them tremendously and I miss them incredibly. 

I’m such a girl.

xoxo, hugs n kisses, and all that jazz,

Kimmie