I remember wanting food, lots of it, no matter what it was. Day after day, I filled myself with whatever was available, usually flour and sugar if I could find it, but sometimes I would even eat fruit or protein, or anything I could get my hands on. I don’t know when the shame and guilt started, but when it did, I started to hide, sneak, and steal. Then my weight went up, and the comments started to come. It never occurred to me to stop eating, but I actually don’t think I could have. I just kept eating, hiding,

My childhood was stormy, and whenever the sky looked dark, I turned to food. My parents divorced when I was four, and I lived with my mother and three older siblings. Fear was a constant in our house. My mother’s first husband was a paranoid schizophrenic, who hurt my mom on a particularly bad night. When my mom’s brother confronted him, they got into a brawl that ended in bloodshed, and my mom’s husband was institutionalized for life. He broke out of the facility more than once, and we lived in fear of his repeated threats toward my mother. My

I just returned from a nostalgic trip to Freeport. It was here 20 years ago when I began to come out of the denial of thinking that someday soon I could control my eating, and that I “wasn’t that fat, just a little overweight.” Twenty years ago, I remember arriving at the hotel in Freeport, so very excited that I would have time and money to buy a whole new wardrobe of clothes. I was teaching middle school at that time, and badly in need of outfits that would look professional and fit my body without strangling me or having