Uncovering Pamela

I was looking at the calendar last night and realized that as of the beginning of this month, I have officially been blogging on this site for over a year.

It’s so hard to believe that it’s been a year.  Sadly, I only have about eight pounds worth of weight lost to speak of for that year, but those pounds lost are outweighed by all that I’ve gained  (sorry for the puns – I can’t help myself sometimes).

When I was trying to come up with a name for this site, I tried to think of something that would express how I felt about my journey.  Not just my weight loss journey, though that was a major part of it, but the simple journey of my life.  I can’t simply separate one area of my life from another.  This blog couldn’t just be about my weight and my weekly weigh-ins.  My struggles with my weight have been intrinsically woven throughout every aspect of my life, while those other areas of my life have all had an impact on my weight struggles.  I’m still not quite sure how I finally came up with the word uncovering, but am glad that I did.  Because that’s exactly what I’m doing.

Not only am I working to uncover myself physically from the added weight and bulky clothes, but I am also slowly, slowly uncovering who I am as a unique individual in all other areas of my life.  The process of losing over 150 pounds and then getting on here and sharing my story, my successes, my silliness, and even my struggles has given me that much more insight into figuring out exactly who I was, who I am, and most importantly, who I want to be.  As they said once on Nip/Tuck, “sometimes you have to lose who you were to find out who you are.”

Not only have I uncovered a slightly less padded physical body, but I have also uncovered several other interesting things:

• I can handle a lot more than I ever thought.
• It is possible to make yourself vulnerable without becoming a victim.
• There is no shame in struggle.
• I (We) are not alone.
• It is possible to care about what others think of me without losing sight of the fact that it really only matters what I think of me.
• I am finally learning how to truly live by my favorite quote:  “To thine own self be true” ~ Shakespeare.
• Eating too much does not make me a bad, unworthy, or unloveable person.  It simply makes me like everyone else in the world:  a human with a problem. 
• There’s still so much left to uncover. 
• It is not odd to care about someone I’ve never met in person…

Thank you for sharing this journey with me. 

Before   /   During