This is the first Blog I ever wrote..originally at ObeistyHelp... it is almost a year now since I began this journey and I wanted to look back and see where my mind was at compared to where it is at now....

Last week I truly began the first steps on my journey to a better life. I am taking all the steps to get the gastric lap band surgery and this is an honest record of that journey.
Why do I say that the butterfly is sprouting wings? Because I have felt like I have been in a cocoon for the last 10 or so of my life, and with all the changes I have going on this year, I feel like I’m fighting my way out of the cocoon now, and soon will be sitting in the sun letting my wings dry preparing to take glorious flight.
These are pictures of how I am now. To say that I hate to have my picture taken is a massive understatement. This is not what I look like in my minds eye… that person just can not really be me. I have spent the last 10 years or so never really looking at my self in the mirror, at least not below my shoulders, so at some point what I have allowed my self to become was a huge horrible shock.,
I have become that person I swore I never would. Looks like the jokes on me
I did not really start out this way. Yes I was a big child, but nothing like this. I was always very tall for my age and bigger then the other kids, but I was healthy. I was active. I was not this. I am sad and angry and mystified at how this all happened, but most of all I am determined that I will not go into the next part of my life like this. I will never be skinny, I will never be thin. That is not in my genetics. But what I will be is healthy. What I will be is active. What I will do is live, love and laugh, and make the absolute best of the rest of my life. I will be 50 years old next year. No longer can I hide in the cocoon of fat that I have created for myself. No longer am I safe here. It is time to take all that life can throw at me and grab hold for the ride. This is just the beginning, and I can’t wait for it to start. I am excited in a way that I have not been in many years. I am hopeful for the future and all that it holds.

I Like what I wrote here... and I am very happy to say that I am even more excited about what the future has to offer, but more importantly I think is that for the most part I wake each day with joy in my heart and an excitement for my life today. Now a life without all the meds that I was on, a life that includes walking and breathing at the same time...I feel a lightness now that really has nothing to do with weight loss and everything to do with learning to love myself, and learning to take care of my self and coming to the realization that I am worth it.. what every it is, I am worth it... A beautiful woman named Teresa from
http://teresajourneyshome.wordpress.com/author/teresajourneyshome/ wrote today about the story of the butterfly's struggle from the cocoon....
Struggle is Good!   I Want to Fly!


Once a little boy was playing outdoors and found a fascinating caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home to show his mother. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said he could if he would take good care of it.
 The little boy got a large jar from his mother and put plants to eat, and a stick to climb on, in the jar. Every day he watched the caterpillar and brought it new plants to eat.
 One day the caterpillar climbed up the stick and started acting strangely. The boy worriedly called his mother who came and understood that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon. The mother explained to the boy how the caterpillar was going to go through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly.
 The little boy was thrilled to hear about the changes his caterpillar would go through. He watched every day, waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day it happened, a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle to come out.
 At first the boy was excited, but soon he became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out! It looked like it couldn’t break free! It looked desperate! It looked like it was making no progress!
 The boy was so concerned he decided to help. He ran to get scissors, and then walked back (because he had learned not to run with scissors…). He snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the butterfly quickly emerged!
 As the butterfly came out the boy was surprised. It had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly expecting that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand to support the swollen body. He knew that in time the body would shrink and the butterfly’s wings would expand.
 But neither happened!
 The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.
 It never was able to fly…
 As the boy tried to figure out what had gone wrong his mother took him to talk to a scientist from a local college. He learned that the butterfly was SUPPOSED to struggle. In fact, the butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly. The boy’s good intentions hurt the butterfly.
 As you go through school, and life, keep in mind that struggling is an important part of any growth experience. In fact, it is the struggle that causes you to develop your ability to fly

I love this story... It reminds me of all the struggles I have had to get to this point and it tells me that there has been a purpose in all of it... and that purpose is to create in me the person I was created to be... I will fly... I will stretch my wings and fly...and am actually in the process of learning to do just that right now...
In her post Teresa talks about sticking her head in the sand... I did that for so long as well, I think most of us do... we stop looking in the mirror and we stop stepping on the scales, and we do what ever we have to do to keep from acknowledging that there is a problem...
What really kicked me in the but was my health... the fact of the matter is that I was not going to live a whole lot longer if I did not make some drastic changes very quickly...So I started doing what I had to do... and one of the first things I did and one of the best things I did was to start seeing a therapist, and I made myself a promise... I promised myself that she would be the one person on earth that I would be be brutally honest with... no hiding, no hedging, no caring what she thought about me... there was absolutely no point in doing this if I was not going to be honest and I just did not have the time to play games with her or with myself... and even today, I still say it was the best decision I ever made... the second was to get the surgery...
I actually started this journey 10 years ago.. just before I would turn 40... I had so much inner work to do before I could even begin to think about the outside...
there is a proverb that says, "when the student is ready the teacher will appear" I have been blessed during this time with reading the right book at the right moment, listening to the right lecture at the right moment, each step of the way was guided by a loving hand and it brought me to where I am now... for which I will forever be eternally grateful