Family Portraits

I was thrown into motherhood in my early 20's. When my son was born, I was in the middle of my most unhealthy eating behavior of my life!  I'm not sure what exactly caused this period of binging and subsequent self loathing.  Maybe it was the stress and the pressure that I went through from Decmber 2001 - December 2002.  During those twelve months, I graduated college, dealt with the death of an uncle that had been a big part of my life at the time. I got pregnant four months before my wedding, got my first "real" job as a mental health social worker, got married, finally moved into our first place, and started to have the freedom and responsibility of an adult! 

Many of those things were big happy times for me and others were sad and/or stressful!  Either way, I coped with all of it by eating. By stuffing my face with as much unhealthy food as possible!  I was so happy to finally be married to the man of my dreams and to be starting a family, but my addiction to food was destroying me and making me doubt whether or not I deserved this kind of happiness.  I had periods of deep depression off and on.  I put on the happy face that I was supposed to have as a new bride and mom, but inside I hated myself. I felt like I was faking it, which made me hate myself more!

Some time in the following year, I knew I needed to make changes.  That is when my real journey to a healthier me started.  Although I did not successfully lose weight and keep it off, I was working on healing myself, on loving myself.  I had many ups and downs, but I did not recognize that my overeating was an addiction and therefore was not able to really be healthy.  Eight years later, all the work I have done is finally coming together and is working!

Each December for the past eight years, I have longed for a Family Portrait.  I wanted to capture this "perfect family" that we have made.  Each year however, I stress about it and then put it off until "next year" when I will finally love myself and like who see in that picture! Part of this year's journey, is about loving my perectly imperfect family and loving myself as I am right now. About taking care of the moments and making memories that I am proud of.  So when the family picture idea came into my head last week, I had the same annual debate with myself.


The outcome of that debate was different this year.  I want to love me now.  I will never get this Christmas back.  I will never have my kids at these exact ages again.  So I made my appointment and we went to the mall for our cheesy family pictures.  It was NOT without anxiety and reservations.  I was a big stress ball about it.  But after I saw us together and each of our personalities shining out of those pictures, I was SO glad that I loved myself enough to capture this time in our lives!