The more people I meet who are having this surgery--or ANY weight loss surgery--the more I am convinced that we are a really special group. (And not necessarily in the "you should wear a helmet before you hurt yourself" way; though I definitely have been known to qualify for that!)
Many of us have faced huge struggles in our lives. Self-esteem has tanked because of our weight; or maybe the weight arrived because of our self-esteem issues, it's sometimes a vicious cycle. Maybe there were periods in our lives when we struggled with emotional warfare between adults or bullying from kids during our youth. We dealt with frustrations and disappointments every time we tried yet another diet, another expensive piece of equipment, another set of DVDs to sweat to with Richard Simmons (that alone should qualify some of us for sainthood--putting up with his chirpy antics can be pretty jawclenching when you're craving carbs)--and the weight would just return over and over again, making us feel like failures. Health challenges like chronic joint pain, back pain, high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep apnea...It can be a very tangled path to WLS, that's for sure.
And yet, despite whatever rocky paths we've been down, and in the face of humongous physical, emotional, financial or relationship land mines that we've tried to dodge, defuse or survive, here we are. Planning to surrender 80% or more of our stomachs so that we can finally gain control over this one facet of our lives which impacts so many other areas.
We're awesome, and we need to never forget that. Wear your scars proudly; they're proof that you're not defeatable!
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