What I Learned From Sharing My Story
When I first started to write Gorge: My Journey Up Kilimanjaro at 300 Pounds. I wrote it from this place that felt safe. I wrote it as a plus-size adventurer book where I, as somebody who is fat, decided to take on Kilimanjaro.
My agent read the manuscript and it didn’t work. She had to have a heart-to-heart with me and tell me what really needed to happen to make this book connect with people.
She told me that as much as I wanted the book to be done (and I thought it was perfect), I wasn’t putting the hard stuff on the page.
I was writing this plus-size adventure story forgetting about the major thing that I had to overcome was not the mountain, but it was my issues with food and weight. I needed to share about that more than I did the mountain.
The way she explained it to me, that I thought was brilliant, was that two-thirds of the United States, if not more, struggle with their weight and it didn’t matter what I put on the table, there would be people nodding along. The more difficult and challenging and embarrassing the situation the better, because people don’t usually share that kind of stuff. And the thing about binge eating disorder or binging or overeating is the secrecy and isolation of it all.
So I needed to put everything about that experience in the book.
What I learned about doing that is that I am not alone. I know that part of my journey to wellness was discovering that, but putting it on the page and sharing my story publicly empowers me more to think about food as just food.
When I take away the shameful and embarrassing parts of my story that takes away its power.
It doesn’t matter what any of us are struggling with, whether it’s food or something else, we have to talk about it. There is a community that wants to hear you. There are mental health professionals who want to hear and help you. But first, we have to speak and share, even if it’s just on the pages of a journal.
Getting it off my chest, my body and sharing my story, even the most horrific story in Gorge of having to sew two pairs of pants into one, that’s the story that sticks with someone. Those are the moments that people relate with the most because I was able to share it with courage and honesty.
The more you share with people you trust, who will listen, the more courage and power you will have in your own journey. I promise.