“My darling girl, there is something I must get off my chest before you grow into yours. As you get older, society, men, even some women, will try to convince you that your breasts — their size, shape, level of ‘perky’ — are what define you as a woman. Hear me clearly when I firmly inform you, they are wrong.”
‘If not your breasts, they’ll attempt to convince you your worth depends upon your thigh gap, complexion, weight.’ Mom shuts down 8-year-old daughter thinking her body is ‘flawed’
‘I couldn’t hide the huge bumps on my face. I felt hideous. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. I genuinely HATED what I saw.’
“A friend told me, ‘You must not be trying hard enough. Do you wash your face at all?’ For years, I didn’t leave the house. He would offer to take me on dates. My answer was always the same. ‘No.’ I became obsessed.”
‘Something strange happened. I began to cramp severely. I passed an object – I had no idea what was. I was a virgin, but it was like I had miscarried. The object was clear and full of veins.’
“This is very uncommon for your age. We normally don’t see anything like this in people under the age of 50. You need to have all the kids you want before we remove it. We will leave it in until you can’t handle the pain from it anymore.”
The Nurse Practitioner says to my 13-year-old daughter, ‘Tell me Riley, HOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN ALL THIS WEIGHT YOU’VE GAINED?’
“I put my hand up and said ‘STOP!”
‘How can you treat me so well, after all I did to you?’ Daughter forgives dying, abusive mom to ‘show her what unconditional love really was’
“I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to cry myself to sleep every night. I didn’t ask to be verbally abused, nor did I ask for a mother that had not one nurturing bone in her body.”
