He said/she said is why so many victims {or survivors, if you prefer that terminology} don't come forward. All too often, what "he said" matters more, so we just swallow the truth. We swallow it, and...

These sad stories will always weigh on me, though that burden lessens the more I realize who I am and what I am worth. 73 The thing is, though, loneliness, like losing control of my body, is a matter...

so she may know that she, in turn, will always be loved. It is important to show a child love in many forms, and this is the one good thing I have to offer, no matter how this child comes into my...

Being useful was a balm.

This is the memoir of my body. My body was broken. I was broken. I did not know how to put myself back together. I was splintered. A part of me was dead. A part of me was mute and would stay that way...

My true loves were and still are books and writing stories and daydreaming. Sports were merely a distraction keeping me from what I really wanted to do.

though I didn't believe everything I learned, it was important to know such ideas, such truths, were out there.

I knew too much about hurt, but I didn't know how much more a girl could suffer until I did.

Specific body parts, "problem areas," also get labels-fupa, gunt, cankles, thunder thighs, Hi Susans, wings, cottage cheese thighs, hail damage, muffin tops, side boob, back fat, love handles,...

Revenge Body, where participants get revenge on someone who has wronged them by losing weight and getting into shape.

This is a show about unruly bodies that must be disciplined by any means necessary, so that through that discipline, the obese might become more acceptable members of society.

The longer The Biggest Loser has been on the air, however, the more the show has disturbed me.

In my more generous moments, I tried to believe the locals were using anger to mask their fear of living in a dying town in a changing world.

The most profound of those realizations was that part of healing is taking care of your body and learning how to have a humane relationship with your body. I was broken and then I broke some more, and...

My sad stories will always be there. I am going to keep telling them even though I hate having the stories to tell. These sad stories will always weigh on me, though that burden lessens the more I...

These terms themselves are somewhat horrifying. Obese is an unpleasant word from the Latin obesus, meaning having eaten until fat, which is, in a literal sense, fair enough. But when people use the...

I am angry that the fashion industry is completely unwilling to design for a more diverse range of human bodies.

I knew where danger really lurked-in the woods behind well-manicured exclusive suburban neighborhoods, at the hands of good boys from good families.

weight loss, thinness really, was social currency.

I often write stories about women who are perceived as cold and resent that perception. I write these women because I know what it's like to have so much warmth roiling beneath the skin's surface,...

I have a membership to Planet Fitness, though I have never visited the local facility. Basically, I donate $19.99 a month to their corporate existence and the idea that I can walk into a Planet...

For years at a time, there was me, and the woman I saw myself as while living in my head, and the woman who had to carry around my overweight body. They were not the same person. They couldn't be, or...

A different day has come, though. I flinch less and less when I am touched. I don't always see gentleness as the calm before the storm because, more often than not, I can trust that no storm is...

I have presence, I am told. I take up space. I intimidate. I do not want to take up space. I want to go unnoticed. I want to hide. I want to disappear until I gain control of my body.

These pictures from the photo albums of my childhood are artifacts of a time when I was happy and whole. They are evidence that, once, I was pretty and sometimes sweet.

I was a daydreamer and I resented being pulled out of my daydreams to deal with the business of living.

I think, One of these things is not like the other, and it is a haunting, lonely feeling, thinking you don't belong with the very people who know you in the truest, deepest ways.

That's a powerful thing, knowing you can reveal yourself to someone. It made me want to be a better person.

That is, of course, if we continued to delude ourselves that our bodies were our biggest problem.

My other wardrobe, the one that dominates most of my closet, is full of the clothes I don't have the courage to wear.