Serendipity

I'm a publicist by trade. I'm a dreamer by nature. And I'm a child at heart.

I laugh as easily as I cry. Sometimes I get angry too fast but I'll forgive and forget just as quickly.

I am a young woman who started a journey to self-discovery by accident - the happiest accident of my life. This path that I'm on, a journey to becoming the best version of myself possible, is the definition of serendipity.

My life until now appeared quite perfect from the outside. I've always had (what was perceived as) a great job and lived in an amazing city. Friends, family and even perfect strangers often told me I was beautiful and intelligent, fashionable and chic, basically the whole package. What everyone didn't know was that inside, I was filled with demons from my past and that those demons tormented me 24/7.

I was an overweight kid, teased mercilessly in school, out of school, at Brownie meetings, at swim class, on the street...you get the picture. I remember one instance so vividly, it still stings to this day: I was little, 5 or 6 years old, and playing outside in the sprinkler on a hot summer day. Two teenage girls drove by in their car and called out the window, "HEY FATSO!!!" I immediately felt ashamed and ran up onto the porch to hide. The girls actually turned around to try and taunt me again, but I stayed hidden away, eating green grapes and trying not to cry. There was the time a boy in my 5th grade class took my winter hat from the coat hook and urinated on it, just because I was deemed fat and unattractive by classmates. There are so many more examples that are seared into my brain, but you get the jist: I was bullied on a daily basis for most of my formative years.

The bullying came to an end my junior year of high school. I'd lost a few pounds over the summer and started taking charge of my eating by bringing lunch to school and eating less of my mother's delicious home cooking at night. The irony is that people started being nicer to me and boys started paying positive attention to me simply becuase I looked physically different. My hair was the same. My personality was the same. All I'd done was go from a size 12 or 14 down to a 10. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Of course, that's not where the story ends, but rather where it begins. As I transformed physically from an ugly duckling into a proverbial swan, my hurt and angry insides didn't change at all. I was (and am) still deeply scarred by the bullying, emotional abandonment (another story for another post) and I believing that being thin was the secret to being loved.  And that's what got me to where I am today; the quest for love. To give love, receive love and most important of all, learn to love myself.

Stick with me - we're in for quite the ride.

With love,
Bethany