My Story

I am a 38 year old mother of 2. My whole life, I had been a thin person. I never had much of an appetite. Thin was just the way I was. I didn't do anything to perpetuate this, nor did I particularly care one way or the other whether I was thin. It was just the way I was born...and the way I stayed until about 5 years ago.










In January of 2000, I gave birth to Olivia, my second child. I had a few extra pounds on me. I weighed about 150 pounds. Normally, I weighed right at 130. The 20 pounds didn't look bad on me really. I was still pretty thin. We had a lot of stress because we were told when we were pregnant that Olivia would probably have cystic fibrosis (a respiratory disease that sometimes causes a shortened life span). This was a HUGE stress but even bigger than that, when she was born, she exhibited no signs of the disease and seemed perfectly normal. Even after months, none of the tests were conclusive. It seems like this would have been a relief, but for me it wasn't. It made things more stressful because I felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I didn't want to settle my mind into the fact that Olivia had dodged a bullet and was perfectly healthy. If I did that, what would happen if one day she started to present with the symptoms of this deadly disease?

I felt very uncomfortable discussing my fears with my husband because years ago, when he was 8 years old, his sister had died of CF and he was just so happy that Olivia didn't have a diagnosis that he would not have understood my worry.

During this time, my father was very sick. I must have been eating a lot because in November of 2000, my Dad passed away and at that time, I weighed 170 pounds. I didn't know how to handle this because I had never been overweight in my life and the most weight I'd ever had to lose was 5 to 7 "vanity pounds". I didn't know what to do. I missed my father terribly because he was my best friend. My mother had never really been present in my life. I had grown up with my Dad. After their divorce when I was 7, I lived with my Dad and my mom didn't come around very often. My father had always told me that at whatever time that something happened to him, I would probably want very much to have a closer relationship to my mother. I never got the chance to find out. In March of 2001, three and a half months after my Dad died, my Mother took her own life.

I felt like I had absolutely NO control over my life. When I weighed myself in May, I weighed 195 pounds. Two months later, Olivia's diagnosis was confirmed. She definitely had cystic fibrosis.

Through the 5 years that have followed, I have come to accept the deaths of my parents and I have had time to enjoy both of my children. Olivia is an extremely healthy, absolutely "normal" child who has no problems with her CF. CF can affect different people in different ways and Olivia has a mild mutation.

The only thing that I haven't dealt with is my weight gain. It has to go. I HATE being overweight.