This hurts to speak about…(Writing something new)

Hey guys!  I’m baaaackkkk!  🙂

Today, I want to tell you guys about something that is hard for me to talk about.  Don’t worry.  I’m not quitting life or writing.  This is something that happened to me as a kid/high schooler.

Body image issues are something that kids, specifically girls, have to deal with.  We need to feel like we’re beautiful and attractive, but the chances are, no matter our weight, height, or size, we don’t.  There is this crazy thing where magazines and the movie industry try to make us feel like we have to be the size of a stick just to be pretty and popular.

See, I’m twenty-six, and I still deal with issues like this, but I remember it was 10x worse as a high schooler and even younger.  I remember walking down the hallway in elementary school once, and a bunch of older kids saw me, started pointing and making fun of me.  I was a heavier kid, and I’ve had weight issues my entire life.  I’m not skinny now.  I’m working on it, and it’s a slow go.  But, I’m still working.

But, I have this immense displeasure for the bullying that goes on because someone isn’t a size zero.  It drives me crazy when kids who are a size two feel the need to be a size zero.  And, they don’t even realize they do this, but they make girls who have a hard time losing weight feel worse about their situation.

This is running rampant in America.  I’m not sure about other countries, but I know that body image issues hit most teenage girls in America.

It took me a while to realize that I’m beautiful in my own skin, for my personality, etc, and I want to share that with others.  It’s not easy to come to terms with who you are as a person.  I struggled for years, and still do, to be beautiful.  To hope that someone would find me beautiful despite my weight.

It happened.  I have guy friends who aren’t disgusted by the size of a heavier woman, but they embrace it.  (And prefer it actually.)  But, it’s not always the case.  And it breaks my heart.

Can’t we all see the beauty in people who aren’t models or actors or look like them?

Well, I say all of that to say this, I’m working on a new novel that is breaking my heart to write, but it must be written.  It’s God-anointed, and I have no choice BUT to write it.  So, I’m giving you a tid-bit of insight into it.

Madison Andrews is a heavy girl.  In fact, here’s her opening paragraph.  (Remember, it’s unedited.)

I’m the girl that my friends would throw into a pack of zombies if it meant they could stay alive longer.  Well, they really wouldn’t have to throw me into the zombies.  I’d probably just lag behind.  See, I’m not too thin, and I’m not too pretty.  I’m just me, Madison Andrews, a sixteen year old chubby girl from Nowheresville, Mississippi.

This breaks my heart, because I know how she feels.  I know how hard it is to look at yourself in the mirror and see someone who is too fat and too ugly to be loved.

It’s hard for me to broach this issue because it’s making me release these deep emotions that I have buried and never wanted to accept again.  Madison, in some part, is me, and it’s hard to write about someone who feels the way I felt.

Not many people knew how I felt.  I put on a brave face and kept my hurt inside.  Which wasn’t healthy.  Eventually, it all came out, and it wasn’t pretty.  It took a lot of prayer, and God showing me that I’m beautiful because He made me to feel better.  But even now, it’s still hard to wrap my head around sometimes.

If it wasn’t for a good friend of mine shoving how beautiful I really was down my throat on top of that other, I might still be having these issues.

So, anyway, I have this whole spiel just to say that I’m writing something new, something that is dear to my heart, to help teenagers who might be feeling this way.  I want people to know that they are loved for who they are, not the weight on the scale.  And it’s a deeper fight than we can ever imagine.

So, this story will have a twist.  I’m not ready to reveal that yet because it will ruin the entire novel (or novella, I haven’t decided on length yet).   My prayer is that it touches lives and changes them because this hurts, it hurts deep and a long time.

My novels, up to this point, have solely been entertaining and suspense-filled.  I haven’t put much thought into meaning and reaching kids emotionally because sometimes, it’s a nice escape from realism to read a book that is just entertaining.  But, like I said, this has to be written, and I think it’s important to touch on issues that make people think.  I don’t want just overweight kids to read this.  I want ALL girls  to read this novel when the time comes and see just how it feels, to embrace it, to feel the hurt of someone going through this, and if they’re the ones hurting, to find that release of hurt and find hope.