So I talked to her, in sputtered sentences and half formed ideas, about how she’s not fat- she’s pretty and perfect the way that she is and no one should ever tell her opposite.
Then I let her go before she lost all interest in what I was saying and tuned out all my words.
Afterward, I texted my husband downstairs and told him about it. I intentionally did that, because I didn’t want to say the words out loud.
I didn’t want other people to know about it, I didn’t want to shoulder the blame. I can look back and see that even then I felt like it was my fault.
My husband’s reply was… not polite. He was just as shocked as I was.
We talked then and I didn’t even have a game plan at that point, except to watch the things that I say.
He agreed. I floundered on what to do. I talked to my mom, who didn’t have any ideas either.
I started calling my daughter ‘Skinny Minnie’, so she’d think of herself in that light, but she thought it was a silly name and didn’t even catch the parallel… so I ended up stopping that too.
I’ll admit, I ignored it for about a week.
Problems sometimes go away when you do that, right?
But one day, I found myself scrolling through Facebook. And an article caught my eye. And it changed my life.
