From Crying to Smiling 😢 ➜ 🙂

There was a time when I carried so much weight that it showed up before I ever spoke.

Not just physical weight—though that was part of it. I lived somewhere between 210 and 240 pounds for a long time, which meant there was a mysterious 30-pound middle ground where my body and my life were clearly negotiating terms. Not here, not there. Just existing in between. Transitional weight. Liminal pounds. Emotionally clocked in, spiritually buffering 🌀.

I didn’t realize how much of that heaviness lived in my presence until I started noticing how people reacted to me.

Children, especially.

They would look at me and cry 😢. Sometimes immediately. Sometimes after holding my gaze for just a second too long. It hurt—not because I blamed them, but because kids don’t lie. They don’t rationalize. They feel. And whatever I was carrying, they could sense it before I ever said a word.

At the time, I was weighed down in every way. Exhausted. Dysregulated. Living in survival mode with a nervous system that never fully shut off 🧠. I don’t think children were afraid of me. I think they were responding to the heaviness I hadn’t processed yet—the grief, the tension, the sadness stored in places I didn’t know how to reach.

Healing didn’t happen all at once 🌱. It wasn’t dramatic. It was slow, uncomfortable, and very unglamorous. It came through truth, loss, repetition, and learning how to come back into my body instead of abandoning it when things got hard.

And somewhere along the way, something shifted.

Now, when I lock eyes with a child, they don’t look away.

They stare. Curious. Present. Like they’re trying to understand something familiar but new at the same time. There’s warmth there. Interest. Sometimes even a hint of uncertainty—not fear, but awareness. Presence meeting presence ✨.

That’s when I understood it wasn’t about weight at all.

Now my official weight, according to the U.S. government, says 122. My real, lived-in body hovers between 125–135, depending on hormones, the time of the month, and whether my nervous system decides food is comfort or fuel that week 🤷‍♀️. But the gap isn’t 30 pounds anymore.

It’s three.

Three pounds isn’t an identity crisis.
It’s just being human 🫠.

Thirty used to be the divide. Thirty was 3️⃣ and 0️⃣—movement and void. The middle and the reset. I lived inside that space for a long time, shedding, dissolving, rebuilding 🔁. Not lost but not fully anchored either.

Now the 3️⃣ comes back into play.

Three is awareness. Choice. Agency. And after that? I decide what numbers come next ♾️. Not reacting. Creating. Not reinventing. Integrating 🧩.

I’ve rebuilt my life about nine times at this point. Call them cat lives 🐈‍⬛. I’ve definitely burned through a few landing badly, brushing it off, and pretending I meant to do that 😅. Each rebuild had its own personality. Its own rules. Its own “this time I’ve learned” moment.

Nine lives in, I’m not chasing reinvention anymore.

I’m choosing continuity 🤍.

Children and animals' sense that. They don’t respond to performance or polish. They respond to coherence. To someone whose inside and outside are finally speaking the same language. Someone who isn’t bracing against the world or disappearing inside themselves.

I didn’t shrink to become acceptable.
I didn’t rebuild to become someone else.

I closed the gap.

From crying to smiling 😢➜🙂
From fragmentation to presence 🧩
From 30 pounds of in-between to 3 pounds of awareness
From nine dramatic restarts 🐈‍⬛ to one steady, ongoing life ☕✨

Not finished.
Not perfect.
But here. Present. And finally staying 🌿.

And honestly—
if there’s a tenth life?

I hope it’s boring 😌.