I grew up in a suburb of Dallas, to parents who both grew up destitute, but on the opposite sides of the world – my dad in the small town of Denison, Texas and my mom in Won Tai Sin, an impoverished neighborhood in Hong Kong. 

My brother, mom, dad, and I were all overweight, if not obese, when I was growing up. My parents found refuge through food to heal their unresolved traumas. These habits passed down to us. When I was 8 years old, my mom decided to change her lifestyle. She started working out and losing weight. Her way of losing weight likely wasn’t the healthiest, but it’s the method she chose. Starting at over 200 lbs (she is 5’1”), she lost ~70 lbs in under 2 years.

This also began her mission to put my brother and I on a “healthier” path too. My mom’s definition of healthy is not actually healthy. To her, skinny = good/healthy and fat = bad/ugly.

Fast forward to when I was 11 years old – my mom made me (I’m a female) her project. Since my brother fought her interventions, and since I complied, I tried to follow her food rules even though they didn’t always make sense to me. In my mom’s eyes, my “worst problem area” was my tummy and sides of my midsection. My mom was desperate to “fix” this “problem” that was my most “fatty” area.

One day (When I was 11), she asked me if I “wanted my fat to go away.” Of course I said yes because she taught me that fat = bad.

She then explained to me that I could have a surgery to “make my fat go away” and I thought that sounded like magic! I’d never had a surgery before so I didn't know what it entailed…

She took me to a doctor who, while examining me, proclaimed that I would be his youngest patient to date. He and my mom made it seem like something to be proud of, so I thought it was a good thing.

My mom told me that I could never tell anyone since “people would think she’s crazy.” I agreed.

I don’t remember going into surgery at all, but I damn well remember waking up afterwards. My mom had apparently arranged for me to recover at my Chinese godmother’s house.

My mom told my dad, brother, and anyone else who asked that I was at “horse camp.”

Oh and side note, I had a scar on my left knee (still do) from an accident when I was 6 and my mom had the plastic surgeon “redo” that as well to make it look smaller. 

So I wake up at my godmother’s house. I’m in bed looking up at the ceiling of this bedroom that I’d never seen before. I was super nauseated, so I got up to go to the bathroom just in case. When I got there, I looked in the mirror and I was completely bandaged up and had a girdle on. I realized that I wouldn’t be able to take it off to pee. There was a slit in the girdle near my vagina so I held it open and slowly lowered myself down onto the toilet, which hurt a lot.

I spent that week or so recovering. I was in a lot of pain and absolutely hated it. I felt like I had gotten tricked.

My mom was thrilled. Once the swelling went down, there was her daughter – with an amended body that looked more “her” definition of what my body should look like. 

I did what she said. I did not tell a fucking soul for 15 years. 

15 fucking years.

Over that time I went to middle school (yes, I was in fucking elementary school when this happened), high school, college, and started my career as a teacher.

It wasn’t until my 2nd year of teaching (when I was 24), when I had 6th graders (who were my age when my mom did this to me) that it really hit me…

What my mom did was not only wildly inappropriate, it was child abuse.

If I’d heard of a parent who planned something like that for their child, I’d call child protective services.

Naturally, over the years I’d experienced intense body image issues and unhealthy relationships with food. I didn’t develop eating disorders (thank goodness), but definitely had some disordered eating. 100% of the time, in the back of my head was her voice, shaming me for what I ate and praising me only when I was her definition of acceptable, aka “skinny.” 

She really fucked me up. 

When I was 26, I told my first person. The person I was dating at the time viewed bodies, especially mine, in a way I’d never experienced. When I’d complain about acne scarring or what my body might change into over time and/or after kids, he’d always say the most healing and healthy things like “your body changing is a gift…it shows the world what you’ve been through and that’s something to love even more.”

Once I told him what I went through, he encouraged me to tell my therapist of 4 years. I mustered up the courage to tell her, but only in the last 10 minutes of our final session before I moved cross-country. Better late than never.

Something that I hadn’t expected is since I started telling people, it’s like a weight has been lifted (lol). Since then, my relationship with my body and food has completely transformed!

I, of course, still deal with some diet/nutrition-related thoughts, but I’m not completely consumed by them. I’ve depowered food and now enable myself to eat whatever I’d like. Once I gave myself the gift of sharing my “secret,” my healing really began. 

I’ve since told my best friends, my now husband (not that person I dated at 26, sadly) and a few other people. The more I talk about it, the more I heal. This is my first time writing it down and it feels so good.

Thank you for reading.

P.S. I’m 30 now so have been enjoying a few years of a healthier outlook on life. 

P.P.S. Now that my husband and I are going to start trying to have a baby, I worry about my emotional and mental health as a reaction to my body rapidly changing in the very area that I was violated for being “big.” This is something I work on in therapy.