What are your best qualities?
I like to think I am a kind, empathetic, compassionate, patient, and loving person. I am a very positive, optimistic person, and I like to see the best in people. I also think I'm kinda fun to hang out with.
Do you have any undesirable qualities?
I am bad with money and live beyond my means. I am extremely trusting and gullible and will buy whatever you are selling. I also think I tend to think everyone else thinks similar to me, which is very untrue, and can lead to selfish, insensitive behavior. I think I am loyal to a fault. I will stay in something way too long, even though it's not good for me. I recently read a quote that resonated with me, "You disrespect yourself every time you say yes when you want to say no. You call it loyalty/love/friendship. Really you are just hoping someone will see how amazing you are and choose you. It shouldn't work that way. Choose yourself. That's how you teach them. By choosing you." I have a hard time saying no and choosing myself. I need to work on that.
What are you most afraid of right now?
I am most afraid of never having a child. My husband and I have been trying to get pregnant since we got married in 2016 with no success.
What do you love the most about your body?
I don't know if it counts, but I have always gotten compliments on my hair, so it has become something I love about myself. After my abdominal surgery I began losing my hair due to the trauma of the illness/surgery. I lost about half my hair. Nobody tells you that's gonna happen! That was very hard for me because it is the thing I considered my best physical feature. Luckily, it did grow back. I think my feet are pretty cute too.
What about yourself do you wish you loved more?
MYSELF! I've learned a lot this year from my sister who introduced me to body positivity. The more I thought about it the more I realized how much shit I talked about myself. I've spent a lot of my life making myself into what other people wanted me to be and trying to please others. The media is always telling us we need to look a certain way, dress a certain way, act a certain way. When we don't look or act that way we end up constantly hating ourselves because what they want us to be is unattainable. I will never have the body of Kim K and that's okay! I think it's time to start loving myself! To figure out who I am, what I want to look like, what I want to wear, and what I want out of life. And to love it all! It's very freeing! When you let go of all of the unattainable beauty standards and stop telling yourself you aren't good enough you feel free to be yourself. And that's the best!
Tell us the story about your stretch marks and scars…
Well, I have always had some digestive problems since I was a baby. When I was 26 years old I had to have my sigmoid colon removed. That was my first abdominal scar that runs horizontally at the bottom of my stomach, similar to a Cesarean Section scar. When I was 29 years old, little did I know, adhesions (scar-like tissue) had been developing since my first surgery. These adhesions caused a small bowel obstruction to occur. The pain hit me while I was on vacation with my girlfriends in Lake Tahoe, celebrating all of us just graduating nursing school. It took the doctors a few days to figure out what was going on. They told me they were going to take a look laparoscopically to see what was going on. This is a minimally invasive surgery that leaves little scarring. When I woke up from surgery they said they had discovered 11 centimeters of necrotic (dead) bowel and they had to open me all the way up. When they told me they used staples to close me up I was instantly devastated because I knew that would leave a big scar. As the next 3 weeks progressed I developed an infection and was vomiting a lot. Because of my stomach muscles contracting from the vomiting my incision dehisced (superficial layers reopened). This lead to my scar being even wider and more gruesome. I now have the vertical scar the runs from my belly button down just past the other horizontal scar across the bottom of my stomach.