Sometimes You Have To Lose, To Win...

I have never shied away, in real life nor on my blog, that I am in fact a bigger woman. I have never been skinny, except maybe when I was a real little kid. I have always been the 'pretty plus' elementary student, the chubby middle-schooler, the overweight high school girl, and the, dare I say it, obese adult. My weight, though I never wanted it to, has always defined who I am, "Oh that is the funny fat girl" "She is a D.U.F.F.-designated ugly fat friend" "Erin, you'd be so much prettier if you would just lose weight" "Fat-ass" "Lazy piece of fat shit"...all these, and more have been used to describe me, Erin. The emotional stress of being fat is probably just as damaging as the physical stress of being fat. I am not sure that people understand that their words, no matter if it comes from a place of love or hate, hurt and they hurt bad.


I have written before about my car accident, and the fact that I practically broke almost my whole right side from waist to knee. It is not a secret that I am, in fact, part bionic with all the metal that is in me. Because of this, it is harder for me to be active like a normal person, add to that the emotional toll of my accident and every other shitty thing that happened to me since 2007 it has been extremely hard for me to lose this weight. It's not like I sit here and love that I look the way that I do, I hate that it hurts for me to do just even simple stuff. Honestly, it sucks.

So, here I am 32, obese and unhappy with myself, so I have made the decision to do something about it. I have decided to get weight loss surgery. I am getting the gastric sleeve, and if everything goes as planned it will be done in June after my children are done school for the summer. I didn't take this decision easily, and I don't see it as "the easy way out", but it is the decision I have made to make sure that I am healthy not just for me, but for my Evan and Ellie. They deserve me at 100%, and this is one of the ways that I can make that possible. Also, there is a part of me that is done being "fat ass" she has been a cushion and an excuse, and I am done with it.

The future, after my surgery, scares me. How do I function now that I lost part of my stomach? What kind of complications will I have post surgery? Will I be happy? But those are the negative thoughts. The positive ones outweigh those. I can't wait to be able to physically do things I haven't been able to do in years. I am waiting with anticipation to see what I look like a year from now. But most of all, I can't wait to live the life I am meant to live with my children. They are my strength. This transformation is for them, just as much as it is for me.

#Dear Me, a letter to 17 year old Erin

In Social Media recently, there has been this fad called #DearMe, I have sat around for the last couple weeks and tried to think of the things that I could write the "younger Erin", and Lord knows that I have made plenty of mistakes. It's just really hard to look back on your life and admit and call yourself out, but I am going to try.


Dear Erin (circa 2000),

Hey there friend, I am writing to you today from the wonderful year of 2015!! That's right, you are almost 32 29 (again!!). Here in the future the Internet is still around, and get this, you can access it on your cell phone (side note no more Snake on your Nokia, now you'll have a phone that is an Android sounds like something straight out of StarWars or something). AND speaking of StarWars, Attack of the Clones (which will be released in 2002) and Revenge of the Sith (released in 2005) aren't nearly as bad as The Phantom Menace, also George Lucas teams up with Disney in 2014 and they are going to release 3 more StarWars movies, hopefully they will be alright especially with how awesome technology is!

Anyway, I don't want to spend this whole time talking about SciFi, though you really should have been truer to your inner nerd when you were younger, nerds are a total thing right now and you would have fit in better in high school now then you did in the late 90's and early 2000's. This whole letter is to let you know things you wished you had known 15 years ago. There is so much that is going to happen to you from college to adulthood that if I wrote it all down, you wouldn't believe me. I hate to tell you this young naive Erin, life isn't easy, and it gets harder with each year instead of easier. Though, I must say you brought a lot of your issues on yourself.

Know this, you are smart and you really should apply yourself more than you do.

• You are talented and you should really practice writing a lot more, so it isn't so hard to do when you are 32 and trying to write the next best American Novel. 
• You are caring, but people are going to see you as weak and you'll become weak, don't. 
• Stand up for yourself, but don't become a bitch, it isn't you even if you try. 
• Don't gossip, not that you do it a lot anyway, but it isn't nice and you don't need that kind of drama. 
• School, especially college, is important finishing on time will make your life a lot easier than you think. 
• Hug your mom and dad and appreciate them more than you do now, as you get older so do Howard and Dee and their days are numbered, Not to be mean but you need to know that they aren't always going to be there.
• Talking about family, spend some more time with Grandmom Dot, she is a link to your past and you'll want to know her stories.
• Forgive those who have been mean to you in high school, what they think really doesn't matter once you're out of high school.
• Don't sell yourself short, you deserve happiness but not someone who is only going to make your life harder than it should be.
• Wear a seat belt, it comes in handy.
• Love and never be ashamed about who you love and why. 

There are a couple things I want to tell you, you are a mom!! You have amazing children one of which will have some issues but you are on top of it, never ever let other people think that they know your children better than you do. They truly are amazing, a true gift from God and the first one will bring you out of a very dark place. 

You need to make better life choices, you don't know everything though you may think you do. Step back and really look and weigh your options.

Lastly, there is no flying cars, or hover boards (Damn it) but technology explodes, and it'll be amazing. MTV still doesn't play music videos, N'SYNC isn't around, but Justin Timberlake is (and no you don't marry him). The best TV show you'll ever watch starts in a few years, and most people don't get it, but you do. Music is better in the 90's, believe me. You'll love and get hurt, you'll lose yourself but you'll start finding yourself again. But most of all, through every good thing and bad thing you keep your sweet, optimistic, and caring self. That is who matters, she is the one that will guide you.

The future is yours for the taking, don't let anyone dim your sparkle,

Erin L. (still) Hewitt

PS. This (#) is no longer a pound sign or a tic-tac-toe board in 2015, it's a "hashtag", and it annoys the crap out of you, suck it up buttercup #getoverit.

Frigging Fairy Tales and the Lies They Tell Us.

Fairy tales from our childhood are the biggest lies we tell ourselves as adults. Don't get me wrong I loved Beauty and The Beast, Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, and even Shrek, heck I am huge massive Disney fan, but all those fairytales have done nothing but jaded my perception of life. Especially life with men.



As a woman I have dreamt of the perfect life, with a happy ending ever since I saw Prince Charming put that beautiful glass slipper on Cinderella's foot at the end of Cinderella. I remember thinking to myself when I was 8 or 9 year old Erin that I would love to find a Prince Eric out there in the world so that I could change who I was to be perfect for him. In fact, it is pretty much thrown in our faces at an early age as young girls that we are to find Prince Charming and he is going to sweep us off our feet and save us from ourselves. Even Belle in Beauty and the Beast suffered from Stockholm Syndrome to be with the Beast man she thought she should be with. Time in and Time out we are taught that we are the helpless fair creatures and men are here to pick us up off the floor.

Then we grew up, and we have all these repressed memories of fairytales and we think that we have found "Mr.Perfect". And we change ourselves and our surroundings to have our happily after. But does that happen? Do we live happily ever after? Nope. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble bust "Mr.Perfect" is not real, and all those movies we watched are just fiction and fantasy, no wonder a lot of us women are messed up when it comes to men, we have unrealistic expectations for ourselves and for men. Let's face it they aren't the problem either, its society as a whole that is the issue.

Here is the truth ladies; YOU ARE STRONG ON YOUR OWN. You do not have to have a man validate your self worth. We all sparkle in our own way, and our job, when it comes time, is to find the man who is going to compliment our sparkle not one who is going to let it fade. Never settle, just don't stay with someone to justify who you are. The worst thing you can do is linger around and think that he is the best you can get so you may as well stay. Life should not work like that. So dust off your shoulders and knees and stand up and walk away.


We have to remember that we deserve the best, even if we have been a bit crazy in our lives, we do not want to settle for Mr.Sometimes. We should find Mr.Always, the man who will sing the song in our heart back to us, the one who wants us at our best and the one who will love us through our worst. He will be the one whose name gives us chills, whose love we could never imagine living without. He will be the one who holds us when the rest of the world walks away. And that isn't Prince Charming that is Mr.Always and he's out there looking for us, his Miss Forever.