The Bigger I Am, The Smaller I Shrink

On Size and the Permission to Be Seen

I have lost more than 100 pounds twice.

The first time, I did it through sheer will. Counting. Tracking. Exercising for hours. Controlling everything I could.

The second time, I had surgery.

Neither was easy. Both required discipline. Both demanded something from me.

And after that second loss, something shifted.

I didn’t just weigh less. I moved differently.

I got LASIK eye surgery. I went to an esthetician to learn how to do my makeup. I bought clothes I wouldn’t have tried before. I took pictures of myself almost every day because I couldn’t believe what I looked like.

Holden or Caleb would take outfit-of-the-day photos for me in the yard. I’d scroll through them later like I was studying someone else. I looked lighter, sharper, more defined.

More visible.

My confidence wasn’t perfect. Even at 118 pounds, I fixated on the loose skin. My stomach didn’t match the fantasy. No number would have fixed that.

But I was there. In the frame. In the photos. In my own camera roll.

Then life shifted.

Divorce. Moving. A job change. Stress layered on top of stress. Structure dissolved. Some of the weight came back... not all of it, but enough to notice. Enough to feel.

And with it, I noticed something else.

I stopped reaching for the camera.

There are almost no recent photos of me on my phone. I take one and immediately see my face as too round, my body as too soft, my angles all wrong. I delete it before it has a chance to exist.

And that's where it starts.

It’s subtle at first. Easy to miss. But it shows up in small ways. I speak less. I hesitate. I pull back. I assume I am less desirable, less impressive, less worthy of attention.

It doesn't stay contained to just photos.

The bigger I am, the smaller I shrink.

 

Not physically, but in the way I show up. In the things I hold back from, the ways I make myself smaller without saying it out loud.

And so I tell myself I’m just waiting. I’ll feel better when I lose it again. I’ll take pictures again when I look better. I’ll put myself out there when I’m smaller. As if visibility is something I have to earn.

And that's how I end up starting over. 

 

Recently, I started another weight loss journey.

I missed the sharper jawline. The flatter stomach. The version of myself that felt easier to photograph, easier to take up space in.

But it was also about control.

After everything shifted — my life, my home, my routines — I felt untethered. Like too much of my life had moved at once. My body felt like another thing slipping.

Watching my food again, watching the number move, paying attention in a way I hadn’t been... it gave me something steady when everything else felt uncertain.

And I can feel it already, down more than 25 pounds so far. The subtle lift. The steadiness. The structure returning. The way my confidence ticks up slightly when I catch my reflection and don’t immediately flinch.

And the way I start to feel a little more acceptable in my own skin.

That’s the part that unsettles me.

Because it tells me how closely I’ve tied my sense of worth to my size.

I can trace this thinking all the way back to high school. I remember crash dieting with a friend before a movie date with two boys. The goal wasn’t health. It wasn’t strength. 

 

It was to be wanted.

Somewhere along the way, I internalized a version of the same equation: that smaller meant safer, more lovable, more worthy of being chosen. And even when I got close to that version of myself, it never quite held.

Even at my smallest, I still found something wrong. The skin. The angles. The way nothing ever quite looked how I wanted it to. The finish line kept moving. I’d get there, and then immediately start looking for the next thing to fix.

What I’m starting to understand is that I’ve been bargaining with my body for permission. Permission to be photographed. Permission to be in photos with my kids instead of behind the camera. Permission to feel confident, to take up space, to exist without constantly editing myself down.

I know, logically, that my weight does not determine my intelligence, my work ethic, my resilience, my ability to rebuild. But knowing that and feeling it are not the same thing.

Because I still feel it.

I feel it in the way I second-guess myself. In the way I quiet my own voice. In the way I shrink myself down without even realizing I’m doing it.

The bigger I am, the smaller I become.

Not physically, but in presence. In how much of myself I allow to be seen, how much space I take up, how willing I am to be in the frame instead of just around it. 

 

I disappear from my own life in small, quiet ways: fewer photos, fewer risks, less boldness. I keep waiting to reappear.

And maybe that's the part I need to stop doing.

Not waiting. Not postponing. Not deciding I'll show up later, when I look different.

Maybe this time, the real work isn't just about losing weight.

Maybe it's about learning to show up anyway.

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Unexpected Caller (One Minute Memoir)

A Memoir on Extroverted Children, FaceTime Ambushes, and Parental Discomfort

Setting: March 2026

This year, I’m experiencing something new as a parent.

Holden has real friends. Not just classmates he mentions occasionally. Actual friends he texts, calls, FaceTimes, and plays Roblox with. They seem to communicate constantly.

This is unfamiliar territory for me. I am shy and socially awkward. Caleb is more like me. Quiet, a little reserved. The whole “kids casually calling each other and chatting for an hour” thing was never really part of our household before.

Holden, however, has embraced it fully.

Lately he’ll leave his computer open on FaceTime while they talk, which means the camera is usually pointed somewhere into the living room. If I’m sitting on the couch behind him, or walking past the room, I’m suddenly part of the background of their conversation.

I try not to think about it.

One evening they were FaceTiming on Holden’s phone instead.

Phone calls alone are already outside my comfort zone. FaceTime is even worse. A video call removes the comforting illusion that no one can see you.

A few times Holden has asked if I want to say hello to his friend.

I have politely declined.

“Oh. No. That’s okay.”

While they were talking one night, they started discussing the possibility of a playdate.

From across the room, Holden called out that he wanted to go to his friend’s house sometime soon. Without looking up from my book, I waved vaguely in his direction.

“Sure. That’s fine. Just have his mom text me and we’ll figure something out.”

I assumed the matter was settled. Instead, Holden stood up.

Before I fully understood what was happening, he had crossed the room and was holding the phone directly in front of my face. My face was now on the screen.

And on the other side of that screen was his friend’s dad.

I was not emotionally prepared for this.

“Hi,” he said cheerfully. “Yeah, he’s been talking about maybe having a playdate with Holden soon, if he’d like to come over sometime.”

I couldn’t even make eye contact.

Staring vaguely off to the side, I muttered something like, “Yeah, sounds good… maybe over the weekend.”

And then it was over.

No plans finalized. No details established.

I avoided eye contact with the phone for the rest of the night.

This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.

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Not the Same, Not Yet (New Chapters, Ch. 3)

New Chapters ◦ Chapter Three: The Return ◦ Entry 2

This essay is part of my New Chapters series — a collection of personal essays organized into themed chapters that trace different seasons of rebuilding and becoming.

← Previous: Return to Self 

On living in the middle of rebuilding. 🌿

Life feels calmer than it did a year ago. Not perfect, not even close... but quieter. Fewer emergencies. More routine. More days that look mostly like the day before. And that should feel like arrival, I think. Like the moment where you finally exhale and say, okay, this is my life now.

But it doesn’t quite feel like that.

It feels steadier, yes. But also unfinished. Like I’ve stepped out of the storm, but the sky hasn't cleared enough yet to see what's next.

A lot of things in my life are still shifting beneath my feet. My living situation. My long-term plans. What the next few years are supposed to look like. There isn’t a clean, confident outline of the future yet. Just a lot of question marks and we’ll see.

But at the same time, I’ve started trying to grab hold of the parts I can control.

I’ve been focusing on my health in ways that feel different from before. Not dramatic resets or all-or-nothing plans, but steady, quieter changes. Eating less without feeling like I’m constantly fighting myself. Not always thinking about sugar and dessert in the background. Making choices that don’t feel heroic, just… calmer.

It’s strange how big that feels, even when it looks small on the outside.

I’ve been paying closer attention to my finances, too. Not in a new way, but in a steadier one. I’ve always tracked things, but now the follow-through looks different. I paid off all my credit cards. I have a plan for tackling my retirement loan next. The decisions I’m making aren’t about the moment anymore, they’re about giving myself more breathing room later.

None of it feels exciting. None of it feels like a big turning point. It just feels intentional.

And that’s new for me.

What’s strange is that while my circumstances still feel uncertain, my behavior feels steadier. I don’t know exactly where I’m headed, but I’m no longer drifting the way I was before. I’m making choices. I’m setting small goals. I’m paying attention.

So in some ways, I’m not the same.

But I’m also not fully settled into anything yet. My life still feels like it’s in motion. My plans feel flexible instead of fixed. There isn’t a clear outline of what the next few years look like, just a general sense that I’m trying to move forward instead of standing still.

So I’m not there yet either.

It’s like the foundation is being built before the house has a shape.

Sometimes that feels empowering. Sometimes it feels exhausting. Most days, it just feels like work.

But it’s work that feels like it belongs to me.

I’m not the same as I was. Not in how I treat my body, not in how I handle money, not in how I think about the future.

But I’m not fully who I’m becoming yet, either.

Right now, I’m somewhere in between. Steady, but not settled. Changing, but not finished. Learning how to hold on to the parts of my life I can shape, while the rest of it is still sorting itself out.

And maybe that’s not a failure to arrive.

Maybe that’s just what it looks like when you stop surviving and start building, even if you don’t know exactly what you’re building toward yet.

Not the same.
Not yet.
But finally moving forward.

Next: COMING SOON →

  

Visit the New Chapters landing page to explore each chapter and read the story in order.

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M is For... Close Enough (One Minute Memoir)

A Memoir of Confidence, Guessing, and Calendar Chaos

Setting: February 2026

Holden has been working hard to learn time in the way that matters to kids. Days of the week, which days he has school, which days he doesn’t, and how long it is until the next thing he cares about arrives.

Naturally, months are still a work in progress.

We were sitting at the dinner table when Caleb decided to quiz him, the way older siblings do when they’ve recently mastered something and are feeling generous with their expertise.

“What comes after April?” Caleb asked.

“July,” Holden answered immediately, confidently, and completely wrong.

Caleb blinked. “No. It starts with an M.”

Holden didn’t hesitate. “November.”

“No!” Caleb sounded like an exasperated teacher losing control of the classroom. “M!”

Holden paused this time, thinking harder. You could almost see him flipping through mental flashcards, searching for something that fit the rules he’d been given.

“Monday,” he said finally, proud and certain.

Caleb collapsed into older-brother disbelief. I collapsed into laughter. Holden, unfazed, simply moved on, already satisfied with his effort.

 

In Holden's world, being wrong is just part of the process.

He’s still learning how time works: how weeks line up, how months follow each other, how calendars make sense to everyone else. But he shows up to every lesson with absolute confidence, even when he’s guessing, even when he’s wrong, even when April somehow leads directly to Monday.

And honestly? Watching him try — brave, certain, and completely unafraid to be wrong — feels like its own kind of right.

This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.

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The Last Time Already Happened

 On quiet endings, growing children, and the moments you didn't know were last

 

I don’t remember the last time I picked Holden up before he got too big.

Sometimes he still falls asleep on the couch. Or in my bed. I used to be able to pick him up and carry him from wherever he ended up. Now I just shake his arm and gently wake him instead, guiding him down the hall while he stumbles along half-asleep. I nudge him. I make sure he moves.

But I don’t remember the last time I carried him.

I don't remember the last time Caleb danced in the living room to his old Music Together CDs.

He took music classes as a baby, before he could even walk. He’d sit on the carpeted floor in a rented room of a church and dance in place, scooting himself around with remarkable rhythm. Once he started walking, he’d ask me to play the CDs at home so he could dance and laugh in the living room.

But I don’t remember the last time he asked me to play them. It's been years.

They used to love shows that drove me crazy. Paw Patrol. Loud. Repetitive. That governor’s voice echoing through the house for hours. At the time, I counted the minutes until it was over.

Now I can’t remember the last time I heard it.

I didn’t notice when it stopped.

None of it ended with ceremony. There wasn’t a final episode. No formal goodbye. Just gradual disinterest. Quiet growth. A shift so subtle I didn’t see it happening.

And that’s what unsettles me.

Last fall, the three of us started running together for a November race.

Evening runs at dusk. Cold air settling in around us. Holden close beside me, sharing one pair of AirPods because he didn’t have his own. Caleb already ahead, whipping around the track like he had somewhere important to be.

It became part of our evenings. Something steady. Something ours.

We said we’d keep going after the race.

We didn’t.

We took a short break. Then winter arrived. The cold settled in. Darkness came earlier.

So the break lasted longer than we meant it to. Motivation faded. Life filled in the gaps.

It just stopped.

And it only just stopped — but I already miss it.
 

I don't even remember which run was the last one. But I miss the rhythm of our feet on the track. I miss the small negotiations over which song we’d share in the AirPods (“Golden” on repeat). I miss post-run treats and flushed cheeks and the quiet pride of doing something hard together.

We’ll run again when the weather turns. And we’ll probably have new songs next season.

But it won’t be last fall.

It won’t be that exact dusk. That exact version of them. That exact season of us.

That’s the part I’m starting to understand… not just about running, but about everything.

You don’t know when the last time is happening. You don’t know when you’re inside a season you’ll already be nostalgic for three months later.

And most of the time, nothing announces it. 

 

Some things don't end with a big moment or any sign at all.

They just happen quietly for the last time. 

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Cindy

A baboon in Namibia and the small things that carry us through

Every day, for a long stretch of time, I watched videos of a baboon living on a farm in Namibia.

At lunch. In bed at night. In the quiet minutes between things.

Her name was Cindy.

People who knew her said she ran the place.

She had the personality of someone who believed the entire farm existed primarily to serve her snacks.

And in many ways, that place was the center of her world — where her story began.

She lived her whole life on a farm in Namibia where the Lambrechts family care for rescued animals. In 1994, a neighbor found an orphaned baby baboon and asked Barista Lambrechts — a young newlyed at the time — if she would take her in. 

 

She did.

They named her Cindy, after Cindy Crawford. Barista would be her mother for the next thirty-one years.

A few years after her arrival, Barista welcomed twin sons who grew up alongside Cindy... a baboon sister woven into their childhood. One of them, Ruben, would eventually become the one who shared Cindy with the internet.

That’s how millions of us met her.

Including me, sitting thousands of miles away in New York.

The first time I ever saw Cindy, she was sitting on a rock eating.

A large bug scurried up near her food. Without even pausing, she picked it up and tossed it aside.

Then she did it again.

It was such a casual, efficient reaction that I immediately understood something important about Cindy: whatever else was happening on that farm, her snacks were non-negotiable.

I replayed the video, laughing. And then I clicked "follow."

Soon enough, the videos became part of my daily life. I watched them all, sometimes more than once.

Cindy in the bath, calmly eating toothpaste off her toothbrush. Cindy stuffing her cheeks full of food, frantic and fast. Cindy swatting at animals (and humans) when they forgot the rules. Cindy grunting the instant she heard the word "happies," the Afrikaans word for "snack,” and opening her mouth wide, waiting for bites. 

Later on, the videos looked a little different.

Cindy went blind from an infection in 2023, but blindness didn’t soften her personality in the slightest. If anything, it made her more impressive. She navigated the farm with total confidence, recognizing voices and footsteps, moving easily between the spaces she knew best: her outdoor house with a hand painted “Cindy’s House” across the front where she liked to nap during the day, the indoor princess tent where she slept at night. 

And, blind or not, she guarded her food like a professional bodyguard.

The best thing about Cindy was that she absolutely refused to share it.

She never had babies of her own, but every baby animal that arrived on the farm became hers. Meerkats. Porcupines. Warthogs. Puppies. Any species. It didn’t matter to her. She would scoop them up, carry them around, sometimes drop them unceremoniously, and generally treat them like temporary children.

She was a natural mother: tender when it mattered, protective when it counted, stern when she needed to be. One minute she would be carrying a tiny animal around like it belonged to her, the next she would be firmly reminding everyone that her food was not communal property.

But once a baby was old enough to develop opinions about snacks, the relationship changed.

Near her food, Cindy had boundaries.

My favorite video shows a warthog wandering over, sniffing toward her banana. Cindy senses him immediately. Her eyes grow wide. In one swift movement, she grabs him by the folds of his neck and brings him straight down to the ground. Then she holds him there, thrashing him just enough to make her point.

It looks less like an animal scuffle and more like an elite wrestling move.

The warthog backs off immediately.

Lesson learned... for a little while, anyway.

There are dozens of videos like that. Maybe hundreds.

Sometimes she would just sit in the sun, her round little body settled comfortably, her knee propped up with one arm resting across it. Her hair would blow in the wind as she casually pulled up handfuls of grass to eat. Millions of people watched those quiet moments through a screen, smiling at the smallest things she did. 

She had no idea.

Over time, watching Cindy became a routine. I knew her habits, the sound of Ruben’s voice in the background, the way she tore open a banana with her hands, the little grunt she made whenever someone mentioned food. I started saving my favorite clips to my phone.

I left comments all the time.

Eventually, Facebook gave me a “Top Fan” badge next to my name: “Team Ruben,” it said.

I defended Cindy regularly in the comment sections. If someone called her ugly, I argued back. If someone questioned the family or didn’t understand her story, I explained it. I answered questions from strangers like I worked there.

How did they get her?

How did she lose her sight?

The internet does strange things to the boundaries between observer and participant.

You start by watching.

And then one day you realize you’ve been quietly defending a baboon from strangers on the internet like she’s a relative.

The first time Ruben liked one of my comments, I noticed it immediately. It felt ridiculous and exciting at the same time. The only time he replied to me directly felt even stranger.

To me, they were celebrities.

 

A few days before Christmas, someone who knew how much I loved Cindy ordered a gift that surprised me.

A personalized Cameo video from Ruben and Cindy.

Ruben said they had just woken up. He’d heard that I loved Cindy and that I was her "number one social media fan." He joked that it was a pity Cindy hadn’t invited me to her birthday, that it would have been "awesome."

A few weeks earlier she had turned thirty-one. They ordered a cake modeled after her. During the celebration, she ripped off the fondant tail and started eating it while they were still filming.

In the Cameo, Cindy sat beside Ruben, her little diagonal snout pointed toward the camera, her dainty pink eyelids blinking, tired but alert. At one point, she made a soft grunt.

For a minute and twenty-four seconds, the screen felt a little less like a screen.
Like the distance between us had briefly disappeared. 

By then, the farm already felt strangely familiar to me.

At some point I realized I had done something slightly absurd.

I had looked up the farm.

They allow visitors to stay there and interact with the animals. I looked at the accommodations, the cost, the flight routes from New York to Namibia. I studied the travel time like it might someday become a real plan.

I imagined sitting in the grass next to Cindy.

Spending the afternoon beside her, watching her supervise the farm. 

Feeding her happies from my hand, watching her pocket every bit of it in her cheeks.

I imagined it enough times that it started to feel like a future memory, even though I knew it probably wouldn’t happen. But I thought about it anyway.

Because in some small way, she saved me.

I discovered Cindy during one of the hardest periods of my life.

I was in the middle of divorce. Moving. Trying to figure out how to rebuild a life that suddenly looked nothing like the one I had expected.

Everything felt unstable.

But every day, there she was.

A blind baboon on a farm in Namibia, confidently running the place and body-slamming warthogs who didn’t respect her snacks. 

For reasons I probably didn’t fully understand at the time, she made me laugh on days when not much else did.

Watching her became a small, reliable pocket of joy in the middle of a season that felt otherwise heavy. And sometimes, during hard stretches, small things carry more weight than you expect.

For a long time, I kept watching her the same way I always had: every day, on repeat. 

Then, in late December 2025, Cindy died, surrounded by the family who had raised her. She was thirty-one — an incredible age for a baboon.

When the post appeared announcing Cindy’s death, I remember just staring at the screen for a while, trying to take in what it meant. I felt a wave of sadness that was hard to explain to anyone who hadn’t spent years watching her videos. I mourned her like she was family. 

For a while afterward, when old clips of Cindy showed up in my feed, I’d feel my throat tighten unexpectedly.

A friend of their family later made a music video in her memory. A slideshow of moments from her life on the farm accompanied by a beautiful song about her.

I cried. Tears streamed down my face as I grieved for Cindy… a creature I hadn’t really known, but somehow still knew.

When the family held a live memorial online, I stepped away from work for a few minutes just to watch it.

 

I thought about the Cameo video a lot after that, too. I wondered if it might have been one of the last they’d filmed. I felt lucky it had arrived when it did. 

After Cindy’s death, Ruben and his family began raising funds for Cindy’s Sanctuary, a project to rescue orphaned baby baboons in her honor.

I donated ten dollars.

Ten dollars isn’t a lot of money. But I’m a single mother with one income, and I don’t usually feel compelled or called to donate to things online.

This felt different. 

So I sent the money and left a short note. It didn't feel like much at the time — small things rarely do until later — but for me, it was a thank you. To Cindy. To the Lambrechts family. 

It felt like a small payment toward something intangible. Toward the hours and weeks and months of joy that Cindy (and Ruben) had quietly delivered through my phone without even knowing.

I think what fascinates me most about Cindy is not just her life on a farm in Namibia.

It’s the strange web of connection around her.

A baboon raised by a woman named Barista.

Filmed by a man who grew up calling her his sister.

Watched daily by millions of people scattered across continents.

People like me, sitting halfway across the world, laughing at a warthog getting tackled out of a food bowl by a beloved baboon who was, frankly, a legend.

The internet often feels chaotic, loud, and exhausting.

But sometimes it does something small and remarkable.

It lets a baboon on another continent become part of someone’s ordinary day.

And Cindy was part of mine.

It’s strange how someone you’ve never met can leave a mark like that. And these days, the world feels a little less bright without her in it.

I still have dozens of her videos and photos saved on my phone. My favorites, the ones I go back to time and again.

Cindy chattering her teeth excitedly when Ruben came near, or when she was holding one of her babies. Cindy drinking tea from a mug like the queen she knew she was. Cindy sounding almost like she was laughing when someone tickled her.

 

Cindy feeling objects carefully in her hands before deciding what to do with them — a large plush banana, for instance, briefly inspected and then tossed aside. Cindy lying on a blanket after anesthesia, eyes closed, still chewing a banana like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Cindy ripping a blanket off her head the second Ruben tried to cover her with it, irritated in the way only a little brother can make you. 

And then there were the sneak attacks. An animal would walk past minding its own business and suddenly, Cindy would grab it by the tail, gathering it up in her arms to hold onto. Donald, a very large cow who towered over her, once tried to share her food. Cindy grabbed his tail aggressively and held on like she was correcting him.

And that was Cindy. Fearless. Completely unimpressed by size differences. Entirely committed to protecting her snacks.

Sometimes I scroll back through those clips and watch them again.

Cindy tearing open a banana. Cindy guarding her happies. Cindy correcting animals twice her size.

And every time I see her, I still can’t help but smile.

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