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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Copabanana" data-source="post: 659637" data-attributes="member: 18958">SWOT,I was raised in a home where the most important thing, was my mother's looks.I remember her coming home from work telling me (I was 8) that somebody told her she looked like Sophia Loren.I remember that there was a discussion about whether I should go to foster care, if my father did not send that month's alimony and child support. That my mother worked and earned a good enough salary to support herself and her kids, did not matter, if she had not the will or responsibility to do so.And I remember going to her closet and counting her coats: A camel hair, a cashmere and a gabardine. And we lived in a city with a mild climate, and she could have gotten by with no coats. And I remember thinking, if she can have 3 coats, and these beautiful dresses, am I not worth as much as a coat?And I was not.So my whole life, I shunned beautiful clothes. And I tried to cover up what about me was pretty. Because I needed to give all of that to my Mother. If she needed it so much, more than she needed her children, it was hers, to have.And then one day I decided to claim my piece of it.Because remember, SWOT, I had been raised in a home where this was the only important thing. And I had built myself into much, much more.But I went back, and I got it. And I loved it. But it was never a value. Never my value.But buried inside me I had learned to value it, to worship it, and to feel that without it, I was powerless, and worth nothing.If I was not pretty, I was nothing on some level and not worth anything. That I did not want to live. I have told M that. If I cannot lose my weight, I want to die.Because after my Mother died, I came to feel that nothing about me mattered except as seen through her eyes.  And that is the truth.So it is not my value. Except it is.  I learned it at my mother's knee.</blockquote>

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