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My weight has been an issue for me for all of my life. Even when I was very young, I was self-conscious about my size. I was bigger than the other girls, not fatter so much as just bigger. It didn't help that my two best friends were tiny. I couldn't share clothes with my friends like other girls. I was stronger and faster than most of the boys my age actually. It was a point of pride and shame for me at the same time.

Like millions of other people, I kept getting bigger as I got older. I carry my weight fairly well, but it haunted me. Winter 2011, I started training for my first half marathon. Exercise had not been a regular part of my life, ever really. Running was good for me in a lot of ways though, even with my asthma, but I started putting on weight. A lot of it.

About six months after my first half marathon, I got a new job and started a 20-month odyssey of stress like I'd never experienced. I was still running, which was one of the few things keeping me sane, but the running combined with continually elevated cortisol levels combined for even more weight gain.

This past summer, I hit a low to rival some of my lowest. I'd never been so big or felt so bad about myself. I was miserable with no idea how to get myself out of it. I knew I would need help to turn things around, and it would take a special kind of person at that.

Six weeks ago, I met a personal trainer and started changing my own life. I weighed 220lbs and couldn't remember the last time I'd been under 200.

Three days a week, I do 20-30 minutes of cardio, and three days a week, Errick kicks my ass for an hour. I write down everything I eat. Errick is emphatic that trying to follow another person's diet won't work. I have to find my own diet. I still occasionally have pizza for dinner. I gave up soda completely, but I have a beer while watching football from time to time. I don't eat as much though, and I burn more than I eat. I also weigh myself every morning and write that down, too.

Yes, I've given up some things. I made it through Halloween without a single bite of candy. I've also beaten my best mile time twice without an inhaler. "Uurraahh!" as Errick would say. The weight started coming off a bit at a time. The numbers bounced up and down from day to day, but the trend line kept tilting down. I'd set my first goal as getting under 200lbs. That was 20lbs to lose.

This morning when I stepped on the scale, I saw a number I hadn't seen in a long time. In fact, I was so skeptical I stepped off and back on to re-weigh myself five times. This morning, I weighed 199.6lbs. It's a slim margin, and there's a good chance it will bounce up and down a couple of times in the next week as I head to my next goal. I'm on my way though.

I am stronger and healthier than I've been since I was eighteen. My asthma gets better and better. My clothes fit better. I feel good. I can do this. 180, here I come!

This is ...

Helicopters and vending machines

For our senior show invitation, each of us got a card to design with our favorite design-related quote. One of the quotes sort of stuck with me over time, although it's evolved a bit in my memory. Wanting to give credit where credit is due, I dug up one of the decks we sent out as an invitation and took a picture of the quote. Here's what it actually says:

Basically, there are two kinds of designers. Helicopters and vending machines. The helicopters fly around the landscape, zooming in to investigate, backing off to get a better panoramic view. Vending machines tend to be inert until someone shoves money in the slot. They then produce a lot of buzzing, whirring, and clanking until out pops a product. It is invariably the same, the same, the same, the same as the previous one, and will be the same as the same as the same as the next. The only difference is the next is usually staler.

- Jay Doblin

Being a designer wasn't the easy path for me. I'm good at a lot of things, but they didn't challenge me. Design challenged me. Hell, it was hard for me. That's why I picked it. When I got it right, the reward was that much sweeter. Hot damn!

I've spent my entire adult life trying to avoid being a vending machine. In the process, I came to resent the vending machine -- and anyone who asked me to be one. I don't mean just being asked to produce the same thing over and over. It's more than that. It's the idea that I exist at the pleasure of someone else to come and tell me what they want as if I'm supposed to spit it out without even thinking about it. I'm worth more than that.

I've spent a long time learning what I know, and it has value. Come to me with a problem or a challenge and let me meet it. There is far more satisfaction in that than just spitting out what someone else wants.

You had to be there: My sister and Mr. Possum

I don't remember our ages, but we were living in the house in Rolling Fields, so I was at least 9yo. Our house was built on a hill, so the front was one story and the back two. There was a second driveway in the back below the deck, and one afternoon, my sister and I found a possum standing there.

As an older sibling, I have always tried to protect my sister, but I think it's genetic with older siblings to occasionally torture their younger counterparts. My sister's naivety left her open to this a few times. The possum was an opening I couldn't resist.

Standing there staring at the possum, who was clearly hoping we wouldn't notice him, my sister asks me if she can pet it. I said yes, and when she wanted reassurance that said possum would not bite her, I responded, "Of course not, possums don't even have teeth."

I was the athletic one in our family. My sister was a bit of a priss. She was not quick by any means, but when she moved toward that possum and it showed her a mouth full of sharp teeth while hissing, my sister broke several laws of physics in the way she flew up the back steps of the deck and into the house.

The possum ran off, and I spent several minutes rolling on the ground laughing. I still laugh at the memory. As an older sibling, it's one of my proudest moments, but ...

Maybe you had to be there.

The more I run the more reasons I have to run.

My first race was my way of dealing with a great deal of loss in a short period of time. It was cathartic. I ran it with a group of friends back in Tennessee to remember and celebrate one of my oldest friends, Mark King. I just finished my second race, and this one was more about fighting back. It seemed too serendipitous that the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend was so close to Mark's birthday, and he worked for Disney for so long. I signed up and hit the trails.

This season, I found more reasons to run. Enough that I have at least one person for every mile of my race. I've made a point to remember survivors, too, just to remind myself that some do survive.

Mile1: Emma Rae Perkins who has many more miles to go thankfully!

Mile 2: Dennis Sweat who I never met, but whose daughter helped me keep going when I started thinking this whole running thing might not have been so smart.

Mile 3: Gino H. and Jim Matthews who are beating the odds!

Mile 4: Mark King. This is my hardest mile mentally, and he is why I never stop.

Mile 5: Jim Galloway. Little girls should not have to lose their daddies.

Mile 6: Nate Tutt. Far too young to be gone.

Mile 7: Don Harmon. For the little girl in me who can't remember a time I didn't know Mr. Harmon.

Mile 8: Glen Weatherly. This is my hardest mile physically, and I will never forget the way he fought.

Mile 9: Marshall Ramsey whose story of survival is a source of power. He never gives up and neither will I!

Mile 10: Fred and Betty White. Two of the best people I've ever known. I'm glad he has someone to lay his clothes out for him in heaven.

Mile 11: Aunt Deloris who may not have much of her race left.

Mile 12: Karen Young who is cancer free!

Mile 13: Ted Duning. May we all finish our races with such grace.

And that last tenth of a mile? That little bit when I cross the finish line is mine. It's my moment to celebrate love being greater than loss, and will being stronger than all the pain.

Next up, Nike Women's Half Marathon in DC on April 28.

It didn't have to happen.

My daddy at his commissioning ceremony.

Growing up without one of your parents is something that I can't explain. If you haven't lived it, you can't really wrap your head around the disconnect. It's not just that I took on a level of responsibility for my mother and sister far beyond my toddler years. It's not the feeling that I should have been able to fill my father's shoes for my little sister and failed miserably. It's not even feeling like something is missing. I guess it's more like everyone gets a 100 piece puzzle that is their life and mine only came with 99. I didn't know the difference.

For a few years, Joe and I lived next door to a beautiful family that have since become our dear friends. The couple has two beautiful children, the youngest a daughter. Parrish is a vibrant and loving child, very affectionate. She's 5 now, and watching her and her daddy has started to help me see where some of that 100th piece should be.

By all accounts, I wasn't exactly a normal kid to begin, but I'm not sure if I would have been as affectionately withdrawn if I hadn't lost my dad at two and a half. What I'm quite sure of is a daughter learns a great deal about relationships and all types of affection towards men from her father. I finally learned how to have an open, affectionate relationship with a man and married him to boot. What I can't quite grasp is a little girl sitting in her daddy's lap falling asleep on his shoulder or cuddling on the couch watching a movie. I've never had these experiences.

Pulling apart and reassembling my psyche has occupied much of my adult life. I've learned how childhood traumas, my natural thought processes and other elements have created the person I am now. It's helped me be the real me and be comfortable with it. I'm more at home in my own skin than I've ever been, but it's been a lot of work.

Good for me, but that's not really the point. The point is first, I'll never know what life would have been like or who I would have been, but possibly more importantly, it never should have happened this way.

The helicopter crash that took my dad from us didn't have to happen. It wasn't pilot error. From every source and the official record, my dad flew by the book the day he died. He was a phenomenal pilot, like he was born to be in the air. The malfunction with the tail rotor was a known issue with the Huey back then. One of the men who survived the crash said they all knew what it was as soon as they heard the loud pop. Daddy tried to catch the tail of the helicopter in a tree to slow their descent, but it was no use. They were just falling too fast. An autopsy report I found by accident years later said he died of blunt force trauma immediately from the impact. His last broadcast was the four maydays he got off before they hit.

The Army in its infinite wisdom and ability to put a price on human life declared there had to be three fatal crashes with the Hueys before they'd recall them. At least one person on three separate occasions had to die before the Army would ground the choppers for repairs. You should take a minute to re-read that last sentence before moving on.

I am 37 years old. My daddy was killed when I was two and a half. Sometimes, it makes me so angry I can barely see through the tears. I've come to understand the anger, to channel it and to keep it from consuming me. This didn't have to happen. The worst part of the anger is what it's done from time to time to my family. It's bred distrust and subsequent division between three people who have frankly lost enough.

I've ended up with some things of my daddy's that I really wasn't ready to own. I took them of my own accord to keep them safe until we can come together and decide the best way to keep them. I'm not moving any time soon, we have plenty of room and I know a little about preservation of old things at least. These things are safe with me right now.

When I came home with them, I went through all of it very carefully. I separated everything and put each in a Ziploc bag for keeping. One of the items is the stocking cap my dad was wearing the night he died. There's a picture of him wearing it at the briefing before they took off. I knew the hat existed, but I'd never seen it. I wasn't ready to be honest. Here I was holding it in my hands. It's the greatest sense of loss I have ever felt, knowing that my dad was wearing that hat at the end of his life with no way of knowing it was the end. He didn't know he'd never see his wife or daughters ever again. He was only thinking about his mission and doing the job he loved.

I have seen a lot of pictures of my dad in my life. I've had things that were his. A decade or so ago, some old family 8mm films were converted to VHS and a few years ago, some film of him playing football in high school was converted to DVD. Those are the only experiences I remember where he was moving. For almost 35 years, he's been a still image or objects pass down. I don't have any idea what his voice sounded like. I don't know what he smelled like. I can't remember the feel of his hands holding me or his whiskers on my cheek when he kissed me.

When I was putting his hat in the Ziploc bag, I found a hair of his. I held it between my fingers in complete wonder before I started crying hysterically. That hair is the only part of my daddy that I ever remember touching. I carefully put it in the bag, so my sister can see it.

I've always believed that things happen for a reason, and that we can never go back. I wouldn't trade even one bad decision of mine for fear of ending up somewhere other than where I am right now. I love my life. I've been lucky beyond measure to have had someone like my (other) dad, John Murrey to come into our lives and love us like we were his own. I know these things and cherish them all. Sometimes, I'd trade just about anything to have 5 minutes with my daddy. Then again, I'm not sure I want to know what I'm missing. I just wish I didn't know that none of it had to happen.

Headstone and foot stone at Lynnwood Cemetery (Lynnville, TN), where my daddy is buried next to his brother Jimmy

Let freedom ring

I was an uptight kid. It wasn't until I was old enough to watch the legendary film Risky Business that I found the words of wisdom that changed my life:

Every now and then say, "What the fuck." [It] gives you freedom. Freedom brings opportunity. Opportunity makes your future.
(Miles to Joel, encouraging him to take advantage of his parents being out of town)

Miles was right, and he taught me a valuable lesson. Loosen up! Nothing and no one is perfect, and while striving to be the best we can is admirable, being a perfectionist is a waste of energy. It's OK to take chances, throw things on the wall to see what sticks.

Of course, there are many things I take seriously, but I've found a way to hold myself to a high standard without the stress of having to be perfect. Some mistake that freedom for bravado, but I am confident, not because I know I'm right, but because I'm not afraid to be wrong.