My featured image is from Christmas Eve 2017. It’s not that I’m wishing it was Christmas again, as we slowly make our way into spring. I selected this picture because I am thinking about how important love and support are in this life. Sometimes your family is your first best community, and that’s the way it worked out for me.

My parents gave me the best long lasting gift, my brothers, and my sister. Then my siblings went out and married, expanding my family’s reach to include more people for me to love and to love me.  The older I get the more I realize winning in life has more to do with the ability to love and to be loved.

Losing weight is hard, that’s just the truth for most of us. So, when taking on a big challenge, it’s important to have people in their lives who are supportive and encouraging. My sister is one of those people for me. Making the choice to get serious about being a Weight Watcher was in many ways was inspired by her. She did everything right. Each week as we drove to and from our meeting, we would talk about the plan and how it was going. She didn’t focus on just how I was doing, she also shared how she was doing. I never felt alone in my struggle. She was not critical, she was honest but reserved judgment. Our relationship is one of unconditional love and she kept Weight Watchers open as an option for me.  Eventually, (Day One) I was ready to take the first (serious) step back into the program.  Thank you, Virginia, for always being there for me.

Here is a picture of us