I don’t remember much of my early childhood – when I think about younger me, my instinct is to go to middle and high school, times of which I didn’t have a very positive view of myself. That negative sense of self has been a dark cloud over me for years now – what is it that makes me unworthy, unlovable, undeserving of joy? And more importantly, when did that spark leave that precious child’s eyes? And how do I get it back?

I’ve always been full of spunk: high energy, silliness, and constant chatter have remained at the forefront of my personality. When did that start? I don’t know. What I do know, though, is in college I began to get compliments on my personality, how it was a strength of mine, and those outside observations only grew as years went on. I always told people “I had to learn to be funny because it was the only thing that would give me a chance when I looked like that”. I only recently realized how constant my negative self talk has been over the years, with this example being one of the more prevalent things I would tell myself. I can’t tell you how long that’s been my default – instead of taking a compliment or acknowledging a fair judgement about me with grace, I have to counter it with self deprecation, a subconscious means for me to bash that inner child. No, Beverly, you’re not good enough, you’re not beautiful, your good qualities only point to your outer ugliness. You’re not lovable. If anything, they’re only complimenting your personality because physically you’re hard to look at – they HAVE to compliment you because they’re your friends and family, they’re obligated to find something nice to say. Wouldn’t you rather they said nothing kind at all and instead done you the good service of being HONEST with you? You know you crave people to finally confirm what you’ve known all along: you aren’t worthy of anything. You’re disgusting. My heart breaks for the girl I’ve forced into believing she’s worthless, the girl who believed those lies for years. Only now am I finally feeling brave enough to try and escape this, to find healing once and for all. But in order for me to heal, it’s time I face the untruths that have haunted me for so long.

Where it all began

Let’s give you some background to get you started. Around the time our story starts, that sweet little girl above was 10 years old and absolutely dominating 5th grade – how smart, how talented, how curious you are, angel girl! How worthy of honor and praise and love you are! She was confident, she was sure of the love her friends and family had for her, she was secure. She was magnificent. Her name is Beverly Hodges Fite; she’s sometimes a little embarrassed by her name because it seems unusual compared to the names of her friends. Her name, though, was a gift. From her mother to her grandfather, Papa. The little girl’s father was the youngest of 5 children. All of Papa’s granddaughters so far had been given wonderful, beautiful names, and yet none of his children had honored his wife and blessed her with a namesake, something she so desperately longed for. Papa was the kindest, gentlest man, and he humbly approached the little girl’s mother with his request – if this baby is a girl, wouldn’t you please name her Beverly for me? And so it was. Beverly Hodges Fite was born December 21, 2000, an exact namesake for Beverly Hodges Fite (or as I’ll continue to call her, Bebe), born October 22, 1926.

I was 10 years old the first time Bebe called me fat. Well, technically she used the word “husky” the first time. I don’t remember why I was down the street at my grandparents’ house, but I do have a picture-perfect memory of the conversation that innocent, happy child had with Bebe.

“Come sit in my lap, darling!”

“Ok!! I’m coming I’m coming!”

*pats hands on the little girl’s thighs* “Oh! Getting a little husky, are we?”

(unsure of what that word means so just goes along with it) “Yeah, Bebe!”

That night when I got home, I was on a mission to learn what Husky meant. Something I loved dearly back then was my journal full of words I was learning. My mom got me started on that back when I first started learning to read with her – once I got into chapter books, I would end up constantly hitting her with questions over and over about what this or that word meant. She then had an idea that I can only imagine was to save herself from the incessant questions and to encourage independence and curiosity in me – take a cute, colorful notebook and write down every word that stumps me. Use dictionaries, context clues, or the home computer to try and figure out the definitions, and then write them in said notebook so I can learn on my own. So, back to husky: I simply HAD to get the definition to this new vocabulary word so I could get it in my notebook! Surely since Bebe said it about me then it must mean something wonderful, right? Surely it means beautiful? I was so excited to find out. Instead of going to my dictionaries I went straight to my mother, because this was urgent!

“Mom, what does husky mean?”

“What do you mean, husky? Like the dog?”

“No, silly! Like what does it mean when a person is husky?”

“Oh, you mean like a fat person. Where did you hear that?”

My world stops. A fat person? FAT is how my grandma chose to identify me? FAT is how she chose to speak truth into me? I’m fat?

“Oh just on TV somewhere today. Just curious!”

And in that moment, I was no longer curious, I was no longer smart, I was no longer fun, lovable, worthy, wonderful, beautiful. My identity was forever changed from that point on. I was fat.

After that pivotal moment in my life where I realized I was fat, I began to transition into middle school, entering puberty with an already horrific image of how I must look to everyone around me. If my own family thinks I’m ugly, how much worse must I look to those I’m in class with, those who don’t have familial obligations to love me? What a burden it must be for others to have to look at me. For this reason I chose to never get an Instagram like all my friends were doing, and I lied to them all and said it was because my mom wouldn’t let me. Little did they know I was simply protecting them and myself from the pain of having to see me. To this day people ask why I don’t have one, and they always compliment me for it and say it’s cool or impressive. How do you explain that to someone? You don’t. You lie. You live with a quiet fear of facing yourself, you live with an absence of old, “cringy” photos (memories) from your younger years, because all the times your friends were exploring and creating, you were forcing them to let you TAKE the pictures. The narrative I lived throughout high school was one everyone knew about me – I didn’t like pictures, so don’t make me get in them. I don’t want to see it if I’m in it. I might get agitated and mad if you force me to be in one, not because of you, but because of ME. It was always because of me. I can’t bear to face it. It’s too scary. It’s too sad.

For all those years after the husky incident, Bebe continued to “lovingly” critique me (I say lovingly because that’s of course what I was always told after other family members would see her publicly shame me or hear me confide in them about the pain she caused me – she only does this because she loves you! She only wants the best for you! It’s because you’re her namesake – she sees herself in you!). By the time I had finished middle school, she had both intentionally criticized me in private and publicly humiliated me in front of my siblings, my cousins, etc. When I try to reflect on those years, my mind continues to play tricks with me in the present – was it really that bad? Am I just horribly dramatic?

Let’s pause for a moment and circle back to Papa, more fondly known as The Candy Fairy. Sweet Papa loved three things in the world: God, his wife, and his family, in that order. He loved Bebe with his entire being; it was the kind of love you see in The Notebook. It was a gift to watch him love her. I dreamed of a love like that, a man so wonderful as Papa committing himself to me. It was always a pipe dream, of course, because Bebe was beautiful enough to be loved like that, I would never know that kind of love. But man, did I enjoy dancing on my Papa’s toes in the living room and dreaming of it. He made me feel like a princess in those small moments where Bebe wasn’t around. He was my hiding place in that house. Papa earned his nickname after he began to hide Hershey’s Kisses in these small decorative boxes that sat just at eye level of a toddler in his kitchen. As kids, every time we went to Bebe and Papa’s house, we always knew to get our purchase upon arrival. The Candy Fairy began working his magic when my siblings and I could barely walk, so it was truly real to us. Sweet Papa always played into the wonder and surprise of this magically refilling candy box, a gift from my childhood that he fostered into a core memory. At his funeral, we all recounted tales from The Candy Fairy and the immediate joy that entered your heart as a child running into that house. My Papa. My hiding place.

How confusing then was it for me as a young teenager to remember the ghost of the joy and excitement of the Candy Fairy while reeling with guilt, shame, and fear as I walked through that doorway. I’d aged out of the fun, and was faced with a new reality. How treacherous was the journey of trying and failing over the years to earn favor through endless cycles of starving myself, over-exercising, then binge eating the shame away, only to end up the same size I started at. How draining was it to always hear the internal dialogue that though my friends were beautiful and thin, I would never amount to any of that. I wasn’t meant to be beautiful, I wasn’t meant to be adored. I was meant to hide myself away under baggy clothes, ashamed of my body, my acne-covered skin, my braces, my glasses.

Papa was a gentle soul, Bebe was a determined woman. He was adamant to make his granddaughters know and see and feel the love of Jesus, while Bebe was on a mission for me to understand the importance of beauty. Bebe loves the Lord, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have standards for me. Oh, how she made those very clear. Oh, how that young girl wept at night knowing she wasn’t enough. She would never be loved unless she was beautiful (which she wasn’t). She would never be valued unless she was skinny (which she wasn’t). She would never amount to anything until her appearance was worthy (which it wasn’t). She wasn’t enough, that much was made clear.

Moving forward to my junior year of high school, when sweet Papa fell incredibly ill, requiring multiple long hospital admissions. Bebe, in all her years, had never once spent a night in the house by herself, and wasn’t planning on starting to then. So, for reasons I can’t begin to explain, I had to start living with Bebe. Someone had to take care of her in the evenings, and though my large and expansive family most all lived in town and had NOT been traumatized by her, I was told to step up and go into the one house I never felt safe in. Especially when my hiding place wasn’t there. From that moment on, my relationship with Bebe profoundly changed. For months I faced this woman who was now vulnerable, memory fading, and requiring immense amounts of love, support, and positive spirits. I wanted to yell at her, I wanted to scream, and instead I found myself eating dinners with her after school, staying up watching Hallmark movies with her, sleeping in the same room as her if she asked, and waking up with her at 4am since she could never sleep without Papa. I ate undercooked and ice cold poached eggs that she had made hours before morning in the middle of the night when she thought it was breakfast time. I stomached it so she could feel like she was still hosting me, still fulfilling her role as my caregiver. I drove her to the hospital before school. I neglected my studies so that I could sit with her and talk. I had hard conversations on the phone with my aunt, the kind where you think you need to go say your goodbyes, and then went into the living room with a smile and told Bebe that Aunt Beth said everything would be fine, that I was so thankful to hear good news. I cried in the shower at night so she would never know my fear, never know my sadness. I prayed for healing in our relationship. I yearned for her approval once and for all. If I couldn’t be beautiful, the least I could do was be a good caregiver. The least I could do was nearly kill myself in an effort to please her and keep her spirits up while my own faded away as he declined. As my sense of being a normal high schooler declined.

In those years there were multiple losses. I didn’t just lose Papa – I lost myself.

When Papa passed his gentle spirit went home to Jesus. What a blessing. What a loss. My hiding place was gone, I had only her to face now. Our relationship had changed over those months together at 2am. It changed as I helped her put clothes on, helped her do her makeup, go to the bathroom. It changed as I secretly cooked us dinners and put them in the fridge and told her those nights to just heat up the leftovers of what she’d already made for us. It changed when I looked at her and saw who she really was: a vulnerable, insecure, loving woman in desperate need of Jesus. She no longer had the power over me to hurt me, she no longer had the brain capacity to insult me with personal, deep cutting words, she no longer had the energy to criticize me. She forgot. She lost the sense of her that which hated my body, and all that was left was a sad, lonely woman searching for love and company. She lost. I now saw a future without her torment, one in which I could finally have freedom from her. It’s been over 7 years since that realization hit me, and after a truly unexpected 2024 in which I developed my worst eating disorder yet, I’m finally facing her. I’m finally choosing to have real freedom. There will never be another relationship in my life more complex than this one. There will never be another Bebe. I can’t explain it to you, but even with all the trauma she put me through, I can’t not love her. I can’t not go see her, laugh with her, help her get beautiful and made up in the mornings when I’m with her because I know how important that was to her.

In summary, I’m choosing to let myself unashamedly love her and the good memories I have, but I’m choosing to love myself more.

Little one, you are so loved. Little girl, you are enough. You are so much more than she made you feel you were. You had no reason NOT to believe those hateful things she poured into you; nobody protected you, dear girl; nobody was brave enough to face her in those pivotal moments. You are not silly or stupid for letting her claws sink into you and change your perspective; you are BRAVE for enduring what you did and still managing to come out with a spirit that loves, a heart that connects with people, a smile that radiates, a laugh that brings joy. You are resilient. You are worthy. You are strong.

You are healing.

Finally.

❤ Bev