I Spent Years Hiding. Then I Finally Stopped Looking Away.

For much of my life, I became very good at looking as though everything was fine. But underneath, I carried wounds, fears, and beliefs about myself that shaped the way I lived, the way I saw myself, and how much of myself I allowed the world to see.

At sixty, something changed.

At Sixty, I Finally Saw Myself

On my sixtieth birthday, I stood in front of a mirror and finally allowed myself to see what I had spent years trying not to see.

It wasn’t simply my weight.

It was how far I had disappeared from my own life.

I couldn’t change the years behind me. But for the first time, I understood that I could choose what happened with the years still ahead.

I didn’t have a perfect plan. I simply knew I was no longer willing to keep looking away.

It Was Never Just About the Weight

Behind the weight were wounds, shame, fear, old beliefs, silence, and the habit of making myself smaller.

The woman on the outside kept functioning. The little girl inside me — the one who had once laughed freely, dreamed, spoke, and lived with abandon - had become harder and harder to find.

I lost the little girl in me when life taught me to hide.

Yes, I Went On to Lose More Than 150 Pounds.

But that was only part of what changed.

Changing my body did not automatically change everything I believed about myself. There were still wounds that needed healing, people and experiences I needed to forgive, old beliefs I needed to release, and a voice I had spent far too many years silencing.

Healing required something more.

It meant forgiveness. It meant allowing my faith to deepen naturally. It meant rediscovering my worth, trusting my own voice, and understanding that changing my life required more than changing what I saw in the mirror.

Eventually, the journey became less about what I was losing and more about what I was getting back.

My voice.
My confidence.
My sense of purpose.
My capacity for joy.
And, little by little, myself.

I Found Her Again When I Learned to Fly.

Years later, standing on a trampoline, something inside me came alive again. For a moment I wasn’t measuring, calculating, hiding, or worrying about how I looked.

I was laughing. I was free. I was flying.

And I knew: the little girl I thought I had lost was still there.

That moment became more than a memory. It became a picture of what coming home to myself really meant.

Lorraine, Today

Today, Lorraine writes and speaks to women who wonder whether their best years are behind them. Her message is rooted in lived experience: it is never too late to heal, find your voice, reclaim joy, and begin living again.

Her background in image consulting remains part of her story and informs her understanding of visibility, confidence, color, style, and the way the outside can begin to reflect what is changing on the inside

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