For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to sky dive.
Which is kind of weird for a girl who used to take a deep breath before jumping off the short retaining wall with her brother as a kid. I just don’t like falling. But somehow skydiving is different. Even though it’s a serious fall, it’s also an incredible one minute of FLIGHT.
I was that kid who always answered the superpower of choice question with “to be able to fly”. I loved riding my bike as a kid & trying to take my hands off the steering wheel for one daring minute to feel the sensation of wide open in the breeze. I also love being on the back of a motorcycle for that flight feeling when you close your eyes.
Free. Open. Limitless.
So, last Christmas I bought my Dad & brother vouchers to go skydiving with me. They both have been wanting to go for ages as well & I thought it would be an epic family outing.
But, when I went to actually book the big day, I discovered that I weighed too much to do it. Not a huge amount over the limit, but enough to make getting into that flight suit a bit of a challenge.
I had a lot of feelings about it. I put off the subject of scheduling the skydive for a long time. I didn’t tell my family or friends that it was because of my weight.
I wasn’t ashamed of my body. After three decades on this planet living life at a variety of sizes, I’ve finally come to love my body just in the past couple of years. I like to be active & I make time to exercise, hike, go for walks, and all that jazz. I eat a combination diet of foods that I know are “good for me” & the ones that make me purr without a care of calories, but no quantity extremes one way or the other. I am just a curvy girl. Even at my smallest, which was a very unhealthy time in my life, I still had some ladies & junk in my trunk.
No, I wasn’t ashamed of my body. I was TICKED that I couldn’t jump out of the dang plane as I am. Even though I understand the physical safety standards of these operations & their equipment, I just resented it & acted in silent defiance for a while by not really trying to lose any weight to be able to go.
But, I have reached a point where my desire to fly has trumped my frustration at the weight limits, so I decided to embrace the need to tame the curves & linked up with Yes Louisville’s new Positive Partner, Baptist Milestone Wellness Center, to get into the flight suit by July.
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