Two Turns from Zero Read online

  Picture your most favorite place to be and imagine what it feels like to be there. I can help you make that vibration of power and contentment a major part of who you are. I say we start today.

  It’s only two turns from zero.

  COME ON!

  PART I

  MOTIVATION

  “No one remembers normal.”

  ONE

  FINDING MY TRUTH

  I’m lucky.

  I had a rough childhood filled with loss, and years of self-doubt, self-medication, and addiction followed—but when I look back on those years, the first thing I tell myself is that, yes, I was really lucky. Because I am lucky. Every experience, tough or tender, ultimately helped me find my purpose.

  People who look at me now can hardly believe that I inhaled meth on and off, sometimes every week, for years; that I drank way too much; and that I hid all this from the students I exhorted to “Be the best you can be every day.” Did I listen to my own advice? Not for a long, long time.

  So no, I wasn’t lucky being an addict, but I was finally fortunate that I met someone who became my wingman and got me, unknowingly at first, through to my sobriety. There’s no way I could have done it on my own. That’s the good part of the story, but first, let’s go back nearly five decades, to where my life started.

  A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE REAL SG STORY . . .

  When I was born, in 1968, I came out of the womb practically swinging a tennis racquet. A natural-born athlete, I was a happy little girl who just wanted to play, play, play, and who never stopped moving until I fell into bed at night (in, not surprisingly, child’s pose on my knees). I’ve always been toned and fit and never had any problems with my weight.

  Unlike my beautiful mom. My parents divorced when I was only three, and the split was incredibly difficult for her. She worked full-time while also taking care of me. She struggled with a lot; one issue in particular was her weight. She jumped from one diet to another because nothing ever worked.

  This made me aware from an early age how excruciating these weight problems were for her, and for many of her friends, and how difficult it was to find the motivation to keep trying to lose weight. I was also aware that people were constantly making fun of her—sometimes directly and other times behind her back—which caused my mom and me both to be filled with shame and hurt.

  Born on the bike, age four

  Mom and Dad

  My mom was so self-conscious about her weight that the only time she would go swimming—which she loved—was at night, when there were only a few people in the pool in our apartment complex. I vividly remember watching her enter the water, surrounded by the inky darkness and the blue-lit silence of the empty pool, and seeing a smile light up her face as she let the water caress her sore legs. My heart ached for her.

  The only benefit of experiencing her pain, however, is the knowledge it gave me for helping my students who are also struggling with weight loss. I have such deep compassion for plus-size people, because I was raised by one. I will always call my mom my hero for never letting her weight affect who she was toward me. She was a very sweet and compassionate mother, full of unconditional love for her “unique” daughter, and for that, I also feel lucky. She taught me the art of the mush—how to be a softy!

  Me and Mom, 2015

  When I was eight years old, my mom nearly died in a car crash in San Jose, California, where we were living at the time, and she ended up in the same hospital where, as it happens, my grandfather was being treated for lung cancer. My father, who was by then happily remarried and busy raising his new family, only saw me every other weekend, which was what their divorce settlement decreed, so I moved in for a short time with the Harveys, my best friend’s family.

  They were a close-knit and devout Mormon family of eight, and some of the most amazing people I can remember from my childhood. They knew I had already been baptized into their faith the year before. That had taken place thanks to one of my friends, Dion, the son of my grandmother’s neighbors up in the mountains of Calaveras County in Northern California.

  I would ride my dirt bike over to Dion’s house, dodging the rattlesnakes on the trails, and hang out there all day. His family was devoutly Mormon, and one Saturday when I rode over there, they told me they wanted to take me to be baptized at Lake Mont Pines. I had no idea what a baptism was, so I asked Dion what it meant, and he said you had to open your heart to God. And I thought, Okay, my heart is open.

  “Don’t be scared,” he added, “because they make you walk into the lake waist deep, but with your clothes still on.” I didn’t understand why he was telling me not to be scared, because getting dunked sounded like a whole lot of fun! On baptism day, we walked in a line, waist deep into the lake as Dion said we would; the water was warm from the summer heat. While we stood there, we heard a short sermon from the Mormon church member who was officiating, and then he asked me to give my life to Jesus. He laid me back and I got dunked in the water, and that was it. I was baptized. The entire experience was pleasant and peaceful. The only hope I had was that, when I was dunked under the water, I could come up and be a different girl. I was different, in fact—I became a lot calmer. I felt like the Mormons had my back—that someone was going to save me if I died, and it was one less thing to have to think about!

  Anyway, the Harveys took me in after my mother’s accident, and prayed with me in the center of a circle every morning and every night, and I truly believe that their faith saved my mom, whose prognosis had been dire. I didn’t really consider myself a true Mormon because my parents weren’t and I wasn’t that interested in churchgoing, but I was grateful for the Harveys’ love and concern. My mom remained in intensive care for twenty-nine days. She was lucky to be alive, and she would live her new life as a slightly handicapped person, unable to do certain things, but she was still alive, and she was still my mom. And this was one of the first times in my life when I felt I was lucky.

  After six weeks with the Harveys, I went to stay with my maternal grandparents, but my grandfather died about a month later. It was brutal to come home one evening from my dad’s to have a lot of people over. I asked, “Where’s Grandpa?” only to have my mom bring me to my room to tell me he was in heaven. I don’t recall anything else from that night—just how much my throat started hurting in the middle, and how my mom’s mascara ran down her cheeks from crying. I stayed with my grandmother for four more years—my mom joined us once she got out of the hospital—and then, when I was twelve, my grandmother, mom, and I moved to a different apartment complex; my grandmother got her own small apartment and my mom and I got one of our own. I still spent time with my dad, every other weekend, and every summer I went to stay with my paternal grandma, Stella.

  Grandma Stella was a real go-getter. She never let having only a sixth-grade education stop her—she became a self-made millionaire. She’s my main hero in life. She taught me that if you put your mind and soul into whatever you want, you can accomplish it, no matter what your origins are.

  She wanted me to succeed more than anyone, and she also had the financial means to help me do whatever schooling I wanted. She always reminded me that when it came to school, she would pay for anything. I guess I’m glad she didn’t know how much I actually hated school in those days. I think that would have broken her heart, because she loved telling me how smart she knew I was.

  Grandma Stella was born in 1919 and had to drop out of school to take care of her sisters and her mom, who had tuberculosis. The family owned a restaurant, so Grandma not only had to look after her siblings and a sick mom, but she had to help run the restaurant, too. When she moved to the mountains of Calaveras County, she went to beauty school and became a hairdresser.

  SG TRUTH I learned from Stella that sometimes you achieve things in life by taking a path that’s different from the one you were originally going down. She never imagined she would sell real estate, and it ended up being a success story during her most tragic time after losing her best friend.
Silver linings for sure, and that was how Stella lived her life.

  Her best friend, Liz, and Liz’s husband were in real estate, and when they decided to open an office, Liz told Stella that they’d bought a two-room cabin—one room for the real estate office and one room for Stella’s beauty parlor. The week before they were supposed to open, Liz was killed in a logging truck accident. Bereft and despairing, Liz’s husband told Stella to get her real estate license, because that was the only way to keep the business going and stay in the house. So that’s what Stella did. She sold real estate for fifty years, and at her peak, she owned ten houses herself.

  Grandma Stella treated me like I was an adult from the time I was a baby. She emphasized that I needed to be successful all on my own. She said I needed to have a career and to use my smarts, and to have a strong work ethic. She taught me how to drive when I was only ten.

  I have to admit that Grandma Stella did drink too much—you could say it’s the family curse. When she’d had too much, I was able to convince her to let me drive us home in our orange Subaru with a stick shift. But I was twelve years old at the time!

  Still, even with two parents who loved me, and with Grandma Stella taking care of me in the summers, for the next four years, I felt so much imbalance in my life at home. My mom was working such incredibly long hours that by the time she got home, she was so exhausted from her day she couldn’t really help me with the schoolwork I struggled with. Some nights, I would end up staying the night at a babysitter’s house, or a best friend’s house, which seemed fine at the time, but looking back, wasn’t so great for my learning process—or getting me past my dislike of schoolwork, period. The only positive thing to come out of this imbalance was that, over the years, it helped me become a highly adaptable person who can fit into new and different environments with ease.

  I’m literally happy staying anywhere, with anyone who is nice. I realize now that these childhood experiences have actually helped me embrace all kinds of people and help them feel at ease with me—which is crucial when I’m asking them to trust me in changing their lives. I know people who, as children, never had to leave their comfort zones—and that of course can be wonderful—but I can tell they have a very hard time adapting to circumstances that seem strange to them, and they have trouble sleeping in places that are unfamiliar to them. I know this seems like a quirky silver lining from my childhood—but nothing rattles me when it comes to sleep. I can literally sleep under a table and wake up refreshed and raring to go.

  It was also during this unsettling period of my childhood that I discovered something that never left me: my own body. As I grew older, I began to feel strong and confident physically, and I became even more connected to my own physicality. What started as a survival technique eventually became my true calling as I learned how to connect the body to the mind.

  “I discovered something that never left me: my own body.”

  This is one of the many reasons I know anyone can become an “athlete.” It’s an attitude as well as a physical characteristic. As soon as you start thinking about your body as your constant, faithful companion, there for you no matter what, it will give you pleasure and reassurance if you treat it right. Athletes compete . . . and this can be your attitude if you want it to be. . . .

  As I hit puberty, I knew I wasn’t like the other girls, and for the first time, I became uncomfortable in my own skin. It was one thing to be a tomboy, and quite another at age twelve to begin to realize that I liked other girls. I was also a teenager in the 1980s, when homophobia was still rampant, especially in my community, and the AIDS epidemic was just starting to take hold. There were signals all over the place that let me know I should keep my sexuality to myself. As early as the fourth grade, I’d been teased unmercifully by boys in my class who called me a dyke. I wasn’t even sure what that meant, so I asked the playground lady, and she told me that a dyke was a girl who loved girls.

  That was confusing to me, and I naively told her, “But I do like girls. And I want to kiss them!”

  “Well,” she replied with a frown, “you are not supposed to like or kiss girls.”

  I looked at her and willed the tears not to fall, and then ran away.

  But what she said stayed with me: It wasn’t right to like girls. So I tried to pretend my feelings away. I would play the role of a “girl,” except I could be a tomboy girl—because being really good at sports was much more acceptable than being gay. Of course, this didn’t get me very far, because I was never not gay. And as I got older, I knew I was a girl who wanted to kiss other girls.

  While I was trying to work that out in my head, I plunged myself into sports, which was my form of exercise when I was a teenager. This gave me a way to be strong in my body, and that was how I created the emotional strength I needed so badly back then. Becoming stronger through sports became a way for me to handle the emotional pain I was experiencing, and team sports kept me going through middle school.

  All eighth graders had electives, but that’s where things got doubly complicated for me. When it was time to do the choosing, the boys got to pick “Boys Sports,” which meant running, basketball, and volleyball. Sounds good, right? But when it came time for the girls to choose, here’s the choice we had: Home Economics. So much for choices, right?

  I guess I was bolder in those days than I wanted to give myself credit for, because I asked to be put with the boys. I could see they were actually being given choices—and I wanted to do those sports. The school said no, but I kept pushing, and when I got my parents to sign off on it, they finally gave in.

  Well, once I was in, nine other girls followed me—no big surprise!—and that was the end of the “Boys Sports” class. Thanks to me, the name “Boys Sports” turned into just “Sports”—which is what it should have been in the first place.

  In high school, sports ruled my life. I had become a superstar athlete. My coaches loved me—so did my teachers, even though they were still frustrated by my endless doodling and daydreaming and chatty ways. I have to admit it: I was a classic flake girl who never turned in homework on time and never studied for any tests. The only thing that got me in the school door every day was team sports, because I just didn’t go for the books and studying part.

  It’s true that sometimes I got benched for a few games during the season because my grades were so bad, but I still refused to do the work. During my sophomore year, my mother and I moved to a different neighborhood, and that meant a different school. The new administration hadn’t yet figured out how lazy I was academically, but they were thrilled to have me playing on their sports teams.

  The big eye-opener for me at that school was that I met a lot of other gay kids, and that helped me to finally come out. These friends supported me, and I fell in love with one of them. Finally, I felt real love.

  That was a really great thing to be introduced to, but along with that came introductions to some very best new friends: alcohol and marijuana.

  It seemed that whenever I’d be hanging out with my friends, we’d drink beer, wine, and those berry-colored wine coolers. I’d already started smoking pot at my old school, but I smoked more frequently at this new school. And getting high every day helped me deal with how much I hated my schoolwork.

  I remember being high when I went to tryouts for junior varsity basketball. Even the possibility that I might jeopardize my placement on the team wasn’t enough to make me stop lighting up in those days. I’ll never forget the day they released the team roster. I scanned up and down the list. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find my name. I practically panicked. What had I done? Had my habit botched the tryout? People around me started laughing at my reaction. The reason I couldn’t find my name on the junior varsity list was that I was already so advanced as a player that I’d been placed on the varsity team. That was unheard of for a freshman!

  That was a real ego boost for a fourteen-year-old, and it felt great, but the other thing it did was make me feel indestructible.
So what was a little pot smoking every day? It didn’t stop me from making the varsity basketball team. I was a star. I was invincible. I was also taking my first steps on a very tough road that nearly led me to ruin. Oh, how I wish I could go back to that fourteen-year-old and tell her what I know today!

  Things got even crazier when I went back to my old high school for my senior year. I wanted to switch because their basketball team was better, and I also had a new girlfriend and wanted to be closer to where she lived. The season was going great, and I was the highest scorer in the league, until suddenly I got a devastating knee injury. I had to have surgery, and I was completely out of commission.

  Around this time, my mom—who was so devoted to our basketball team that she was voted “Mom of the Year”—was going through some really tough times financially, which, understandably, had left her preoccupied and stressed and not able to focus as much on what was going on with me. So with no diploma and no job, I dropped out of high school and followed my girlfriend, who had a volleyball college scholarship at California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo.

  Now what was I going do? I got a job at a summer camp at the local YMCA in San Luis Obispo. Somehow I thought it was easier to just bail on my life and escape into adulthood than it was to finish high school as an eighteen-year-old gay person. All I wanted at that time was peace and employment. The YMCA was a sanctuary that offered love and acceptance—and most of all, a job! I led camps and after-school programs, worked in the actual gym, and taught racquetball. I started playing so much racquetball that I became the 1986 novice champion for central California.