At a dark point in her life, Diane Passey decided she was too heavy to keep living. Follow her journey from grief and despair to coach.

Some of the points discussed are:

• There will be a light at the end of the tunnel. It may be just a tiny glimmer. But it's there. There is always hope.
• You don't have to feel God's hand to have Him there. He's there whether or not you can feel it.
• We are never really as alone as we feel. Diane strongly believes our trials are not just for our own experience and growth, but to help other people through their trials. 
• How important it is to have a survivor mentality vs. a victim mentality
• Satan will do anything he can to destroy your self esteem and make you feel like nothing. I almost took my life because of a number on a scale. It was only a number.
• When you're feeling stuck in that dark place, you have to talk. Talking is the hardest thing to do. Depression is so self centered and inward focused. As soon as you can reach out and look up, you'll be able to work your way back up again.
• There isn't a right or wrong way to cope with mental struggles. Medication, Therapy, Coaching, Exercise, Connection, all are good ways. The challenge can be to find the combinations that work best for you.
• The value of an individual is always more than a number on a scale or a pant or dress size. Numbers are neutral they are not good or bad. It's what your brain, Satan, and society tells you about the numbers that create those feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness.
• Gratitude is very powerful and the fastest way to change the focus of your brain.
• Self care, self care, self care!
• Don't listen to shame. It's a liar. Don't listen to Satan. He's a liar.
• You are never truly alone.

Enjoy the transcript from today's episode:

Diane 0:01 

Just one particular day, I went and stood on the scale to donate plasma and I saw the red lights of this digital scale flash 201 and I couldn't believe I was over 200 pounds. I though, “How could my family love me? How am I even going to face them again?” I was devastated. It's like something inside me just broke.

Tamara Anderson 0:31 

Welcome to Stories of Hope in Hard Times, the show that explores how people endure and even thrive in difficult times, all with God's help. I'm your host, Tamara K. Anderson. Join me on a journey to find inspiring stories of hope and wisdom learned in life's hardest moments.

My next guest has been married for 25 years and has seven children, three in-law children, and three grandchildren with a fourth on the way. She has a passion for teaching and has taught children, teens and adults in religious, personal and professional settings for over two decades. She started out her coaching career helping people through weight loss and emotional eating for eight years. Two and a half years ago, she became certified through the ICF and CCA and now loves helping parents and teens navigate the difficult path of parenting and adolescence. What a chore. I am pleased to present Diane Passie. Diane, are you ready to share your story of hope?

Diane 1:39 

I am so excited. Definitely ready.

Tamara Anderson 1:44 

Yay. This is going to be fun. Diane and I go clear back to high school days almost. She was one of my sister's best friends and so we kind of know each other from back then and then reconnected through Facebook after she shared a very, very personal story which I'm gonna invite her to share today, so I'm excited to have her on.

But before we dive into that story, a little known fact about you is that you have a crested gecko named Creo. And I have to ask about this because we have a dog. And the reason we have a dog is because my children, it's one of their stress relievers, and they will love on this dog and talk to the dog and play with the dog when they are not as apt to talk or be as open to me sometimes because teenagers are tough.

Diane 2:32 

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Tamara Anderson 2:34 

And so my question is: why a gecko?

Diane 2:38 

Okay, so first of all, a crested gecko is the absolute best pet ever. It doesn't stink, it doesn't bark. It's easy to take care of. I have loved lizards and reptiles for a very, very, very long time. And my children found this crested gecko and gave it to me for Christmas. They all went and pooled their money together and gave it to me for Christmas probably three years ago.

And it is the coolest little animal. If haven't seen a picture of a crested gecko you've got to look it up. It's got these little eyelashes and its little fingers are just so delicate and it licks his eyeball like, Oh, cool. Dogs cannot lick their eyeballs. It's actually funny.

I have kept my crested gecko in my office and I had a cute little client who loved my crested gecko and she would come in and hold it during our sessions. She really tried to convince her mom that a crested gecko was the emotional support animal that she needed. They don't qualify legally as an emotional support animal but after she reached some of her goals, then her parents allowed her to pick a little crested gecko. Isn't that a cute story?

So they are easy to take care of. They're beautiful, and just a lot of fun. So I love it. I love that he's mine. And that, like how many adults get to have their own pet? You know, that's true. We kind of inherit pets when our kids have a pet and then they leave the house and then they leave it with you and unfortunately that's how we end up with some of our pets. So I love it. I love that it's just mine. That makes it really fun.

Tamara Anderson 4:38 

That is so fun. Oh my goodness, that that is really cute. I guess I'd never thought that a gecko could be an emotional support animal but, you know, different people bond with different types of animals. So it makes sense that those who would gravitate toward that would be so excited to have that and hold that maybe even as you were saying during a session

Diane 5:00 

Yeah, well, you know, I think anything that distracts your mind from whatever you're going through at the time, that kind of gives you something else to focus on, can serve as an emotional support animal of some type. And so yeah, you know, officially, there's only a certain few animals that can be technically emotional support animals but like you said, there are like different animals that people gravitate towards. I don't know if I’d call a fish…

Tamara Anderson 5:33 

You can't hold a fish No,

Diane 5:34 

No, you can't hold a fish and my fish have never sung to me like they do in Finding Nemo so you know, they don't talk to me and I find them quite boring. But you know, I suppose maybe watching the fish swim in water might be comforting. I don't know. I don't know we can make probably make a case for anything, Tamara.

Tamara Anderson 5:54 

That's probably true. We could, I bet between the two of us, we can.

Diane 5:59 

Between our kids, we probably could, depending on what the kids are wanting at the time.

Tamara Anderson 6:04 

That is very, very true. Oh my goodness. Well, thanks for telling me about that. I never would have pictured a gecko as an emotional support. I've learned something new today. Yes, yes. So let's dive a little bit into your story and why don't you take me back to being a young mother and where you were at that point?

Diane 6:26 

I'm happy to do that, if I can just go back a couple years further, because I think it kind of helps understand how it is that I kind of became, you know, so like, put in the situation that I was.

Diane 6:43 

When I grew up, I felt like my worth was based on how my body looked. Was I skinny, was I overweight, was I not overweight, what was the number on the scale? My first diet that I went on was when I was in fifth grade. And during that time, you know, a lot of girls are hitting puberty and they do get to gain a little bit of weight. You get a little bit curvy, but in my family there's not a lot of curvy people.

I have a teenage son right now who is a size 28 waist and 34 length. That's kind of how the majority of my family was built. I'm tall, they're petite. I'm built with like, just a bigger body set. So I very much felt like I stood out. I'm five nine, so I was much taller than a lot of my friends.

From about that time in life I started becoming very self-conscious of my weight and went on several diets throughout junior high and into high school. Never felt like my body was okay or that I was okay. So fast forward to being a newlywed and my husband loved me. I had had one pregnancy and then and I got pregnant pretty quick after my first. My first two kids are 20 months apart. I think the combination of being pregnant two times close together like that and just my body makeup, I am not somebody who is meant to be super skinny. I had put on some weight.

Weight was not something that, you know, you talked about very much. In fact, when I talk about weight openly, it makes some people really uncomfortable. You can ask boys all the time what they weigh. My teenage boys will tell everybody how much they weigh. But for women, it's kind of like this taboo subject because so many of us base our value and our worth on that number on the scale. Being five nine, I always have weighed more than my younger sister. She is 5’1” if she rounds up. I'm always going to weigh more than her because I just have a bigger build of a body. That was really difficult for me because of the culmination of all those years of having all this shame about my body and having this second little baby.

My daughter was probably about four months old. We were very, very poor. We were going to college and I decided that I wanted to start donating plasma. I didn't work outside my home, and I wanted to do something. See, what a lot of the college students, I was in Provo, Utah, what a lot of them do is you go donate plasma. If you go, like the first time you get 25 bucks, a second time you get like 35 bucks or something. I thought, I'm gonna do all this good. Well, I didn't own a scale and really dreaded getting on a scale anywhere. It just was always a very emotional experience for me. But when you go and donate plasma, they have you step on a scale to get your weight, they prick your finger, and they go through all these motions to make sure that you're healthy and that everything is good.

This particular scale that they had was kind of like a doctor's office scale more like maybe we see nowadays where it was a platform you stepped on and then there was a digital number. It wasn't one that you move the little weights over. Yes, that was kind of more common. So having that digital number was pretty triggering to me, and I went one particular time and I was kind of in a dark place already struggling with depression and some anxiety. I had been for years but we didn't talk about it much back then. It was 25 years ago, we were maybe starting to talk a little more about mental health, but not as openly. Well, even now, we talk about it a lot more openly now, but the conversation obviously needs to be even bigger because it's still so hard for people to talk about.

So already kind of in a depressive state with a lot of shame. This one particular day, I went and stood on the scale to donate plasma and I saw the red lights of this digital scale flash 201 and I couldn't believe I was over 200 pounds, and I couldn't tell you what I was wearing that day if I had my shoes on or off, like, I don't know. I mean, I have been 200 pounds so many times ever since. Like, it's not like that big of a deal to me anymore.

I've had to do a lot of brain work to kind of help me talk through that. It's just a number on this scale. But that was completely devastating that I was over 200 pounds. I didn't know anybody over 200 pounds. I couldn't imagine that. How could I be somebody that was over 200 pounds? How could my family love me? How was I even going to face them again? That's just not what normal people weighed. And the devastation, it's like something inside me just broke. And I sat down as they processed the rest of my paperwork, and I started just really thinking about that shame just being so strong. How was I ever going to be able to keep going and cope and what would happen if I wasn't around anymore?

I had had suicidal thoughts before. I kind of thought in general what would life be like without me. But this time I started really considering specifically what would happen with my daughter what would happen with my son, my husband, he was in school, had a job. I like thinking logically. I started following this path of “Is this the time that I just can go? Is this the time? I don't know how to face this. I don't know what to do. And is this my time? That the world would be better without me.”

I'm a pretty empathetic person. So I knew that my husband would be sad. And I knew that my kids would be sad, but I figured my husband was young enough that he would be able to find another wife, that my kids would be able to grow up in a home with a mom that they wouldn't be ashamed of, that they would be able to not have to be around me anymore. And it seemed so logical. It seemed like why wouldn't I give them an opportunity to have a mom who was okay? A mom who didn't have this heavy shame that was attached to her.

When you're in a college town, and you live in these college apartments there were all these just teeny, teeny women. And I just thought there's so many more women who are better than I am, like, everybody is better than I am. And I'm being unfair to my family to stay around any longer.

And so during this time, it takes a while, this waiting period of time and then you sit down to actually start donating the plasma. I kind of sat and watched as they put the needle in your arm like if you're giving blood and then they kind of spin the blood out and put it back in your arm. They spin the plasma out. I just remember just watching that the TV's were on. I remember seeing TV's on but everything was just a blur as I sat and I planned it out.

I knew because I thought about it before that what would be the most sure and best way for me to take my life. And I knew exactly where the items were that I was going to use. I knew exactly how I could do it. They were easily right there in my apartment. My husband was watching my kids, but he had, I can't remember if it was class or work or something right after. So when I got home, he was going to leave. And I would be able to follow through with my plans. And I thought it through and I thought it through and I had a lot of time to really, to really like sit and logically make sure that everything was going to happen, was this really what I wanted to do and I decided it was, that this was going to be the best thing. The best thing for everyone and I didn't want to have to face this challenge.

More I didn't want to have to feel anymore, that my value was so much connected to this number that I might not ever. What if it never changed? You know? Or what if I stay 200 pounds? Like, that was just, I just couldn't fathom how horrible that would be.

And so I knew that this was the right thing to do. I have found that when I'm in those really dark times when I feel like I'm so, so deep in a hole, it's a very selfish experience. It's when I'm really depressed. I'm thinking about me. I am the center of all of all my thoughts. How are things going to affect me? It's hard to look out. It's like, almost like you kind of close off in a shell.

And you're looking down, your shoulders are slumped. There's an actual posture that we kind of do to close off from everybody. You don't get as much air because your lungs are not filling up with as much air and it kind of perpetuates this feeling of depression because you’re just hunched over. When I was done donating plasma I got in my car and it was a little bit of a drive. But I sat and I thought through everything, step by step, over and over again because I had to make sure. I didn’t want to get out there and get home and not follow through. If I was going to if I was going to do this, I wanted to make sure that I accomplished my goal and that nothing might possibly stop it. I had to make sure that I had a plan for everything.

So I arrived home. I lived on the first floor of our apartment complex, and I walked in, and I didn't want my husband to know how upset I was or anything. I'm sure in the moment he doesn't remember this experience at all. And I'm sure in the moment, if he was aware that I was upset he would have maybe been able to see signs, but I went back into the room that I knew I could start the process and he didn't leave. I needed him to leave because he would stop me and I couldn't have stopped me. And he didn't leave and I don't remember the reason why he didn't leave that day but it was like he just wasn't leaving. And it was like it was normal for him. I don't know if he decided not to go to work or his class was canceled or he just had other things to do.

I was kind of frustrated. I was frustrated that he was thwarting my plan. I'd figured everything out. But I hadn't planned him not leaving, like I had planned all these other things, but not him not leaving. And when I came to realize after a few minutes that he was going to be around and that I wasn't going to be able to follow through. It opened up my heart to I think this pain.

I think in the planning stages and deciding that I was going to take my life and all of that, I wasn't feeling all the emotion. I was obviously in pain because it was that place to start with. But once I realized that I was going to still be around, that's when the real pain from the shame and where I was and what I felt about myself and how low my self-worth was, that's when it really came. And I remember standing in this little hallway, we had cinder block walls and, and just standing there and sobbing and my husband came and just hugged me.

And I just remember sobbing and sobbing and laying on my bed and just crying that I had to keep going. It seemed so much easier to leave than it was to keep going. And I didn't want to deal with keeping going. It was just going to be I ended it, and that was it. I didn't have to worry about it anymore. And I didn't have to think about it anymore and the pain would be gone. And so when that moment came, that's when it got really, really hard. Because then I had to think of what am I going to do now? I have to like I have to keep going. Because I don't know when this is going to work again, I had this all planned out and now it's not working and so now what?

Tamara Anderson 22:12 

And you had to pivot and make a new plan.

Unknown Speaker 22:15 

So I did I had to decide, okay, now what? And at the time I was not very good at opening up like I said, I didn't tell my husband until years later that that had been my plan. And he had said that he had remembered that he had stuck around for something but he couldn't remember what either but I had to decide, okay, well, this is how things are meant to be. If this is what God is telling me is that I'm supposed to still be