Characters Who Inspire You.

Something or someone has inspired me to write each story I have jotted down. For the first novel I wrote (which will never see the light of day) a soap opera I watched inspired that story. Weird, I know, but it did. Years of being a cat lover inspired The Feline Fugitive. My favorite romance inspired A Love Rewritten and so on.

Last week, I talked about my love for MMA, which inspired the hero of my novel that is making the rounds. This week I would like to talk about the heroine of that same story.

Who inspired the creation of Caitlyn?

Well…Me.

I knew sooner or later I would have to write a Caitlyn. I just wasn’t sure when it would be. Then the idea for Extreme Love hit me and I knew Caitlyn would be the perfect heroine for my hard-bodied hero.

Why?

Like me, Caitlyn has spent her entire life struggling to lose weight and finally she succeeds in losing eighty pounds. The next thing she knows, life as she knew it, is no longer the same. The clothes are different, the MEN are different, the way she views herself is different. In certain ways, she feels she is still an overweight woman trapped in a smaller body. And that is where the true struggle begins.

Everyone is different in their reaction, but for me, losing weight has been one of most life-altering changes of my life. Yes, this is above getting married and having twins. Those things changed my life as well, but nowhere have I asked myself, “Who am I?” When I’ve always believed I knew exactly who I was. Then I won a lifetime battle of the bulge and suddenly I’m not exactly the same person anymore. Yes, I was still the fun-loving, loud-laughing person inside. But I would stand in front of a mirror and think who in the heck in this person staring back at me.

That was when I realized that losing the weight was only half the battle and I still had a long way to go. I wasn’t a person who was once small, gained weight and lost it. I was a person who had never been below a size 18 (well maybe when I was 10, LOL). I spent my childhood and my early 20’s overweight. Always shopped in the plus-size clothes (I actually bought clothes even bigger to hide in and Hide is exactly what I did.) I was embarrassed to go to the gym, worried about what people would whisper behind my back. All of these things changed.


Eighty pounds later, I’m accepting the new me, both body and mind. Writing Cailtyn helped me with that. I got to therapeutically release my own feelings and went on my on personal battle. I cried with her as she grew because I was faced with the same obstacles. And through helping her with hers, I was able to help myself.

So in all truth, Caitlyn and I inspired each other. I was inspired to write my after-weight-loss journey and she inspired me to learn to accept myself for the new person I am now as she accepted herself.

Don’t get me wrong, I still HATE bathing suits, I’m equally not as thrilled with the smaller clothes that cover less of my skin. But this weekend, I bought one of those dreaded suits and sucked it up and wore it. And for the first time, I find myself willing to buy those sleeveless shirts. I also accept the fact that men actually do notice me now, much to my husbands chagrin. LOL. Though he is happy for me and thrilled with the new confidence in which I carry myself.

I never believed losing weight could alter my life so much. But it has. I love the person I have become. I still slip up, you can’t live a certain way for a majority of your life and not, but I have learned how to jump back up, brush myself off and get right back to it. I couldn’t do that before.

So thank you Caitlyn. The one character I have written that has inspired MY life more than any other.

Esme

www.esmereldabishop.com