Change. Of any word in the English language, it’s likely near the top to instantly invoke anxiety.

I have always considered myself to be a flexible person, but in retrospect, that wasn’t necessarily so. I have gone through severe depression and been at points in my life where the need for change — or for just doing anything at all — was paralyzing. Rather than just make a dent in whatever needed to be done, I would simply freeze up. My mind would keep me up at night, worrying over any number of topics, suggesting the dire things that would happen if I didn’t take action. And my mind wasn’t wrong, either; dire things did happen because of my inaction.

I have, at times in the past, failed miserably to do even the most basic things to change. Rather than deny it, I’ve accepted that there are failures in my past for which I am totally responsible. My weight is one of those things, and I used to go through any number of mental contortions to justify exactly why I was morbidly obese.

Among the things I blamed: genetics, having unwisely dieted over the course of my life, having made bad decisions regarding what I put in my body, being unable to exercise. That’s just a few bullet points on a list that went on endlessly.

I’m not saying that some of these things weren’t a factor in keeping me morbidly obese. They do play a part, but they are not the entirety, and they are not unconquerable, which I believed for decades. What I really feared was simply accepting that I needed to change.

Change, when you’ve lived nearly the entirety of your adult life as morbidly obese, is an extreme challenge. Not only did I need to work through where I’d gone wrong in the past, but how I would move forward, both in finding methods that would work for me personally with my challenges, and mentally evolving to a point where I could accept myself. While there are any number of fine individuals who are able to embrace themselves regardless of excess weight, I was not one of them. Not ever. The more weight I gained, the more self-hatred brought me down.

One of my biggest challenges on this particular journey, in my early days, was simply accepting where I was at that moment. I despised any photos of me, and merely looking in the mirror would trigger disgust. I made the decision, early on, that any progress photos I would take, including my “before” photos, would be ones where I looked my best at that moment; so many before/after photos of those who have lost weight feature a “before” photo of someone in their darkest times, rather than someone in a good moment.

I have stayed true to that, although when I look at those early photos now, I know how unhappy I was, even if no one else sees it.

Overcoming failures and accepting my part in them has been a crucial step forward for me in every imaginable way. Now, the idea of change no longer freezes me in place; rather, I can see potential in change. It’s not just that, though: going through this mental process has also made me recognize when I have willingly born the responsibility of events that were not mine to bear — or bear alone. My own self-doubt induced the willingness to take on what was not mine. I have since released that part of myself and can more easily see when I should step back. That’s nearly as important.

My reflection in the mirror, these days, is not only happier, but I really am a more flexible person. Adaptation isn’t a reason for mental withdrawal and hibernation; it’s a reason to move forward. It’s part of the process, and I am meant to learn from every challenge I face.