Kathleen Casassa:  

Life The more things change in the world today, the more I realize that growing up in a small town like Bowie, Maryland, was really idyllic and I should have appreciated it more. I live in a suburb of the Phoenix-metro area, and have traveled all over the U.S. and most of Europe, not once but twice, and to England three or four times (I lost count), and while all these cities are magnificent, busy, teeming with activity and life, they are also teeming with people who share the same apartment complex for 30 years but not know one another, and who work in the same building for 25 years but never say "hello" to one another as they pass on the crime and violence-plagued streets, their eyes full of fear and uncertainty. For most of my life thus far, I looked back on the years growing up in Bowie as some of the most traumatic of my life because until we moved I was relentlessly bullied, teased and tormented for reasons I didn't understand with one exception: I was different. I was not only different from my classmates, but I was also different, very much so, from my sisters. They were both very thin, very pretty, very popular, very smart, very "everything" I wasn't. Growing up, I often wondered whether I was adopted because I was so unlike them. In terms of being overweight, the bullying and teasing turned into a positive because I got into the aerobics craze, began weight lifting, joined a gym, and at 45 years old, wear a size 6. However, I have learned that no matter whether I was a 10, an 8, a 6 or even a 4, it didn't nor does it make my life any better or different. In fact, I had to spend money on more clothing! The teasing and taunting that made me feel like a failure drove me to succeed, at least in terms of what is deemed "success" by the society in which we live, so that while in college I relentlessly pursued jobs with well-known publications such as the Arizona Republic newspaper. I was one of only two in my graduating class in journalism to have a job right out of college, at a newspaper where, surprisingly enough, I reached a pinnacle of success I believed would elude me for years and years while I worked as hard as I could to meet my goal: newspaper editor. Not realizing I would reach my ...Expand for more