Losing The Weight Of The Past
As always, CBS News Correspondent Steve Hartman used the random toss of a dart to find the latest subject in his ongoing journey to prove that Everybody Has A Story. What he found this time around was an ordinary woman from Georgia attempting to move ahead with her life, while trying to outrun the demons of her past.
Most people come to Waycross, Ga., to visit the great Okefenokee Swamp. But if there’s one thing Hartman has learned in his travels, it’s that no sightseeing tour can compare the adventure that always awaits him inside the typical American family.
This is the story of Wanda Petersen, a 47-year-old working mom who, by night, fixes the meals, and by day, explains exactly where they go.
Petersen, a former nurse, now teaches anatomy at the local high school. This week, they’re studying digestion.
But the story Hartman discovered, as always by chance, is not how much she knows about diet, but how hard she struggles to stick to one.
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"Tonight at supper, I had one biscuit, and I could have had four. And that’s a day-to-day struggle for me that’s a meal-to-meal kind of thing," says Petersen.
"Yes, she has an eating disorder, because she uses food to comfort herself," adds her counselor, Lynn Brueske, whom Petersen started seeing a few weeks ago. As a result of these sessions, Petersen now thinks she has uncovered the root of her lifelong weight problem.
"The theory is that you overeat to fill an emotional hole," says Petersen, adding the hole she’s been trying to fill is at least 40 years deep.
Petersen says her father was an alcoholic with an explosive temper. Just breathe the wrong way, and he’d put his .38 to your head and threaten to shoot. That's why Peterson spent so many hours either hiding in her closet or the nearby woods, waiting for her father to pass out.
"My daily prayer was that he die," she admits.
Earnestine Pittman, Petersen’s mom, says her husband died Sept. 14, 1988, "And God forgive me for saying this...but since their dad’s died, I’ve had more peace of mind."
Pittman stayed with him 38 years, raising four kids in a home she now admits was in no way suitable for children.
"What I look for in the therapy is not to be thin, although I would very much like to be thin, because that’s how everybody is 'supposed to be.' Wht I really want to be is to be free. I just want to be free from that," says Petersen.
And the good news is, Petersen says it’s working. It is certainly a major accomplishment. Because, as you know, the hardest weight to lose, is what we carry on our shoulders.
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