I got the travel bug fairly early. I was 12 when my mother told my brother and me she was sending us to Kenya to live with my aunt for two years. My mom is from Mombasa and wanted us to experience our Kenyan heritage and culture as first-generation African Americans.
My mother didn’t take the trip with us, so we were unaccompanied minors traveling with a flight attendant. It felt so grown-up to sit in large first-class seats, enjoy all the soda we wanted, and eat first-class food.
That trip and the experience in Kenya put an insatiable love of travel in my soul.
As an adult, I could travel as much as I wanted to. My first adult trip was as a 19-year-old traveling from Milwaukee (where I was born and raised) to New York. What should have been an exciting experience turned into my worst nightmare.
I got on the flight and sat in my seat. As I tried to put the seat belt on, it didn’t fit across my body. I tried to contort my body, shift my position in the seat, and suck in my belly to the extreme, but the seat belt would not click closed.
As the flight attendant passed, I whispered and asked if I could get a seat belt extender. She didn’t hear me, so I repeated my request. She responded in what felt like amplified theater mode,
I Weigh 300 Pounds & Travel Taught Me To Accept Myself
