I am someone who reads rooms for a living. Not in a mystical way. In the way that anyone who has spent enough time presenting to people learns to do. You watch the face of the person in the third row who crossed their arms twenty minutes ago. You notice when someone stops taking notes. You feel the energy shift in a way you cannot always name but you know, and you adjust. You slow down, you find a different entry point, you make eye contact with the person who looks lost and

Having been a chubby child with people pulling my cheeks at every turn and telling me how much they loved them (I hated the cheek pulling by the way, it hurt so much), I grew up watching my weight like a hawk. If I ever dared to stop checking the scale for a while, a family event would roll around and some aunt or cousin would comment on how I had “added weight” and needed to watch it. So the scale became a quiet companion in my life. When I reflect on those years now, I have