Ten Years Later (5 page)

Amy’s life now is a far cry from her former life. She says the topic of those dark
days almost never comes up. Her parents never bring it up, nor do her sons. Both boys
declined an interview. Amy recalls a rare moment when Marcus referenced their old
life.

“He made a comment like, ‘You know that Terrell and I are old enough now that we will
always protect you.’ Because at ten and seven,” she says, “they couldn’t.”

I ask her if she ever worries about falling back into unhealthy or destructive habits.

“No. I don’t use food as a coping mechanism anymore. I eat because food is what I
need to live. Me working out and me living a healthy lifestyle is like me brushing
my teeth,” she says. “As far as the abuse goes, I think I went through it so I can
show other people what it is. Emotional and mental abuse is control. And when you
think your husband or your boyfriend is being super caring or super sensitive and
he is calling your phone—especially these young girls—they’re calling or texting you
fifteen times a day, or they don’t want you to hang out with your friends because
they’d rather spend time with you, and they don’t want you with your friends and family
because they just want you all to themselves because they love you, that is the first
telltale sign of emotional abuse. They’re trying
to control you. And from there, it escalates. So, I had to go through it to recognize
it, so I can help and coach other people through it.”

Amy travels for speaking engagements to encourage and enlighten women like her, who
have survived domestic abuse.

“I can’t speak to the victims who are buried, because they couldn’t get out of it.
Every time I speak, it’s to the survivors, and I say, ‘I applaud you for finally taking
the leap to get out,’ but to the victims who are still stuck and can’t find a way
out, the thing I tell them is, ‘The unknown is scary, because when you’re in it, you
know what to expect, and you can brace yourself for the abuse. You can make excuses
and try to make things better. But the unknown is scary, because you don’t know what
you’ll do financially. They have excluded you from finding a job and having financial
stability, and isolated you from family and friends, and at this point you feel you
have nothing in your life. The unknown is scary, because if you leave him, what the
F are you gonna have? Nothing. No money, no friends, no family, no job, no security,
no nothin’.’ But I tell them, ‘The unknown is scary, but being in what you are with
him is so much F-ing scarier than the unknown.’ ”

I ask Amy if
she
would have braved the unknown had it not been for a judge ordering her to better
her life.

“No. No, because that judge forced me to say,
It is him or your children
. I went through three years with this guy, back and forth with him every week, every
month. I went through this craziness. It was the abuse, it was the honeymoon period,
it was the abuse again, it was the honeymoon period,” she says. “I left and came back
into that relationship over those three years so many times, and it was never bad
enough.”

We talk about the residue from the bad years and what remains.

“I have a five-inch scar up the center of my stomach from where he stabbed me. I have
scars from when he has burned me with cigarettes, from where he has cut me with a
razor blade. The bruises have healed, but those emotional scars and mental scars affect
me more now, even
ten years later, than any of those other scars ever did,” she says. “Just like the
physical scars will never go away, I will always have them.”

In Amy’s work as a weight-loss consultant, her past serves as a guidebook in her sessions
with obese clients.

“There’s a purpose for everybody. I feel like all that stuff that I had to go through
had a purpose. I coach and counsel people now and I help them get healthy. When you’re
living an unhealthy life, there’s nobody who can tell you there’s a better side, unless
there’s somebody who’s actually been to the other side to show you there’s a way out.
When there’s a client sitting in front of me who’s four hundred pounds, there’s an
underlying reason why. I understand it. I’ve been there,” she says. “Not only do I
have the certificates and the credentials and the book smarts, but I have some clout
to back it up, because I lived it and I breathed it and I dreamed it. I think it gives
me credibility with people because they think,
She understands what I’m going through.”

For Amy, the quickest and most effective way to help people is to get to the heart
of the matter. She feels like she’s earned the right to be frank.

“I ask them, ‘Why are you fat?’ I use the F-word all the time, because I’ve been there.
Until you acknowledge why you are overweight, and why you use food as an addiction,
and why you use food to cope, you will never, ever, ever be cured,” she says, “and
I tell people that. ‘Why are you at three hundred pounds? What’s going on in your
life?’ It’s abuse, it’s a bad marriage, it’s a bad job, it’s bad kids—there’s a thousand
and one reasons why people are three, four, five hundred pounds. It’s not because
they want to be fat and gluttonous, it’s because there’s something super, super messed
up in their lives that is causing them to use food as a coping mechanism, just like
a crackhead, or a drug addict, or an alcoholic would.”

There is a sense of relief for Amy in knowing that there was a reason for the brutal
challenges she faced in her life. From her own darkness, she can now shed light on
a solution for someone else.

“I can’t tell you how many people I’ve had say to me, ‘I need you to save my wife’s
life.’ Or there’s a mom standing there with her four-hundred-pound son and she says,
‘I need you to save my son’s life.’ That’s a lot to ask of somebody. I’m not God,
but those opportunities have been presented to me every day for the last two-plus
years, and I view every one of those opportunities as a gift, because that’s why I’m
here. I can’t promise you that I’m going to save your life, but I can give you every
tool that I’ve ever had to try to help you,” she says, “and that is what I’ll be doing
until the day I die.”

Amy wants to spread her message of getting healthy both on the inside and out. She’s
clearly worked hard, and painstakingly, for overall strength in her own life. She
wants others to see in her journey the power inherent in taking that first step toward
change.

“I think I finally found my purpose. My purpose is to be a motivational speaker and
a life coach. And my life is fucked up,” she says with a laugh, “but I think I’ve
been through enough to be able to understand people’s fucked-up lives. To be able
to motivate and inspire people. I had to go through all of that in order to be able
to do what I do. People can think,
She went through all of that? Then I know that I can do it.
I would go through it all over again if that meant that I could save a person’s life
from domestic violence or obesity. I am now supposed to coach and counsel and mentor
people to finally live the life that they’re supposed to.”

The relief Amy feels about finding her purpose in life resonates in these words from
Mark Twain. I came across them after I met Amy. They made me think of her.

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born, and the day you
find out why.”

Amy Barnes was born on November 10, 1973. It took her years of beatings, losing her
children, and 490 pounds to find out why.

So many of us know people who’ve battled a medical crisis, or we ourselves have endured
one. When WebMD ran its magazine’s annual “Health Heroes” section in 2006, a small
blurb about a young woman named Lindsay Beck packed a big wow factor. Lindsay had
accomplished so much. Never did we think we’d find someone who, at age thirty-five,
already had a fascinating ten-years-later tale to share. But Lindsay does. And oddly
enough, her story has an intimate connection with an NBC colleague whom I know and
love.

When you meet Lindsay Beck for the first time, you feel like you’ve met her before.
She’s got that kind of face. An effortless white smile, fresh skin, a chestnut ponytail,
and blue-green eyes that make you close yours.
Hmm. Did I buy peaches from her at the farmers’ market? Was she in that Ivory soap
commercial?
Lindsay is a thirty-five-year-old who looks twentysomething, burdened by nothing.
Well, ha. What a joke. If the inside of Lindsay’s body could read that description,
it would laugh. It would throw back its formerly ravaged, toxic head and snicker at
the words. A C-shaped scar on Lindsay’s
neck is the trapdoor to her medical past. When you lift it, you see two rival stories:
a double helix of dark and light.

The San Francisco Bay suburbs where Lindsay grew up are now some of the most expensive
zip codes in the country. But back in 1976, when she was born, the dot-coms and their
megamillions were nonexistent. Merrilee and Michael Nohr, Lindsay’s parents, fell
in love in high school, got married, and soon realized they were not meant to be together.
They divorced when Lindsay was four and her brother was just one. Her mother soon
became involved with the father of Lindsay’s best friend from preschool. The dream
that little girls have of becoming sisters with their closest friend came true. Her
new stepdad, Bob, also had a second daughter, so a blended family of six was formed.
Lindsay describes her childhood as “vanilla.”

“Not in a bad way,” she explains. “It was safe, full of sports, school, family, and
a sense of community.”

The divorce did create some challenges every other weekend. That’s when Lindsay and
her brother would stay with their father, who had not yet embarked on his two future
marriages.

“My mom would say, ‘Here’s the toothbrushes, here’s the clothes, you’re in charge,’ ”
recalls Lindsay. “But my dad was a bachelor, so I can remember calling my mom and
saying, ‘Dad has no food; we’re eating ice. But don’t worry, I’m making sure everything’s
okay.’ ”

The bulk of Lindsay’s family life was consistent and loving, filled with swim meets,
soccer games, and trips to the beach. Her mom and dad did not go to college, but Bob
did. He felt strongly that Lindsay should, too. When it was time to choose a school,
Bob guided Lindsay away from the California university where her high school friends
and boyfriend were headed, and toward the University of Colorado in Boulder.

“Bob sat me down and said, ‘The choice is yours, but this is a mistake you’ll regret
the rest of your life. At Boulder, they have study-abroad
programs, you’ll meet all new people, and the opportunities there are enormous. If
you follow your friends, where is that going to get you?’ ”

Lindsay listened and Bob was right. Her roommates were from Minnesota, Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Ohio, and as Lindsay puts it, “that began to break the vanilla.” In
May 1998, she graduated from the University of Colorado in Boulder with a major in
international affairs and a minor in economics. Lindsay knew she was built for a leadership
role in business; she began looking for a job that would prepare her for it. Companies
that would put her through business school were at the top of her list. She chose
the well-established Otis Elevator Company, founded in 1853.

“I was embarrassed to even say I worked at Otis,” she says, smiling, “but I picked
the job because they were recruiting really hard for young people as a dinosaur company
with a lot of older people working there, and they paid so well, and they would send
me away for training for three months and pay for business school. It was all about
young professional development.”

A month out of college, the twenty-one-year-old landed happily on the bottom step
of the corporate escalator, selling for Otis in San Francisco. Lindsay was excited
about the job and enjoyed the months of training. She lived with friends and was preparing
for a marathon in the spring. But a marathon of another sort was about to begin.