Eat and Love Yourself OGN: You Will Be Great

Every once and a while something creative comes along and completely engulfs you and speaks to who you are. This could be a song, an album, or a book. When I first heard of Eat and Love Yourself, the title alone stuck out as something unique. I read the synopsis and immediately knew I was going to read this book.  I contacted Sweeney about doing an interview for Comic-Watch (Panels of Inspiration: An Interview with Sweeney Boo ) for the book’s release and she graciously obliged. In our emails she mentioned that she would love to hear what I thought about the book. After reading the book I was absolutely moved from reading about the main character Mindy and her struggles with self-acceptance and her eating disorder who is fighting through her day-to-day life, doing her best to have a good work/life balance. Realizing she has an empty fridge, she heads down to the local market and stumbles upon a chocolate bar aptly name Eat and Love Yourself, the store clerks only information is that it is new from a local company.

Mindy loves supporting local businesses so she picks some up. What she didn’t know is that it would take her back in time to various moments in her life. What we see during these moments, is Mindy’s eating disorder and body dysmorphia came into being and how it played its part is defining her and various relationships with her family, friends, and love interests over the years. We see Mindy deal with the ups and downs of her past and combined that with her current issues is a lot for anyone to handle, and Mindy is no different. It was at this moment that I became emotional and it felt that at times I was seeing my past and dealing with the struggles of accepting who I was. I never had an eating disorder, but growing up overweight, reading comics and playing video games, not good at sports I would struggle with my own acceptance for years, even in my adult years and with my career in the military it didn’t stop. Acceptance has always been a struggle. As you follow Mindy through her journey it not only makes you think in terms of how we treat people but how we value acceptance. Mindy is an absolute superhero. As the father of a daughter, and someone that has struggled with body acceptance Eat and Love Yourself presents itself as a guide of how to overcome your struggles and love yourself.