I was always the “fat girlfriend.” The one guys settled for.The one they dated until someone better—someone thinner—came along. Until my boyfriend dumped me for my best friend. And then, six months later, on the very day they were supposed to get married, his mother called me and said, “You do NOT want to miss this.” That’s when I finally learned just how wrong he had been about me. My name is Larkin, I’m 28, and I’ve been the big girl my whole life. Not the cute, curvy, Instagram-thick kind

If you looked at my life on paper, it would read like a long, heartbreaking list of losses. I wake up every day at 4:30 a.m. in a house that feels too empty, too silent, too big for just me. The walls echo with memories that sting. The third bedroom down the hall still smells faintly of strawberry shampoo and childhood innocence. If you looked at my life on paper, it would read like a long, heartbreaking list of losses. I can’t open the bedroom door without feeling like someone

The week I was supposed to become a mom, my husband started acting strange. Not nervous-strange. Not first-time-dad scared. Strange like smiling at his phone. Strange like whispering and tilting the screen away when I walked by. Strange like making plans without me and telling me, over and over, that everything was “handled.” I didn’t understand what that meant. I didn’t realize until I went into labor that I wasn’t the only one about to give birth to something life-changing. Call me Sloane. I was 31. My husband, Beckett, was