Susan Thompson

I was born on June 29, 1974, in San Francisco, California. The hippie era was just winding down, and my early years were filled with love and openness, but not much structure. In grade school, I attended the Miss Katherine Delmar Burke School and excelled academically. I filled my time with math, puzzles, basketball, acting, and Prince music, but deep down I lived for the summers, when I went away to Camp Tawonga just outside of Yosemite Valley. My spirit soared there, as I learned how to backpack, white-water raft, rock climb…and kiss boys.

I was a normal-sized kid (maybe a little chunky) who grew into an overweight teenager. By the age of twelve, I had started to diet, and at the age of fourteen, I found the most effective diet ever—drugs. The next six years were a blur of intoxication, dropping out of high school, and multiple failed attempts to pull it all together.