Even while I was achieving, this illness kept me from being satisfied. People would say, “My God, Mary Jo, you’ve got this wonderful husband, you’re attractive, you’re making a good salary, why aren’t you happy?” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be happy; I just couldn’t, because the chemicals weren’t going to the right place. That was a cause for shame.
There was a tremendous cosmetic burden of being a broadcast journalist. I wasn’t ugly, but I wasn’t perfect looking. Today most of the people hired have model-perfect looks. I remember being so proud of becoming a broadcast journalist and one day while covering a fire I heard one police officer yelling to another a few feet away, “Yeah, Joe, you’re right, she does have fat legs!” I was a journalist, but that was allowed to matter. I was bright and I worked around the clock. The number one pressure for me was getting the story right, because the worst thing a journalist can do is get the facts wrong.
