How To Feel Comfortable In Your Own Skin

I was in college, feeling overweight and stupid for not being able to lose weight after several diets. (Little did I know that most diets make you gain weight!) But that aside, I was honored when friends asked me to model for their professional artist salon, as they were sick of the popular '70s model-Twiggy look. When one artist said to me, 'We love your mountains and valleys,' I knew I had come home. My body was art!

I realized I loved my body when I started salsa dancing. Once I finally embraced my body and stopped expecting myself to look like I never hit puberty, I started loving my curvy figure. And the fact that my boyfriend is 22 and absolutely loves my figure—belly, hips and all—helps.

I was eight months pregnant with my first child and doing a headstand at my local yoga studio. Up until then, I'd always felt 'not enough' when it came to my body. I wasn't flexible enough or svelte enough or muscular enough. But that quiet moment, upside down, my baby squirming (with pleasure, I think, at the ride), I felt strong and pulsing with life. Ever since then, rather than being 'not good enough,' I appreciate what a fabulous vehicle my body is for my spirit and soul.

After years of battling health problems and lacking self-confidence, at 28, I finally I gave up trying to fix my body and focused all my attention on what I loved most about it. The shift didn't happen overnight, but little by little, I began spending more time appreciating my body, and almost in tandem, both my self-esteem and my health got better. When I love my body for what it is right in this very moment, I give myself the opportunity to be happy and feel fulfilled without having to reach some arbitrary goal.

When I see myself in the mirror at 45 years old with five children to call my own, professional success despite coping with tragedy, a regimen of running three miles and exercising every morning—which gave me muscles in my arms and legs—a shape like a 25-year-old and a mind of an 80-year-old, I think that's pretty awesome!

I learned to love my body about nine months after the birth of my son. I had never been shy, but my stomach was a source of shame. After it was stretched to the limit during pregnancy and left flabbier than before, my stomach was never to be seen again. Then I took a belly dancing class that required me to show my belly, and I came to embrace the woman that I had become. I decided to get a tattoo on each side of my belly to make me love the marks left by the pregnancy. I feel better about my body than I ever have in my life.

I started to love my body at age 32, after my mother passed away on her 53rd birthday. I was at my highest weight (345 pounds) and decided I would not spend the next 20 years waiting for death. I began a journey of healing and weight loss, a slow process that's included gastric lap band surgery and an amazing fitness program. Today, I will try anything new—I am not afraid. I just signed up for burlesque dancing classes and I weigh 285 pounds now (a lot of that is muscle).

In college, I had terrible posture. Hunched over, chest caved in, my pelvis tilted back and my head and neck drooped forward. I had such low self-esteem. Slowly and deliberately, I began to open up in dance class. I watched in awe as my body grew and changed. My head finally became an extension of my spine, instead of glued to my chest. I was becoming a different person—a new person. I knew I would never be the same.

I learned to love myself, including my body, at 38 after the birth of my daughter. I saw the reflection of myself in her and realized I must become the change I wished to see in my daughter, correcting and disciplining myself so that she could reflect my change. I want my daughter to love herself; I must model that healthy self-love for her.

When I finally realized that I was never going to be taller, have bigger boobs and lack cellulite, it was like I finally pulled a ratty, old book off the shelf and opened it up to discover it held the most miraculous story. I started to see my body as the gift it is. I found gratitude in how I can hear and respond to music. For the way I love to dance. For the simple pleasures my body provides me of sight, touch, taste, smell.