For most of my childhood, the reflection in the mirror startled me: in my mind, I was blonde and blue-eyed, an admittedly far-fetched feat in my Jewish-Gipsy family. Then puberty swept in, carrying gifts of fainting-grade menstrual pains and a sizable butt. Some of my friends grew long, elegant limbs, while I developed what my mother called “wrestler’s legs.” My feet were a punishment from god, too broad, the instep too high for any pair of shoes I’d ever tried on. I coveted slender, feminine wrists that poets praised in their lady loves. Who would ever want to kiss a hand like this, I lamented, turning over my peasant paws. I hated my body like some teenagers hate their parents. “You have ruined my life!” I wanted to yell at it.

My first year in college, I developed anorexia. All it took to whip my body into the shape I always wanted was daily marathons and a diet of cucumbers and chewing gum. Finally, I looked great in leggings. A year later, the leggings hung loose, and I had to choose between eating or dying. When I chose living, my body revenged: every crumb I ate took up permanent residence on my thighs. A brief moment of glamor turned into physical and psychological devastation. I was Cinderella in reverse, and no glass slipper to fit my hoof.

“Is there anything you like about your body?” A therapist asked once, after I listed the body parts I wanted returned or exchanged.

After a moment of contemplation, I said, “My ears.”

As I matured, I’ve mastered makeup. I learned to dress for my body. I’ve tamed my hair (don’t quote me on this in the summer). I thought my body and I had a truce.

I thought wrong.

I married. I got pregnant. I wanted a natural birth. My body? Not so much. The baby never turned, despite me hanging upside down for hours, sitting in a hot bathtub with a bag of ice on my big belly, and burning some Chinese herb near my pinkie toes (I was desperate, ok?). Nothing worked, and I was scheduled for a C-section. It felt like a violation. The recovery was hell. Breastfeeding was worse.

With my second baby’s birth, I hired two midwives and a doula to birth at home. It was my body, damnit, and I was going to have control over it. After 24 hours of labor, I was rushed to the emergency room for a C-section. The second recovery was worse than the first, with a bonus post-op infection. And with the newborn weighing over 10 pounds, my body introduced me to a fresh source of suffering––my back.

I couldn’t sit or stand for long before pain stabbed me in the back, radiating down my legs and reaching up to my neck. After waking in the morning, it took me 40 minutes to stand up straight. A chiropractor who adjusted me said, “I keep fixing you, but you keep breaking in the same places. You need to build up muscle to hold your spine. You have to practice yoga.”

I wasn’t thrilled. Yoga seemed too slow, something old people did when they couldn’t run on treadmills anymore. I lifted weights and climbed an elliptical. But my back was killing me, and so I followed the chiropractor’s advice.

I don’t know what kind of yoga I had imagined, or what kind I signed up for, but within the first five minutes of the class I realized the lithe old ladies had me beat. My shoulders burned and my legs shook in Downward-facing Dog, as the teacher recommended to take a brief rest in the pose.

A brief rest? I would have snorted if I wasn’t so out of breath.

I peeked under my armpit. To my right, a grandma half-closed her eyes, still as a statue in the pose.  Witchcraft, I thought.

“Exhale and fold.”

People buried their faces in their knees as though they were long-lost relatives. My hands barely reached my thighs, and my body warned me that I’d regret trying anything funny. How was it all these people could do it, and I couldn’t? My body was failing me, again!

Well then. I clenched my jaw (a habit that had earned me a lifetime subscription to a nightguard). Channeling Clint Eastwood, I thought, “Are you feeling lucky, punk?” Yoga was our new battleground, my body and mine.

I plunged into yoga, going to three, four classes per week. It didn’t look difficult, why was it so difficult for my body? I would mold it and pound it into every asana, I vowed. But my body had found an unexpected ally.

The yoga teacher adjusted me into easier modifications, handing me props that I hadn’t thought I needed. “Stay at your edge,” she’d whisper before moving on. “Your body is talking to you. Listen.” Over time, weird things she said began making sense. So did my body.

One day, I discovered I didn’t hate my feet anymore. Wide, with a high instep, they helped me balance. They were hard-working feet, not some lazy couch-lounging feet, not stuck up office feet. They were survivors, fighters like me. You go, feet!

Then, realized I’d stopped hating my legs. They were so strong I could crouch on either one, unassisted, and get back up. I could rely on them. Respect, legs!

And here’s the weird part. I even came to like my butt. I don’t know why––it didn’t help with yoga all that much. One day I tried on stretchy jeans and looked in the mirror at my butt. Oh, it was hard to miss. To hell with it! I bought the jeans. And then I wore them, and felt great.

With my third pregnancy, I practiced yoga until the day before my scheduled C-section. I wasn’t going to force my body to do something it didn’t want to do. I couldn’t believe the difference in post-op recovery: within hours, I was walking. Two months later, I was back to my yoga practice.

Yoga changed both me and my body. I became more patient and accepting; it became more limber and defined. Our relationship has changed, too. I like to think of it as partnership.

“Mmm, this dark chocolate is delicious,” I think.

“Would you like a migraine with that?” my body inquires.

Before, I would say, “You wouldn’t dare!” Standing up to tyranny takes sacrifice, especially when the tyranny revolves around chocolate.

Now, I put the chocolate down. A bad peace is better than a good war, as my great-grandmother used to say.

“I’m tired,” my body says.

“But I want to stay up and read.”

“It’s up to you,” my body shrugs, “but it will cost you: a UTI or a yeast infection, I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

“What? Why?”

“Because,” my Ph.D. assists my body with the answer, “when you sleep less than eight hours, your immune system crashes.”

“How about seven?” I bargain.

“For seven, you get a head cold.”

“Bite me,” I used to say like a rebel, and suffer the consequences like a champ. Now, I turn off the lights like a good girl. It’s almost as though my body knows what’s good for it.

“What’s this new wrinkle? Huh? What’s this wrinkle, I ask?” I yell at my sleepy body in the morning, squinting at the horror in the mirror.

“Calm down,” it grouches. “What did you expect? You are not 20 anymore, or 30. Brush your teeth, you don’t want a root canal, do you?”

A root canal is the kind of external threat that quells internal quibbles like an army of Orcs in The Hobbit unites dwarves, elves and humans. I brush my teeth, my precious.

For decades, I tried to shape myself into some “perfect” form, searching strangers’ eyes for what I couldn’t find in my heart: acceptance, love, admiration. I have missed out on cheese and dessert, shorts and flip-flops, and good sex.

But you know what? I am fitter than ever. I have leggings, and I am not afraid to rock them. I may not be everyone’s idea of beauty, and that’s fine. “I’m not a silver dollar for everyone to like me,” my great-grandmother used to say. A tiny bird of a woman, she’d survived pogroms, World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, a civil war, and World War II. Her skin-and bones body died at 98, but the seeds of her wisdom sprouted in me. “Better late than never,” as she used to say.