I never really loved my body — until I started getting tattoos. Now, I see it as a work of art.

• Through high school and college, I was obsessed with my body, and not in a good way.
• I was constantly eating less and exercising more in a bid to get thinner — and perhaps love myself more.

Like most women who grew up under the weight of American society's beauty standards, I have long struggled to love how my body looks.

I exercised and dieted obsessively at the end of high school and through college. Some of it was to get healthy and strong, but mostly, to try to look good.

But even at my thinnest — especially at my thinnest — I couldn't help pick apart my appearance. I thought, "My arms could be more toned. If I just got a little more lean, a little more muscular; If I had abs, then surely, I'd be healed."

Of course, losing weight and exercising more wouldn't heal me.

It would take a much deeper psychological shift, an active decision to love myself through my body's ebbs and flows, its different shapes and abilities. Something began to change when I started getting tattoos, dedicated partly to my parents and Montana, where I grew up.

My tattoos taught me to love my body in each of its forms

Each of my tattoos holds a story, a piece in the puzzle of who I am.

The half-sleeve on my left arm pays homage to my family and my home state, with a bluebird to remind me of my dad and his love for the birds, which settle and build their families near our house each summer.

The flowers remind me of my mom, for her grace, beauty, and strength amid tough conditions. I look at my tattoos daily, and each time, I think of the people most important to me.

I have an excerpt from Dylan Thomas' 1951 poem "Do not go gentle into that good night," which I clung to during one of the darkest points in my life, and a damn-near-perfect recreation of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam." I also have a tattoo of an olive branch and lion that I got with my mom in Israel, a sort of mother-daughter bonding experience I'll always be able to reflect on.

As I collected each of these works of art, I became more and more excited to see them in the mirror — and excited to see myself by proxy.

These days, when I look at myself, I see fewer imperfections than I used to. That could be chalked up to growing up and becoming less obsessed with my looks. But I think it can be attributed to how I've adorned myself with things I cherish.

Ultimately, it raises the question: How can I love these things so deeply — renditions of my family, my favorite art pieces, my home — and not love the canvas they're on?