By 14, I’d been practicing martial arts for over a year. I’d gone from being the fat kid in school who couldn’t take her eyes off the ground — the one who ate lunch in Mrs. Cronstad’s office every single day because I was so afraid to show my face in the school yard — to being the kid who would walk down the hall and look people in the eye and think, “You can’t talk to me like that — I just broke two boards with my right foot. Bring it.”
In this photo: Jillian getting her blue belt from Sensei Robert David Margolin