I was a regular kid with a normal family life.
When I was seven months pregnant with my son, my mother and I took a trip to El Salvador, where she's from. Frequent visits with her to see my extended family have taught me how different life can be if you are born into poverty.
More than half of pregnant women in the U.S. are obese, which leads to complications like hypertension, gestational diabetes and high blood pressure.
Yoga has been the best tool for managing stress and life's challenges. Everything from my studies to my father's death was eased by my practice of it.
A lot has changed since the 1980s, when the United States was a country with one of the greatest numbers of people infected with HIV.
Yoga gave me the ability to calm down.
Cholera is even more severe among populations who are immunologically naive.
Sacred spaces can be created in any environment.
I think each woman has her own relationship to beauty.
As a global community, we have to start thinking more seriously about whether there are limits to what our earth can bear and if we're willing to cope with the struggle for limited resources, which only seem to increase as our population does.
As a child, the conversations that I liked to have with my friends - or with anyone, for that matter - were always about religion.
I do everything in moderation.
I grew up Catholic. My mother is from El Salvador, so my family on her side is Roman Catholic. My father is Protestant, and while he was spiritual, he wasn't much of a churchgoing person. I think it's fairly common for families to be brought up in the mother's religion.
With every passing year, I feel more fulfilled.
If we truly value humanity, life, and all that it represents in its highest form, then we need to do all that we can to promote quality of life over the quantity of life.
In many countries, women aren't jubilant when they learn they are pregnant. Quite the opposite - they're terrified.
I have a son and a daughter; I try to teach them equally about balance, gender, and gender equity.
I didn't know anything about running gear when I started out, but after trying a few shoe brands, I've discovered that Brooks are my preferred shoes.
I haven't left modeling completely; I just took a step out, and I now have the rare luxury of picking and choosing how to spend my days.
As a Global Maternal Health Advocate, I get to travel the world quite a bit, meeting individuals and visiting programs with tremendous potential and incredible vision to improve the quality of life for countless others.
