ITERATIONS—ON SADDLE SHOES AND FITTING IN

For an almost 13-year-old Midwest girl, the prospect of moving 1500 miles to California was an emotionally overwhelming ordeal. Mostly in a good way.

From the time I can remember, Jim and Jackie were setting off on another grand adventure, every four years, clocked to predictability like the coming and going of seasons, like sticky hot Kansas summer days.

Before my first training bra we had moved from Chicago to Dallas, Dallas to Kansas, then Kansas to California. Curious how it isn’t the uprooting I remember as this overwhelming eagerness for every single new thing.

Not wanting her little girl to be burdened with the daunting endeavor of “fitting in,” my mama gifted me with this curious non-conforming way of interpreting every situation, of walking through each day.

Which brings me to black and white saddle shoes—

We purchased my coveted oxfords in a Kansas City boutique just before moving away. To my mama, they were the fashionable choice, “You will set the trend,” I can still hear her say.

To the boys and girls in my new California school, I was anything but. I was relentlessly teased and avoided. Not a day would go by that would-be friends fixated not on my eager smile but my dissident feet. “Rise above it,” advised the woman I most admired. And I listened like my life depended on it because in so many ways it did.

I wonder if I ever thought to tell her that her survival technique has become my superpower—

How I have learned to see extraordinary beauty in the unexpected.

How I have become adept at reviving outcast things.

How I am aware that how we posture is commentary on what we carry inside.

How I shepherd others through the process of setting themselves free.

Several years ago, my best friend in California [the one who grew to love me despite my unconventional style] was preparing her three young daughters for their own momentous move that would inevitably alter the trajectory of their lives.

Before their departure I gave them each an elaborately wrapped little shoe box.

Inside were nestled the tangible lessons of my own early years, paired in sizes 3, 5, and 8.

“When you’re feeling awkward and unwelcome, walk it out,” I said.

“When you don’t fit in, consider that the gift.”

To be a part of something and still stand firm.

To know who you are without seeing it reflected in someone else.

To hold your head high in the midst of judgement, ridicule, disdain.

To lean in to the uncomfortable while welcoming the unfamiliar in.

To remember who you are when life takes unexpected turns.

Life is an iterative process. It seems there is very little we leave completely behind.

Most of who I am [what I am drawn to and what I value] is an echo of something born, then born again. Fragments of things once difficult and challenging have become, in unimaginable ways, the most captivating pieces of every season of my life.

Today, my friend sent me a picture of her now 30-year-old daughter wearing her saddle shoes on the first day of third grade.  If you are wondering—

She witnesses to women who have been trafficked and abused.

She shines a light on what is beautiful…and what is not.

And stands firm in her belief despite what others think.

I wonder of the woman I would be—through peer pressure,  heartache, cancer—if my mama hadn’t insisted that my hardest lessons play out in black and white. Like saddle shoes.

NOTE: I still wear oxfords and have not wandered far from the classic saddle shoe-inspired vibe. I think it’s something about carrying the ones that came before with me… every step of the way.