Feet!
Not something you’d expect someone to love. And it is weird. It’s weird because the only feet I like are my own. All other feet are just gross. And people cannot touch my feet, with the rare exception of my husband. I don’t get pedicures, I really don’t want people touching my feet.
I used to hate them. I hated them because they are small (a US women’s 5) and hard to find cute shoes for. I can’t go just anywhere and buy a cute pair of heels. And athletic shoes? I just skip over women’s and go to the kids department. I have a foot deformity as well. In addition to your normal high arch, the ball of my foot protrudes more than what it should. It causes pain in some shoes and I have to be careful picking out running shoes. But over time I’ve grown to appreciate buying athletic shoes in the kid’s section. Have you ever seen the price difference? So much cheaper! The small size is still a pain, but I always get compliments on how cute my feet look in heels. Small feet in cute heels just seem to attract attention.
These shoes I spent an entire day desperately searching for. They were supposed to be worn in Las Vegas when my husband and I went to renew our vows. It took me hours to find them, and I never got to wear them out. I wore them around the house, I even had to run across my house in them because a furchild was misbehaving. That is when I figured out that these would not be practical for wear in Las Vegas with a long wedding dress (how practical are 5 inch heels, even if you are 5′ 1.5″). So they were stuffed in the back of my closet for a time when I could wear them. Even though the size isn’t quite right, I love these shoes! They are the kind of shoes that make me think of how cute my feet can be.
These shoes are another pair that just don’t quite fit right. But they are in honor of a friend that passed away in a car accident. She loved shoes, of any kind. The more unusual the better. I never actually met her in person, but with each set of unique shoes she bought you could see part of her personality. And it wasn’t just heels that she bought. All shoes were loved. And new shoes made her feel beautiful. Shoes and how her feet looked in her shoes were a form of expression, a way to tell the world about her and her feelings. Something I try to keep in mind now when I purchase new shoes.
For just over four years of my life I wore boots every day. My boots had to be special ordered in. The boots I wore to deploy had to be ordered in, and were the smallest boots they had ever ordered. I’m not active duty any more, I actually started blogging when I was on terminal leave. But I miss these boots at times. They are not cute, they stand for a purpose. I felt honored to be part of the small portion of Americans that wore them.
From my days of early walking (I walked at 9 months) to track to marching band, these feet have been through a lot. They took me through 8 hour days in heels working at a bank. They walked miles every day while deployed to Iraq. Now they suffer through soreness and swelling in flipflops while I’m pregnant. I hated my feet when they were just a difficult size to deal with. But now I appreciate where they have taken me. I appreciate the work that they do. I love them for how cute they can look in heels. I love that I can paint my nails crazy colors, put flowers on them, or just leave them naked. They have had broken toes, bruised bones, bruised connective tissue. They have needed crutches or special shoes to repair injury. But just like any other part of my body I have learned to love them for exactly what they are, even with my scraggly pinky toe. 
So there you have it, my transition from something I disliked about my body and why I love them now. Like I said before, please feel free to share something yourself. If you’d like to share a guest post please email me (bybabysrules@gmail.com) or send me a message through the Facebook page.
