Therapy In the Form of High Heels

A few years back, The Oprah Winfrey show used to be on air.  At the time it was on channel 4 at 4:00 PM, Monday through Friday. I set my DVR to watch every show religiously either while my kids were napping or after I had gotten back home from work. I miss that show and there were several episodes that stuck with me. But one has always stayed with me. On this one specific episode, Oprah talked about life being difficult and how she coped with bad days. I am embarrassed to say that I cried after hearing about the ONE thing she did to make herself feel better; she put on a pair of high heels! She walked around her house, went about her daily tasks, made important decisions IN HEELS! She said it made her feel empowered for various reasons.

As a woman, I can relate to this in several ways. First and foremost, I am a short lady; I stand at 5’1’’. So yeah, naturally I am drawn to any shoe with a heel that can give me a few extra inches. But it goes deeper than that. It’s symbolic really. It’s about feeling like you are on top of the world; YOUR world. Holding your head up high no matter what it is you are going through.  Keeping it together for your children after a terrible loss. Because no one can truly know what you lost. Taking the high road when you are faced with a difficult decision or test. Keeping your chin up when you are challenged. Putting on a happy front when you are falling apart inside. EATING CROW when you know you have no other choice because you made poor choices, because you know you dug your own grave, but wished someone had more empathy.  

Wow, the high heel thaaang just resonated with me, it truly did! It’s about doing what you have to do in order to power through and survive. In my case lately, it’s about putting on a pair of kicks and sucking it up!

I recently went shoe shopping. My shoe size can be hard to find, but I found a couple pairs that made me smile. And of course my favorite? Heels! I don’t know… Is it the whole Wizard of Oz thing; follow the yellow brick road, Dorothy? There’s no place like home? We aren’t in Kansas City anymore! No matter what, click your ruby red heels and wish…HARD!

Is there really no place like home? Yes, of course there is NO place like Home. In MY home, you can have a bad day, you can click your HIGH heels and regain your perspective. In my home, you can have a bad day and it will be welcomed, validated, and healed. You get to have a human moment. You get to make irrational decisions and completely regret them the next morning like erasing a post on Instagram or Facebook. Regret you ‘unfriended’ those true friends you didn’t really mean to. You are getting my point, right? In my home, you get to be human and cry, but then you get to put on your favorite pair of heels after you went running and are too lazy to remove your workout clothes, while having a glass of wine as I did the other night (hence the pic on this post). You can say I had a bad day. I turned 37 and found three more grey hairs, ha ha! It  definitely was a Wear Your High Heels day :)