Share Your Stories
When my Mom got sick with pancreatic cancer my sister Ann and I found brand new red high heels in her closet. We told Mom that she had to get better so she could get up and dance in those shoes. She smiled, tried , but didn’t get well. Those shoes allowed her to dream and hope. SOLE SISTERS is dedicated to my Mom and all those women who have special relationships with their shoes.
Please share your stories….happy, sad, empowering. I want to create a global community where women connect with their shoe stories, and, like my Mom, feel hope and be uplifted.
- Cynthia Salzman Mondell
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an interesting story. looking forward to your further posts.
Sole to Soul
One thing that we sisters all have in common and that would be, the soles of our feet. We walk many different paths for many different reasons. Our sex gender is a common bond. Most of us become women beginning a point in our life we were once a girl.
As females we are born with all of the eggs that we will ever have in our lifetime and our chemistries’ are as complex as our varied approaches to our journey.
Like in life there is a shoe for everything my favorite shoe is the flat. That is when I feel that I am being real. Flat sandals give me freedom. My black work boots are strong for rain, snow and mud. My heels are for those moments when I need to be, who I think you want me to be. Every shoe has a purpose.
But this story is about my Black Ballet Squared-toe flats. When the path is long and difficult and I feel the need to move freely, I wear these Black flats.
If my shoe’s tough could speak, it would tell the stories of how they have traveled in rooms of happiness, hope, confusion, joy and sometimes sorry.
These shoes nervously tapped the floor as I listen to a young father of 16 years. He was considering dropping out to work at Walmart so that he could support his daughter. He didn’t recognize his talent and forgot his commitment to his education. His wanted to see his daughter again and wanted to give her support.
They kept me strong as tears rolled down my face, knowing his pain.
These worries were our common ground; it was our 35-year age difference that separated us but concerns were the same. My stewardship to my kids as an adult parent and his, the life of a childhood lost with the concerns of a new and unprepared parent.
How complicated for a young person to not live the life of a child while being responsible for potentially 3 children and little knowledge of knowing better. He stayed in school and realized his talent, made a commitment in that moment not to have more babies before he could finish college. I carried his story in my shoes that day, this was also my son’s birthday.
These shoes were there again when I needed them after a long day. They didn’t let me down as they stomped the gym floor to cheer on my 11-year old daughter as she ran down the basketball court. She made her way through the challenge of sports. It was her personal challenge to overcome and to be the best that she could be. She made me proud.
These shoes made me stand strong when my son forgot who he was for a moment and made me challenge him to wake up and see the bigger picture before him. My son is 15 years old, filled with knowledge and hormones. I love him.
They held me up in the hospital room when my father was given a prognosis of his illness and kept me sturdy as I walked down the long hall to get to the car. Those same shoes were on my feet when I had to share only part of that news with my kids who waited to hear how he was doing.
Sometimes these shoes will sit in front of my toilet this being the only time that I have a moment just to sit and do nothing in the quiet.
They’ve heard laughter, loud discussions, encouragement and most of all they have heard my truth.
These are the shoes that I look for when I know that my day will need comfort and will have many steps to travel.
While wearing them this weekend and I rarely wear them on weekends. in the middle of a difficult conversation I glanced down and noticed that I had them on. I was reminded of these reflections for this story.
Like magic the conversation with my partner of 3 years became an open and honest discussion of feelings. We have had talks for a year but saying nothing, the words always seem to get in the way. This new conversation was spoken with a different tone. A fairytale ending is not what I hope for but I’ve learned to start listening with my heart in this relationship.
To think, a simple pair of shoes purchased 4years ago for the comfort of the shoe, which was soft and flexible, cool in style and comfortable to my feet. Turned out to give me comfort to move around in my daily task supporting me to learn and grow.
I would like to retire these shoes only because they have done their job. I will always keep them as a reminder of the journey of which I’ve walked for these past 3 years.
One day they will be replaced with another pair of shoes to travel with new ideas and new experiences.
It will be the same sound that that I listen to which guides and moves me on my path. It will guide me to the next pair of shoes. I will hear them cry out to me and I will know that it is time to make change.
My life experiences gave these shoes a Soul; a simple pair of Black Flats with a Square-toe that look like ballet slippers.
It is my wish for all of the Soul-Sisters who walk in their path to be guided and protected like the soles of their feet that are protect by their shoes.
Our Souls are our common bond it is that which connects us all to each other.
For six years of my life, from 1978 through 1984, I was a handbag designer owning my own small company based in Texas “Flight of the Dragon” and the “Signature Collection: Sharon Lauve”. With a BFA in Art from the University of Texas, and having had a work career in advertising and jewelry design, I headed to Hong Kong and Taiwan where I met many fascinating persons in the fashion design world of handbags and shoes.
In Taiwan I would drink coffee, brandy and smoke cigarettes late into the night at the lower level bar of the Taipei Hilton, where designers from Eiteinne Aigner, Gucci, and other well know fashion houses would consort and share design stories. Local Taiwan manufacturers, who also designed, would gather in the bar to stay in the loop with current trends. Later, those same manufacturers would party upstairs at the disco with accessory representatives of firms from all over the world who handled their products.
At one point during my visit to a warehouse of thousands of shoes belonging to a very chic and well known manufacturer/designer, I gasped at the sight of some very “funky” styles, not at all consistent to the sleek and high fashion styles for which this manufacturer was well know. I will never forget what this manufacturer/designer said to me as I held up a pair of these awful shoes, “Well,…everyone has to start somewhere”. I always held those words close
to my heart whenever being hesitant to produce something new.
I was delighted to have been part of this world for the three years I designed imports in Taiwan and Hong Kong. I later contracted my handbag designs in South Texas at the factory, Collins of Texas, for another three years. There was nothing quite so thrilling as watching a model, on the runway of the former Dallas Apparell Mart, showing off your latest designs. And I was always so happy that I had managed to coordinate with that particular season’s shoes!
As a granddaughter, I felt I knew my grandmother very well. I’d heard her story countless times: Orphaned by age 5, grew up with an unloving step-mother during the depression in rural Mississippi. By age 16, my grandmother graduated high school and had learned to survive on her own. She worked hard, fighting her way tooth and nail through the depression to get into business school where she met my grandfather. Together they built a life, a family, and a business that spanned fifty years.
I’d always admired her temerity, her fierce spirit, her giving nature, and her silly sense of humor especially when it came to her children and grandchild, but never understood her as a woman and what it had been like to walk in her shoes.
In July 1999, she complained of rib pain that she’d had for several weeks, but couldn’t deal with it any longer. She went to the hospital and they admitted her for pain and a low platelet count. As a nurse, I knew what the diagnosis would be and within a day, we officially had it: Leukemia.
Immediately she started chemo, but the disease had already damaged her body so thoroughly, she went into a rapid decline and literally overnight, my very strong grandmother went into heart failure.
As we each spent our time at her bedside, then sitting in the ICU waiting room when things took a turn for the worst, I discovered how many different kinds of shoes my grandmother actually wore. No, I didn’t see them because of her closet, but from her visitors.
First, the bridge club, who wore their casual walking shoes with practical heels and strong primary colors. She
Second, her aerobics instructor talked of how Grandmother never missed a class and had faithfully attended three times a week for years.
Third, the gardening club praised her ability to nurse flowers and vegetables back to health, a skill she mastered as a young woman. These boots with the thick, flat souls and leather skeletons allowed her to move about dirt and mud without slipping. She’d often come in covered in dirt, but smiling from ear to ear because she’d worked hard to make things beautiful.
Fourth, her church shoes. As her pastor talked of Grandmother’s generosity with the community and their church family, I remembered her simple, sweet one inch heels. They weren’t fancy and may be sling backs or even have decoration of a small flower, but they made her feel beautiful. She had a few pairs blue, black, or even a green pair.
Fifth, her practical walking shoes, the ones I’d see her in most frequently. These were her everyday shoes. Tattered and worn, she used them for everything from going to the grocery store, to making care packages for the battered women’s shelter, to simply walking around the neighborhood in the evenings.
Sixth, her house shoes. Simple white slip-on flats with small flowers on them. She’d have a new pair every year or so, but would wear them until the seams became unraveled and the souls had little left, piece of string holding them together.
About a week before she passed, I sat at her bedside, realizing she wouldn’t be with me much longer.
“I’m so sorry.” I sobbed.
She looked at me and took my hand. “For what?”
“For not seeing you as anything but my grandmother.” Shaking my head, I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to see it. “I just didn’t see you as anything else.”
Smiling, she squeezed my fingers. “You weren’t supposed to.”
Even now, ten years later, I find that I still remember her more as my grandmother, but I’ll never forget the incredible woman she was.
I have so many pairs of shoes and so many stories that go along with them, I’ve devoted an entire blog to them. There are some shoes though that remain near and dear to me, and ones whose stories I never forget.
A few years ago I had to go through reconstructive knee surgery and lost all use of one leg for months. I had to rebuild the muscles and learn to move it on my own. I had to go through hours of painful physical therapy to make my leg bend, and I had to wear flats.
I went out and bought flats, because I didn’t have any, and for months hobbled to and from therapy in those horrid flats. When I was able to go back to work I went to DSW to buy a pair of “professional flats” (part of me died on that trip) and I also saw a beautiful pair of patent leather heels that were blood red at the toe and faded into black at the heel. I bought those heels that day with the determination to wear them and not be resigned to flats forever. They were my goal. What I was striving to be strong for, and the promise that this too would pass.
Eventually I became stronger and could walk without the brace or crutches, and then without my leg giving out. Eventually I was able to walk normally, and finally, in my red heels. Since then my heels have only gotten taller, and my leg stronger. Now I’m facing the same surgery on the other side, and while that means I’ll be in flats for a while, it’s my shoes that give me a goal to work towards.
We wouldn’t want those hundreds of heels to go to waste.
From my earliest years, one of my strongest memories is of running around during sticky South Arkansas summers in bare feet. Broken glass, bee stings, “stickers” in the yard—nothing would deter me from shedding my shoes. My mom tried to tempt me with all kinds of cute shoes to no avail. When I was in the sixth grade she bought a pair of gold suede dressy shoes for me that had buckles on them. She got them half price and they were a size 7 and a half. My Mom wears size 8 and a half double narrows so she was being optimistic. To this day I still have short fat feet with a high instep and mostly wear 6 and a half and 7′s. She still has that pair of shoes waiting for me in the box in one of her closets!
I first started paying real attention to what I wore on my feet when I was in the seventh grade. In Junior High, that was the year of Oxblood Weejuns. That was also the year I was put in corrective black & white saddle shoes to stop my feet from “turning to the inside.” Those shoes were the bane of my existence. I was already a geeky tomato stick with thick glasses, a toothy grin, and then…corrective shoes?
Somehow I managed to live through the humiliation and eventually got that first coveted pair of Weejuns.
The next time I remember a shoe obsession was when I was working my first job in TV and fell in love with Stan Smith Addidas (I bought the little boy’s size). Now they carry them in women’s sizes and I still keep a pair of the comfortable leather sneaks with the round toe and green back in my closet.
When I moved to Texas to be the first weather girl in Dallas-Fort Worth, it was the 80′s and I fell in love with cowboy boots. I especially liked the Rocketbuster brand of Retro boots…and to date I own (and wear) about 40 pair!
Now my taste is a bit more sophisticated thanks to Carrie Bradshaw and the Sex and The City crew. I own Manolos, and Jimmy Choos, and Christian Loubitans (sic). Those are the shoes I laughingly refer to as my “from the car door to the restaurant table” shoes. (For comfort I wear UGGS!)
I can recall each decade of my 50-something life via the shoes I wore when…and can easily call to memory several pairs from each time period.
My closet overflows with shoes…I now seem to have an obsession with flip-flops. That collection rivals the cowboy boots.
But for all those hundreds of pairs of shoes, I still remember running barefoot through the dew-slick grass on a South Arkansas summer morning and savor the memory of digging my toes in the rich red clay. I can hear my mom calling for me to “put your shoes on, Jocelyn Kay!”
Shoes may define my decades; barefeet signify my soul.
From my earliest years, one of my strongest memories is of running around during sticky South Arkansas summers in bare feet. Broken glass, bee stings, “stickers” in the yard—nothing would deter me from shedding my shoes. My mom tried to tempt me with all kinds of cute shoes to no avail. When I was in the sixth grade she bought a pair of gold suede dressy shoes for me that had buckles on them. She got them half price and they were a size 7 and a half. My Mom wears size 8 and a half double narrows so she was being optimistic. To this day I still have short fat feet with a high instep and mostly wear 6 and a half and 7′s. She still has that pair of shoes waiting for me in the box in one of her closets!
I first started paying real attention to what I wore on my feet when I was in the seventh grade. In Junior High, that was the year of Oxblood Weejuns. That was also the year I was put in corrective black & white saddle shoes to stop my feet from “turning to the inside.” Those shoes were the bane of my existence. I was already a geeky tomato stick with thick glasses, a toothy grin, and then…corrective shoes?
Somehow I managed to live through the humiliation and eventually got that first coveted pair of Weejuns.
The next time I remember a shoe obsession was when I was working my first job in TV and fell in love with Stan Smith Addidas (I bought the little boy’s size). Now they carry them in women’s sizes and I still keep a pair of the comfortable leather sneaks with the round toe and green back in my closet.
When I moved to Texas to be the first weather girl in Dallas-Fort Worth, it was the 80′s and I fell in love with cowboy boots. I especially liked the Rocketbuster brand of Retro boots…and to date I own (and wear) about 40 pair!
Now my taste is a bit more sophisticated thanks to Carrie Bradshaw and the Sex and The City crew. I own Manolos, and Jimmy Choos, and Christian Loubitans (sic). Those are the shoes I laughingly refer to as my “from the car door to the restaurant table” shoes. (For comfort I wear UGGS!)
I can recall each decade of my 50-something life via the shoes I wore when…and can easily call to memory several pairs from each time period.
My closet overflows with shoes…I now seem to have an obsession with flip-flops. That collection rivals the cowboy boots.
But for all those hundreds of pairs of shoes, I still remember running barefoot through the dew-slick grass on a South Arkansas summer morning and savor the memory of digging my toes in the rich red clay. I can hear my mom calling for me to “put your shoes on!”
Shoes may define my decades; barefeet signify my soul.
My grandmother was one classy lady! She was only 4ft 11, but always matching from head to toe and just the epitome of class, even though she didn’t have much and had a very hard life. She had men to beat on her, literally run her over with a tractor and treat her just down right disrespectful! To have seen my grandmother, you would never believe it because she was also the eptiome of “strength”!
You know the old cliche “until you walk a mile in my shoes”…well, to my grandma having a new pair of shoes was like having no problems because no one had walked in them. When she would wear her heels, she felt taller than her problems, literally and figuratively.
So today, 2 generations later….I carry her legacy! I am a Shoe Lover because of my grandma! I gain strength thru my heels and new shoes. I have an entire room dedicated to my shoes…and when I need to mask my true feelings for the day, I go in my room and pick out a new pair of heels….and walk out my house w/ no problems on my mind and ready to tackle any problem…because in those shoes, I carry my grandmother and she makes me walk taller than anything that could come at me! I am Camille “ShoeDiva” Butler and I am proud and honored to have had a grandmother like Annie Mae Turner Moyler Chance!
Hi, I think your post is very interesting. How can I reach you for more discussing?
To speak on a single pair of “favorite” shoes reduces my life to a single incident. My shoes and the shoes I’ve worn have all represented many stages of maturity and experience. The shoes of my earliest remembrance were my Sears brand sneakers. They were called “The Winner”. Those shoes were my mother’s conscious way of giving me confidence at an early age. Wearing my “Winners” made me feel I could run at top speed and succeed at any task. However, the 70s were a time of steady change. I flowed with the sands of time and changed with it. I began to wear “Candies”. They were my first pair of heels. My mother purchased them in beige so they could be worn with any outfit. With those shoes came an assurance of freedom and liberation. As I entered my teen years during the 80s, the times begged the youth of my neighborhood to cut off the afros; get rid of the tight-rainbow colored threads; and express one’s self in baggy clothing and loosen up. My “Jelly’s” represented my loosey-goosey way of thinking. While I still carried within myself the confidence from being a “Winner” and the freedom of being a “Candie” girl; I progressed into my teenage years with the prospect of knowing that the future was mine. I had the opportunity to become what I wanted to be. Having said that, “Jelly’s” were purchased in many colors and forms: low-heeled, flat, and sandal. It was a very good feeling knowing that I could wear a sneaker, heels or flats and still have the acceptance from a world working towards progressiveness itself. With the increasing demands for change, I began to radicalize my thoughts and ways of behavior. I purchased revolutionary combat boots, knee-high Converse and stilettos. My closet, being filled with these types of shoes allowed me to express many of my emotions on the theatrical stage, behind the video camera and in the recording booth. I became the risqué warrior goddess; fighting for causes of various sorts; protesting for a better and truly liberated world. I realized the type of shoes I purchased were leading me to behave in a certain manner and bottling me into a single train of thought. I also began to become aware that this warrior was not the totality of my being. I refused be reduced to a self whose only shoes in the closet represented a single characteristic or a single experience. Again, I entered another stage of life. I accepted that I am many characters and the shoes I purchased from now on were going to mirror that. I purchased sneakers, cowboy boots, sandals, high heels, low heels, flip-flops, moccasins, rubbers; a variety of shoes for the different moods and experiences of my life. Indeed, the strangest pair of shoes I’ve worn, I admit were those of my father. After he was diagnosed with Cancer, I had to wear his shoes. They were big. They were massive. They were uncomfortable. But what an honor! Since his passing, I’ve worn comfortable shoes. As long as the shoe is comfortable, I wear it. As long as the shoes can assist me into my next phase of life with comfortability, I wear them. My shoes have definitely represented a person, place and/or thing. They were my protection and my liberation. They were made of different materials and substances. They were many different heights and widths, as was the experiences and thoughts of my life. The shoes in my life represent the soul of who I am and who I will become.