Growing pains are real pain in the ass- or in my case, a pain in the foot. I am currently tenderly treading the break-in stage of new Birkenstocks. The leather has the feel of some soft steal across the top of my already inflamed metatarsals, and the cork about as giving as some freshly set concrete on a hot day. 

I can vividly recall this feeling in my very first pair of Birks, long ago. The “what the heck am I doing to myself” feeling. But something deep within me knew that one day the pain would pay off, and dont you know, in time that leather broke in to feel like a hug around my foot top and the cork a stable base like I’d never known in all my years of footwear. 

So the determination to tread on in my current discomfort is the assurance that I will soon have another pair of remarkably comfortable shoes- but imagine I had never suffered through the growth zone of my first pair. Imagine I had abandoned them after the first couple hours of pinch. Imagine I chose comfort over trying anything new! I’d probably be stuck in some overly squishy, plantar fascitis-inducing style of shoe named after a gator or something!

Life lessons are everywhere- let your shoes speak to you.

Keep growing,

Love, Stephanie