L E O N I E . W I S E

i have been thinking a lot about feet this week. primarily due to a prompt for the first week of unravelling.

i’m not going to go into any detail about the assignment, because it’s not my place to tell you about the content of the course (it’s susannah’s baby and she absolutely deserves all the credit). it’s also partly because i consider this course to be an invitation… as a way that i can also question myself and begin new conversations that bubble up to the surface of my mind along with my responses to the course work. i see unravelling as a light, showing me the way into unexplored parts of me; a set of clues given to me by someone who hasn’t walked my path, yet has trodden one of their own that i can gain insights and wisdom from.

me and these feet have been travelling for a long time.
lifetimes perhaps. it feels like a long time ago, i left a place that was dear to me, part of me fully knowing that i would lose my way and spend a long time finding a pathway that would return me to the place that feels like somewhere i can belong.

i think i have also been runing from myself for [almost as] long as i’ve been travelling…
choosing to pack up & move when life got tricky rather than sticking around to work through my shit. this happens less frequently now as i get to know myself more. i travel now to move towards things like adventure and new friendships, rather than away from places of pain & discomfort. and it’s not that i don’t have these anymore, more that i am learning to sit with myself, dive into and explore those places, make them my friends and journey with them, accepting them as parts of who i am and what makes me whole.

these feet rollerbladed me on my first date with my beloved, and were barefoot as i held the arm of my father and walked along the beach to where i would make him my husband. they have danced me through festivals, helped me find balance in the standing leg series of bikram yoga, carried me to the doorways of both old & new friends, wandered over many pathways (both literally & metaphorically) and borne me through many countries. they were right there with me when i decided that i wanted a life of travel and adventure and not one with a house, a mortgage, two kids, two cars etc. the latter life is valid, it’s just not the one for me.

i find myself most grounded when not wearing any shoes.
that being said, i do love shoes and select them based on how much fun i think we can have together. i have dr martens, funky el naturalistas, a pair of pointy ones that seriously make me feel like getting up to mischief, some cowgirl boots and always, always a pair of funky birkenstock thongs.

i was looking back through the [very few] photos i have taken of my feet and found an unsurprising theme. in most i am barefoot & close to the sea. the ocean is one place i guess i could call home… my spirit home if you will. a place that soothes me, simply by being near her with my toes dug into the sand, or walking through her laughing waves. the sea is where i wash my taonga (treasures), one of which is a bone-carving of a mermaid. we know each other, the sea and i, and i miss her like a treasured friend when we are apart.

my beautiful, mostly uncomplaining feet have carried me to this place where i now sit (barefoot), with words tumbling around in my head craving to be made sense of. these feet are an essential part of the same body as a heart that is finally learning that all of this travelling to faraway & magical places is leading me closer and closer to the home that i will always carry deep within my most present and grounded self.