My assignment for The Body Remembers class this week: write five hundred words about an experience of bodily dissociation or alternatively, of heightened bodily awareness, anchoring this body sensory awareness in one body part.
Twenty years ago, I started having an issue with my feet and I could no longer find any shoes or boots that were both comfortable and stylish. I did some research and discovered I was dealing with plantar fasciitis. A little more research revealed a problematic piriformis muscle. I tried all sorts of remedies. I bought shoes of all designs and boots with laces, though I mostly resorted to clunky tennis shoes because they gave me the support I needed.
In therapist-speak, bodily dissociation is a protective strategy against painful memories, thoughts, or feelings, commonly used as a mechanism to cope with physical pain or trauma. Knowing that, I wonder if perhaps dissociating from my feet as a child and teenager led me to ignore them and not give them the care they needed to stay healthy.
Feet give a person agency. As a child, I lived on the farm and did everything with my mother. As a teenager, I wanted to get a job and make money but the folks thought that was foolish. I wouldn’t earn enough to pay for the gas into town and besides, we only had one car. I never had a job until I went away to college, where my lack of experience meant that I ironed shirts for one of my professors.
Could it be that being thwarted in my attempts to stand on my own two feet cut me off from them? My first big breakthrough in healing my relationship with my feet came when Des Moines Osteopathic Clinic offered an hour-and-a-half session showing people how to exercise feet so I signed up and went. In October 2017, I received a handout with twelve exercises. I performed the exercises diligently for three years and now I remember to do several of them when they tell me they need them.
My feet also tell me what they want to wear. I acquiesced when they wanted to wear tennis shoes when we went to the Belin Quartet performing at St. Augustin Catholic Church. In return, they graciously allowed me to wear a pair of cute colorful soft-soled shoes to my sixtieth-class reunion.
