On Beauty: A Workout Wednesday Post

I once had a person tell me that looking at my feet made him want to vomit. It’s perhaps a fair assessment as I was born with very deformed feet. I can’t point my toes, stand on one foot, or do ankle circles, I don’t have the correct number of toes, and I need to shop in kids shoes for a size 13 and a 1, because they are not even the same size.

I had a bunch of surgeries when I was little to make them functional with wheelchairs and crutches and braces and odd shoes. I had casts and more casts and physical therapy sessions aplenty all before I turned five years old.

To my parents credit I don’t remember feeling weird or different as my energies were channeled into sports where my arms could be power (long-distance swimming), and my time was spent developing a penchant for reading and a talent for writing. And my feet have carried me down the aisle at one wedding and numerous graduations, into the delivery room and through two pregnancies, and even through a half marathon.

Today for my workout I decided to go for a run on a late summer morning that was teasing us with fall temperatures. I took pictures, as I often do, of things that I think are beautiful and I listened to music that fed my soul.

I was only going to do a mile. But the weather had me continuing on down the trail until I realized I had run 1.5 miles. I decided to go for 2. Then a great song came on and my watch said 2.2 and, although tired, I knew it was going to be three. I’m a slow runner but it brought me such joy to move my body this morning in great weather, beautiful surroundings, and good music in my ears.

I made it 3.1 miles. I bent down, hands on knees, exhausted, in my driveway and saw my feet and smiled. They can’t be called beautiful in the traditional sense, but they had carried me through more than I thought I could do. That, I realized, is a different kind of beauty.

Moving a body-any kind of body-with joy is beautiful and is a mental health elixir. Our bodies are beautiful in how they carry our souls for as long as they are able. We demand so much from them, and spend a lot of time thinking they are less than optimal, but they still carry us and start to dance when that particular song plays, or beg to run outside, or seemingly on their own, jump to hug the ones we love the most.

There is beauty all around us, if we know how to see it. And there is a joy in moving our bodies that reflects the beauty of the soul. My feet are beautiful, and yours are too. Let’s move them with the joy they deserve today!