💄🔮💎 --> TOOL$ OF THA TRADITION.
[ tha disgustingly dope agenda. part 3. ]
“At bottom is the best soil to sow and grow something new again. In that sense, hitting rock bottom, while extremely painful, is also the sowing ground.”
—Clarissa Pinkola Estés Ph.D.
[ women who run with the wolves. book. ]
[ focusing on tha foundation. ]
Having been equipped with the wisdom from “THA $HAMAN’$ $OLITUDE” — it is now time to utilize the currency and gems that were uncovered during your journey within.
In anticipation of our “VIRTUAL VI$ION QUE$T,” you must not only gather the tools for the journey ahead, but also the knowledge and wisdom needed to use those tools with the upmost efficiency, which brings me to the story of ‘The Red Shoes’ — my favorite tale from my favorite book — “Women Who Run with Wolves”; a tale that has always resonated with my inner child and my background in Fashion Design.
This is a story of the ‘Root Chakra’ — in addition to the foundation of one’s confidence, self-worth, security, stability and freedom. A matter of taking the scattered gems of your journey and building a foundation of your own making as it compares to the expectations that are given to you from societal propaganda and what the outside world tells you to value; what’s deemed as an acceptable life.
In this tale, the story begins with:
“……a poor motherless child who had no shoes. She saved cloth scraps wherever she found them and over time sewed herself a pair of red shoes. They were crude but she loved them. They made her feel rich even though her days were spent gathering food in the thorny woods until far past dark……for even with all the riches surrounding her, the humble red shoes made by her own hands had given her the greatest happiness.”
I’ve been sewing and designing clothing for more than half of my life; even before my mother got me sewing lessons for my 13th birthday. Now that I think about it, I may have taken to sewing as a way to connect with my mother — who studied Fashion Design in college — and whom I never really had a solid emotional connection with since she worked a lot and never had the patience to teach me how to sew.
Also looking back on it, I learned so many life lessons and how to solve my own problems in my own creative way as I learned the craft of sewing. I learned patience and persistence towards my goals, confidence in my abilities and taking pride in my work. The main lesson I learned was that my immense creativity and skills in design were greater than I had estimated — or that others had estimated for me, in all areas of life.
[ tha tool of discernment. ]
As Black Women, we’ve been taught that we have to struggle in order to get money, play the masculine role in order to thrive economically and sacrifice our feminine divinity in order to make it just above broke; coming from generations of being mis-educated on the truth and frequency of money — as well as the fact that it is just a tool — truth is, the authentic currency lies within us and is only determined by us.
As the story progresses and the poor girl is approached by an old wealthy woman in a gilded carriage, the lesson of discernment approaches as well.
The poor girl then makes the choice to go home with the old woman, allowing her to “treat her as her own little daughter.”
As she’s initiated into her new home the old woman gives the girl a bath and new clothes — having burned the girl’s old clothing and red shoes that she deemed “ridiculous”; symbolically cleansing the girl of her intuition and the creative spark she’d honed throughout her journey.
The perfect illustration of sacrificing your self-worth and unique identity for outdated external expectations.
Because I believe that the clothing we choose to wear is not only our shelter from the elements — but a language that communicates how we value ourselves — this also represents how the girl’s unique voice and perspective on life is snatched from her as:
“she was then made to sit still all the time, to walk without skipping, and to not speak unless spoken to, but a secret fire began to burn in her heart and she continued to yearn for her old red shoes more than anything.”
[ tha hungry heart. ]
A life lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way is to never go grocery shopping or leave the house while hungry — it makes you more vulnerable to the elements of illusion, deception and impulse; much like how the girl is starving for the fulfillment that her handmade red shoes brought her.
Once the girl stumbled upon the shiny red shoes though,
“her hungry heart, picked the red shoes.”
These red shoes may have reminded her of the pair that she created, but these new red shoes were simply a reminder of the joy and happiness she got from the shoes she crafted.
The trickery and desperation get real and by the end of the tale the girl has to have her feet chopped off, with an axe, in order to save her from the result of her desperation.
“And so she cried to him that her life was worth nothing and that he should cut off her feet. So he cut off her feet. And the red shoes with the feet in them kept on dancing through the forest and over the hill and out of sight……now the girl was a poor cripple, and had to find her own way in the world as a servant to others, and she never, ever again wished for red shoes.”
The foundation of her freedom and ability to craft a life she truly enjoyed, quit literally, cut from right beneath her.
Instead of relying on her tools of creativity and ingenuity, the poor girl ends up seeking her value outside of herself which only ends in a traumatic event that obliterates her perception of her own value for good.
Does this story sound familiar to you? Can you relate? Do you know someone who may relate?
CITED:
Etés, C. P. (1992). In Women Who Run With the Wives: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (pp. 232–275). story, The Random House Publishing Group.