As a 6’0” American woman, I fall in the 99.38th percentile of height. (Info courtesy of this calculator).
People see my tallness first. It’s the thing about me that’s most noticeable and conspicuous.
People often look at me with wide eyes and say the obvious, “you’re tall.” (or random dude on the street one day: “your daddy must be biiiiig!”).
People ask me if I play basketball. Or used to model. Or if my (male) partner is shorter than me (he is) and how he feels about that (totally emasculated, obviously).
All of this is only sometimes and sort of annoying (and there’s actually a lot of social privilege in being tall), but my height is definitely a thing. It leads the way and defines how I show up and occupy space in the world.
After the awkward teen years, I got better at standing up straight, not shrinking away, and enjoying the benefits of getting things off the top shelf and being able to see and breathe fresh air in crowds.
But I pretty much always wore flat shoes. Because I thought I couldn’t wear heels (isn’t it awkward and rude to tower over people like that?) or because I thought I wouldn’t be able to walk gracefully (higher center of gravity and all).
But I recently got a couple of pairs that make me about 6’2”, and the experience of wearing them has rocked my world.
These shoes make me feel like I have superpowers, which makes sense – because they do amp something about me (my tallness) that actually is a sort of weird, mutant superpower (statistically speaking).
It makes me wonder: why don’t more of us amp up rather than tone down what makes us weird, different, and special?
The places we don’t fit (maybe literally) are portals into so much beauty, power, and realness.
I’m finding that for me, wearing shoes that make me taller is an act of embracing my bigness – not only my actual physical size, but also the fullness of who I really am.
And there’s something catalyzing and life-affirming about stepping into that simple truth.
It feels good to feel like more of myself.
I’m tall. So I might as well own that shit.
Is there anything about you you've been toning down that wants to be amped up? Where is your invitation to step into your bigness?
Whatever weirdness, uniqueness, or realness is waiting to find deeper expression in and through you, I encourage you to embrace it, own it, and let it take you to truer depths of your vast and beautiful being.