Elizabeth Dyer shares about how a pair of clogs led her to a new viewpoint on parenting.
I live in Berkeley now. Which means I no longer wear shoes. I wear clogs. Not Danskos or Crocs. We’re talking stiff leather nailed to a block of wood — footwear that screams earth mother and whispers unresolved pelvic floor trauma. I bought my first pair ironically. I thought I was observing the culture, anthropologically. The way one studies doomsday preppers or religious sects.
But then it happened: I joined. Now I have ten pairs. One for preschool drop-off. One for Berkeley Bowl. One for charging my Tesla while mouthing apologies to the cyclists… My child’s preschool is a co-op so progressive the toddlers are often naked and the parents always on snack duty. Here, my clogs lend structure to the chaos. Like, yes, I forgot pajama day. But look at my footwear. I contain multitudes (And plantar fasciitis).
I’m finishing a doctorate in psychology, where I spend a lot of time thinking about what gets hidden, especially in mothers. And I think beneath all that restraint, there’s something else. Psychoanalysts call it jouissance.
It isn’t joy or comfort. Its pleasure pushed past the point of bearable. The exquisite pain of loving your kids so much it nearly splits you open. Of witnessing their smallness, their radiance, their trust — and knowing you can’t fully protect them. That pain isn’t poetic. It’s structural.