Full of cracks and dry skin? There’s an answer for that, and maybe it isn’t at the spa.
My heels had been dry for a while. Like, wandering-through-the-Sahara-desert-with-no-water-and-your-moisturizer-fell-out-three-miles-back-in-those-enormous-dunes dry.
Maybe it was pregnancy, maybe it was my affinity for Merrell sandals. Who knows. But they’d become parched and I hated it.
I’ll admit that my feet didn’t actually hurt because of it. Some people warn of this. The cracks had grown on my feet where the curves of my soles met the ground, however, and it definitely hadn’t done wonders for my self esteem. I’d changed. I was now one of those crusty old neighborhood ladies. One of those who used to sit outside in a nylon striped lawn chair at the top of the driveway in August and complain that their husbands never listened or came home early enough, with a dry martini in hand and even dryer heels. I’d now joined the ranks, in flip-flops.
But I wasn’t ready to. And so, once I made this revelation, I decided to head to the spa for a pedicure. The first in my lifetime. (Hey, better late than never!)
And there, in the cool quiet reflection of the pedi-room, I encountered a new wonder: the foot scalper.
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Or, scraper. And it was so effective that I bought one of my own and brought it home immediately to use after every shower. (Hang it on the hook and you’ll never forget!)
(If you aren’t familiar with them, a foot scraper is one of those hand-held wooden or plastic devices that has a rough surface on it. You scrape it against your foot and thus rub all the dead cells off, essentially getting rid of that rough, cracked surface by roughing things up even more).
But here’s the thing, ladies. I’ve now tossed my foot exfoliator in the garbage. Why? Because the more I scrubbed, the rougher my heels eventually became. It was as if I was taking cells off, but damaging my feet even more, each time I used it. I was conditioning my feet to growing deeper and deeper crevasses, assaulting my skin.
And so, one day I changed back. I rubbed copious amounts of moisturizer on my feet. I made sure to always wear socks, especially when going to bed. And guess what? After a month or so, softness returned.
I’m still working on some of those cracks, but the future looks friendly.
Want suppleness? Then, soften, is my advice. As the old song says, try a little tenderness. Don’t apply the pressure of a rough stone and expect smooth results.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’m now a convert for life. Socks and moisturizer. And it was the best decision I ever made, (at least for my feet).
