Calluses Are Protection—Like Failure

Calluses are a timely topic for Healing Girl Summer, because right now lots of people are in sandals.

In the gym, you also get calluses on your hands. Unless you wear gloves. I’m not a fan of gloves because they make my hands sweaty, so I don’t wear them.

Which means I have calluses. This is a good thing.

I’ve even started letting calluses build up on my feet. Eww, right?

No, not at all! Because what’s the point of having aesthetically pleasing feet if it hurts to walk? Can you believe we’re so stupid to file OFF the protection our bodies naturally create?

I finally stopped my nail lady from taking them off completely. Because it hurts to walk without them! WHY WAS I DOING THIS TO MYSELF?

I don’t care that my feet may not look as salon polished as possible. Who is even paying attention??? Only the sickos people that pay for feet pics. And you know what? Let’s not judge them. They’re creating jobs. But I’m not supplying them with content.

So back to calluses. Why do they form? Repeated friction. The equation is:

friction + repetition + time

If you keep rubbing an area over time, you’ll get a callus. It’s an adaptation, not damage to the skin. IT’S PROTECTION. Your body is protecting you the best way it knows how.

So when you start lifting heavy in the gym, you naturally start forming calluses on your hands. You can file them down so you don’t catch snags from your clothes (or hair). But they’re imperative to your grip.

That’s how I feel about failure. If you never fail, you never develop the calluses that protect you from the hard parts of failure.

The part where that first failure makes you doubt yourself in new ways. When the imposter syndrome rears it’s ugly head and screams “I TOLD YOU SO!” The ones that make you want to crawl into a hole and never come out again.

But if you have protection against that, if you recognize that failure isn’t an end—it’s just a data point—then you don’t freak out.

Imposter syndrome has nothing to grab a hold of here. Because the calluses are a natural barrier between it and me.

And let me tell you: that’s a way more relaxed existence than being the girl who is too scared to fail.

Your hands (and feet!) are tougher than you think. And if you have a hard time believing that, the latest episode of LVMC is waiting for you in your favorite podcast player. It’s called Failure, Fear, and Generational Trauma: Healing that Mess.