pre teen in a sparkly pair of doc marten boots.
It’s been said that you are 100% who you are at your core by the time you're ten years old.
At ten years old, I was falling in love with the role and joys of ‘best friend’, eyeing boys who could hold intelligent conversations, reading stacks of books, writing lists, ideas, and story ideas on scraps of paper, and beginning to develop my love for films, music and playing an instrument.
It is an honour to be a parent of a ten-year-old, to hold space for their interests, whims and desires, and to learn that, in doing so, I am healing parts of myself that went unexplored.
Waiting in line for a Bryan Adams Concert : Roll with the Punches Tour
Doc Martens were not on my radar as a shoe option for myself in the ‘90s and early 2000s. Despite being popular and worn by all the cool kids in the grades around me, I was often relegated to hand-me-down shoes or directed toward more practical, feminine options. I eyed the girls who walked with confidence and recognized the quiet power these boots gave them. I even remember studying my young uncle’s Doc Marten shoes when he came in from university classes. The way he pulled them off without untying them, and the bold stitching they had.
Fast forward almost three decades, and the ten-year-old I am raising, who points out Doc Martens on our outings.
“I love these.” I would love to have them someday.”
Through her eyes, I realize how much I have resisted this option for myself. I had let myself believe that Doc Martens were a shoe for the edgy, grunge emo youth I never had.
Ridiculous.
When we sat down to order her first pair, I decided to pull an ace out of my sleeve and reclaim the ’90s pre-teen youth I might have had if being edgy and cool were welcome in the house I grew up in, and get my own pair alongside hers.
Together, we put on our boots and walked into her first rock concert, where we learned even more about her interests, passions, and her way of processing the world around her.
On the outside, these are just boots.
On the inside, for me, these are steps I am learning to take, one foot after the other, to understand who I and my daughter individually are at our deepest core.
Be it girly, grungy, or everything in between.
Ace of Spades for 2025 played to reclaim the 1990s grunge era I would have thrived in.
