From Shoe Guy To Storyteller
Unlacing the stories that bind. Walking into the ones that free.
What if the shoes you wear could tell you something about your soul?
For years, I believed in structure. In shoes that corrected. In theology that controlled. In systems that defined who I had to be.
Then one day, a free pair of barefoot shoes set me on a path I never expected—one that unraveled not only how I thought about footwear, but how I understood faith, identity, and power.
This piece is about that journey—from constriction to expansion, from inherited stories to ones I now claim as my own. It’s about what happens when you stop letting systems mold you, and instead, begin listening to the deeper wisdom already rooted in your body and soul.
If you’ve ever felt like you were walking around in someone else’s story, I invite you to begin here.
Want to Watch or Listen?
The Full Story
I'm a long time shoe guy who now introduces himself as a storyteller. But in truth, I've always been a storyteller, even if there were times in my life when I told horrible stories.
My Journey from Shoe Guy to Storyteller
What does that look like? If you look at my LinkedIn for the past decade and a half, you most likely think of me as a shoe guy.
Not a sneaker head, but someone passionate about finding the right fit for people's unique needs, someone who believed the right shoe could change your life.
For a long time, I believed "right" meant structured, padded, orthotically engineered. I told a story shaped by conventional wisdom, a story about support, correction, and control. It made sense. Especially to someone like me who had survived eight significant knee injuries and two surgeries. I didn't just believe in support, I depended on it.
The Moment Everything Changed
But then something happened that shifted everything I thought I knew.
I was walking through a trade show with my then 12-year-old. We were wandering the aisles when all of a sudden my kid shouted, "A spinner!" and bolted toward the booth, eager to win a prize. The folks behind the table lit up at the enthusiasm, and I wandered over to join them.
That's when a guy at the booth picked up a shoe, if you could even call it that. He bent it, folded it, twisted it in ways that made my knees ache just watching. And I thought, "There is no way that would ever work for me." I needed cushion. Structure. Arch support. Or so I believed.
But they were kind to my kid. They laughed and engaged and said, "Guess who just won a free pair of shoes! You'll have to come by our office as we don't carry youth sizes here."
So we did.
And that day changed everything.
Discovering a New Truth
My kid got shoes. I got shoes. And as I began to wear them, I realized something unsettling: my entire understanding of footwear was wrong. These shoes didn't impose a shape but let my foot shape the shoe. They let me feel the ground. As time went on, I learned that just walking in these shoes made my feet stronger, and that strength let me trust my own body again. Not despite the injuries, but because of them.
Soon barefoot shoes were all I wore and 11-months after putting them on for the first time, I ran a 50k Spartan Ultra in a pair. Afterwards, I had no joint pain or discomfort of any kind. Now, a week later, when I had to wear traditional dress shoes for a few hours, my whole body felt disjoined, but after 50k and 60 obstacles, it was only my muscles that ached.
No wonder I became a barefoot enthusiast. In fact, I went to work for the very company that handed my kid that free pair, Xero Shoes. For much of the last four years, I've traveled the country helping others discover what I did: that most shoes, like most stories we inherit, are unnecessarily restrictive. They confine rather than support. They mold us into shapes we were never meant to hold. The devolve our feet, robbing our joints, muscles, and tendons the opportunity to operate as nature intended.
But barefoot shoes? They invite expansion. They invite return. They let the body do what it was always meant to do.
That's how I learned to tell a life giving story about shoes.
Unlearning False Stories
But my journey of unlearning didn't start with shoes, it began years earlier.
Before I was a shoe guy, I was a pastor, and just like I once had to unlearn everything I thought I knew about footwear, I had to unlearn what I thought I knew about God, largely because what I thought I knew about God, failed to form me into the kind of person who lived with the compassion, grace, and love that faith should produce.
The faith I knew left me riddled with shame. It didn't undermine shame—it amplified it. Stoked it. Stirred it. It intensified shame by focusing relentlessly on my depravity, then offered a gentle and almost dismissive reprieve by saying that I was forgiven. This theology believed good news could only be good news if there was really bad news first, and so it thrust the bad news upon me with fervor. So I did what shame-riddled people do: I lied. I deceived. I found secret ways to soothe my shame, and actually became the depraved person that faith insisted I had always been.
Finding a More Life-Giving Faith
So after spending 40 years of my life immersed in a very Western Christendom understanding of faith, I've come to believe that just like all of the scientific evidence pushes us towards barefoot shoes, the scriptural, historical, and embodied evidence points not to a distant deity demanding sacrifice, but to a love-soaked presence inviting trust. Not a savior who came to change God's mind about me, but one who came to change my mind about God. A God not obsessed with control, but committed to communion. Not defined by wrath, but known by relentless love.
The God I thought demanded performance and perfection was actually the one bending down, like that guy at the shoe booth, showing me a different way. A softer, more grounded way. One that didn't add layers of protection and distance, but invited presence, sensation, vulnerability.
When I think back to these moments today I can't help but think of an ancient prophet named Jeremiah who wrote: "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls." This isn't just spiritual poetry—it's an invitation to question the pathways we've accepted and rediscover more human ways of being. They're moments that invite us to tell a different story.
And that's the thing about stories, they shape us more than we know. And when we change them? They change everything about us, and the way we move through the world.
What Re-Storying Really Means
Now, some might hear all this talk about "changing our stories" and think I'm advocating for some kind of shallow positive thinking, just slapping a happy face on difficult realities. Or worse, using narrative as a way to deny accountability or hard truths.
That's not what this is about.
Re-storying isn't denial, it's deeper seeing. It's not about ignoring reality, but about recognizing that multiple interpretations of reality are always available to us. Some interpretations lead to life, while others lead to diminishment.
The Three Movements of Re-Storying
It's excavation work, and it happens in three movements:
First there is Recognition, a naming the stories you've inherited.
Then you have Resistance, a questioning of whose interests they serve.
Finally there's Reclamation, where you delve into a wisdom held deep within your bones and psyche, a perennial wisdom, an enduring, cross-cultural understanding of what it means to be fully human. This is a wisdom that transcends time and place, offering guidance on how to live with authenticity, connection, and meaning.
That wisdom invites us to stories that reconnect us to the truth that we are not machines, not products, not projects. We are humans: sacred, messy, luminous, loved. And every time we tell a story that leads us back to that truth, we resist the world that wants us to forget.
That's the power of story. It's not just memory or meaning, it's direction. It shapes who we become.
The Collective Power of Stories
And it's important that this wisdom we uncover is more than our deepest desires. After all, this can't just be about personal transformation or getting what we want, this is about transforming the very systems that shape our collective lives.
Reframing the American Dream
Consider the story of "The American Dream." What began as a vision of collective possibility, where a society created conditions for all to thrive, is now a narrative of individual achievement. This shift didn't happen by accident. It was a deliberate re-storying that served certain interests while obscuring others.
The American Dream once spoke of shared prosperity, of rising together. But over decades, it was rewritten to celebrate exceptional individuals who "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" … a phrase that originally meant something impossible. This individualized version of the dream obscures the communities, policies, and shared infrastructure that make flourishing possible. It makes invisible the redlining, segregation, and systemic barriers that kept certain communities from accessing that dream at all.
This isn't just semantics, it's how power operates. When we internalize stories that frame success and failure as purely individual outcomes, we become less likely to recognize systemic injustice, less likely to organize collectively, and more likely to blame ourselves or others for structural problems.
Re-Storying as Political Imagination
Re-storying, then, isn't just personal work, it's political imagination. When we collectively challenge dominant narratives, we're participating in what Adrienne Maree Brown calls "emergent strategy" where we create new patterns that ripple outward, transforming both consciousness and conditions.
So when I talk about changing our stories, I'm talking about examining the narratives we've unconsciously adopted and asking whether they're actually true. Whether they serve life. Whether they recognize the complexity of being human. There couldn't be anything further from putting on rose-colored glasses.
Quite the opposite, it's about removing the distorted lenses we didn't know we were wearing. It's about finding a clearer vision that honors both suffering and possibility, limitation and liberation. And nowhere is this more true than when it comes to seeing the stories of people who don't look like us.
Privilege and the Stories We Tell
As a straight white man, it would be easy for me to believe that the way the world treats me is the way it treats everyone, that my experience is universal, that it represents the "normal" human experience. This is perhaps privilege's most insidious effect: it normalizes itself through storytelling.
The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man who lost his life challenging Hitler's Nazi Germany, understood this when he wrote about "seeing the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled." This isn't just a moral imperative, it's a recognition that the stories told from positions of power are inherently incomplete.
Re-storying requires those with privilege to recognize that we've inherited narratives that naturalize inequality. Stories that tell us success comes from merit alone. Stories that normalize racial wealth gaps or gender pay disparities as just "the way things are." Stories that render the marginalized invisible or frame them as problems to be solved rather than voices to be centered.
This is where re-storying becomes not just healing work but justice work. By questioning whose stories get told, whose get believed, and whose get institutionalized, we create space for narratives that honor the full humanity of all people, not just those with power to shape dominant cultural stories.
My Eye-Opening Experience
Having my eyes opened to this reality is another layer to my re-storying journey.
During my sophomore year of undergrad, I was assigned a book on educational disparities in inner-city schools. The sections about East St. Louis described conditions so devastating that I dismissed them as propaganda. Nothing, I thought, could possibly be that bad in America. The descriptions of crumbling schools, environmental hazards, and systemic abandonment were so far beyond my cultural experience that I couldn't imagine them being real. I remember closing that book thinking it was exaggerated to make a political point.
Fast forward about ten years to my first year at seminary. I was assigned to a church in East St. Louis, and suddenly I was walking through the very reality I had once dismissed as impossible. The conditions weren't propaganda—they were someone's daily life. Streets where children played alongside environmental waste. Schools with broken windows and inadequate resources. Communities systematically cut off from opportunity by redlining, disinvestment, and infrastructure designed to isolate rather than connect.
That moment forced me to recognize a profound truth: the stories I believed about America did not apply to all Americans. The narratives I had inherited, of equal opportunity, of systems that worked for everyone, of problems that couldn't "really be that bad," was a story that served those already comfortable while making invisible those who weren't.
What was most unsettling wasn't just seeing the conditions, but recognizing how easily I had dismissed someone else's reality because it didn't match my story. How completely my privilege had allowed me to simply not believe what didn't fit my worldview.
The discomfort of that experience was palpable, and it was one of many moments that forced me to consider how my story affected others, be it something systemic or more personal.
Taking Responsibility for Our Stories
And here's something crucial: whether we're talking about the broad impact of dehumanizing structures or the effects of our own struggles on those closest to us, we must take full accountability for the actions we took while believing false stories. Changing our narrative doesn't erase the impact of our choices. If anything, a more truthful story allows us to face our impact with greater clarity and courage.
This is where the wisdom of recovery communities offers profound guidance. The life of making amends isn't just about saying "sorry," rather it's about living differently in ways that help heal the wounds we created. It's about allowing our new story to generate new actions that restore what was broken.
In this way, accountability becomes not just a burden of the past, but a pathway toward healing, for ourselves and others. When we own both our stories and their consequences, we discover that responsibility and freedom aren't opposites. They're companions on the journey toward becoming more fully human.
Becoming the Storyteller of Your Life
So let me ask you something: What story are you telling about yourself right now? What story are you living? And is it making you more human or less?
If that question stirs something in you … good. That's the beginning. That's the moment you get to become the storyteller of your own life. Not the editor, cutting out all the bad parts. Not the director, trying to control the outcome. Just the teller. The one who names what's true. And invites something new.
Introducing We Can Stay Human
My journey from restrictive shoes to barefoot freedom, from confining theology to liberating faith, from ignorance about to systemic realities to an advocate for change is what led me to create We Can Stay Human. Just as I found freedom in letting my feet reconnect with the earth; just as I discovered that embracing a more authentic faith invited me to live with empathy, compassion, and kindness; just as walking the streets of East St. Louis opened my eyes to harsh realities; We Can Stay Human invites you to explore the stories that seek to rob us of our humanity and craft more life-giving alternatives.
We'll draw wisdom from diverse traditions, examine how systems shape our personal narratives, and practice writing new stories that honor our full humanity, not just as individuals, but as people connected to each other and to the living world around us.
Because storytelling isn't just art. It's ecology. It's resistance. It's how we stay human in a world constantly trying to make us something less.
Our Core Movements
Pulling from that deeper perennial wisdom, these stories will center on four movements:
But more than anything, it's a space that invites you to explore your own story.
Join the Journey
If this resonates with you, I invite you to join us on this journey by subscribing to receive weekly reflections at wecanstayhuman.com.
If you want to go a step further, a $5 subscription will give you access to three weekly practices, a 60-second guided reclamation that anyone can work into their schedule, a 60-minute resistance ritual that invites you to dive deeper into your own story, or ideas on how you can step into a full-on rebellion, transforming all of your life.
And since story is best explored in community, I encourage you to share this post with someone who might resonate, whose story needs rewriting.
Your story doesn't belong to the systems that try to define you. It belongs to you. And we're here to help you reclaim it.
Whether you start big or small, these shifts are how We Can Stay Human.
Practices
Typically these will be behind the paywall, but I wanted to give you a taste of what you’ll find in future posts.
🌀 60-Second Guided Reclamation: “What Story Am I Living?”
🕯 60-Minute Resistance Ritual: “Mapping My Narrative”
Title: The Story Map: Recognize. Resist. Reclaim.
What You’ll Need:
Journal or large sheet of paper
Three markers or pens (different colors)
A quiet space
Ritual Steps:
Recognition (20 min):
Create three columns titled Self, Others, and World.
Under each, write 3–5 core stories you’ve inherited (e.g., I must achieve to be loved, People always leave, Rest is laziness).
Resistance (15 min):
Circle the stories that no longer serve life. Beside each, ask:
Who benefits from this story?
What impact has it had on my body, my choices, my relationships?
Reclamation (25 min):
Beneath each circled story, write a new story rooted in perennial wisdom.
Use metaphors that resonate (e.g., I am not a machine, I am soil and light).
Finish with a prayer or mantra that affirms your agency:
“I release the story that confined me. I choose the story that sets me free.”
📷 Optional: Create a visual version of your new story as a map or mandala. Hang it somewhere sacred.
🔥 Full-On Rebellion: Story-Shifting Through Immersion
Note: Book links are affiliate links, and while I hate Amazon’s exploitation, I recognize it’s where most people shop.
Books to Re-Story the Self and the System:
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - valuable for the ladies, and a must read for the men
The Will To Change by Bell Hooks - essential if you want to understand how patriarchy hurts men too
Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by Bell Hooks - valuable for the men, and particularly challenging for white women as it explores how feminism has largely ignored black voices
The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor – reclaims body narratives, especially for marginalized folks
My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem – unearths embodied trauma and intergenerational storylines
To Be Told by Dan Allender – this work focuses on our individual stories over our collective ones, but sometimes one is the path to the other. Note: Dan is distinctively Christian, but also deeply gracious.
While I will typically offer more than books in this space, it is not the responsibility of marginalized people to help those of us who benefit from predominant narratives understand their stories, so I’ve curated a list from authors who’ve had the courage to put their experiences to print for everyone’s benefit.