Because I was (I’m pretty sure) a rather easy-going kid, my mother was quite taken aback by my, vociferousness<\/a>, in my outright rejection of the “One insert to rule them all…”<\/p><\/div>\n When, as an adult, you have flat feet (pes planus<\/em>, actually) life can be a pain in the…foot. And knee. And hip. And back. And everywhere else.<\/p>\n The arch in the foot puts the rest of the body parts in their proper places. The human body\u00a0needs<\/em> the arch in the foot. It’s expecting<\/em>\u00a0the arch in the foot. Everything above the arch\u2014well, not clouds and trees and stuff, just physical humanity\u2014has been, how you say,\u00a0evolved<\/em>\u00a0with the expectation that both feet will have the aforementioned arches.<\/p>\n And when your feet don’t have those arches, ohmeyegawd<\/em> everything hurts and you don’t know why and an arch is so small you might not even know it’s missing and you end up thinking you’re a weakling because you can’t stand up straight and you can’t walk a mile like everybody else can.<\/p>\n Flat feet can give you terrible posture (because your body gets…weary, so very very weary…<\/em>of trying to keep things upright that aren’t stacked properly to begin with). It can make you want to sit down\u2014a lot. Stuff just hurts. If you’ve been standing\/walking for what would be a normal time for a normal person, you\u00a0can’t sit down because your knees are so stiff from being,\u00a0determined,<\/em>\u00a0to keep the body upright that they they refuse to bend (kind of a “Do your job” scenario taken to the extreme).<\/p>\n Getting those knees to bend takes a lot of fortitude (and some gritting of teeth). And once you HAVE bent them and ARE sitting down, the thought of straightening them back up (to go to the bathroom, say) fills you with, well, torpor<\/a>.<\/p>\n (And deciding which takes precedence\u2014the full bladder or the sore knees\u2014creates a minutes-long quandary that only ends when the bladder says as it always does, “I win. You know I win. Every time.”)<\/p>\n And if you’ve had flat feet your entire life and don’t realize it’s a “thing,” you can end up thinking you’re a loser because Jesu GAWD<\/em> why can everybody else have normal days while every one of your days feels like you’ve climbed Denali<\/a>\u00a0and your knees don’t bend and your hips don’t bend and you can’t stand up and you can’t sit down and what’s up with all of\u00a0that<\/em>?<\/p>\n I had to write all of the above because my\u00a0In the Wild<\/em> review of the Upstep arch supports<\/a>\u00a0is, in its entirety, the following eleven words:<\/p>\n Oo, and they come in a pouch! I love that.<\/p><\/div>\n To expand the review (in case you did not find it all-encompassing):<\/p>\n If Upsteps can make it there, they can make it anywhere…<\/p><\/div>\n With my Upstep inserts in my shoes, I could stand up. I could sit down. I could stand up and then sit down. And\u2014and I don’t know if I’m properly conveying the immensity of this\u2014I was pain-free. My body just did what a body is supposed to do, comfortably, fluidly, and pain-free.<\/p>\n Left: not in. Right: in. Looks the same from the outside. But oh the inside…<\/p><\/div>\n The opposite of pain is not happiness, its…nothingness. I had no pain. I had nothing. Except perhaps the thought: Ohhhh…this<\/span>\u00a0is what it’s like to have a body that does what it’s supposed to do.<\/em><\/p>\n Over the years, I have used both the inserts you buy<\/a> at the foot section of the pharmacy AND the super-expensive<\/a> specialty-store inserts. None of them worked.<\/p>\n Note that I did not add “as well as the Upsteps.” Because now that I know what actually works, I also know that all the other things didn’t work. Ix-nay<\/em> on the ork-way<\/em>.<\/p>\n No, they aren’t yours. They’re MINE.<\/p><\/div>\n Having worn the Upsteps<\/em> every day (and in every shoe) since they arrived, I can tell you that THEY WORK. Seriously, they are the business.<\/p>\n I don’t know what this stuff is, but I’m pretty sure Superman brought it back from Krypton.<\/p><\/div>\n Confession:<\/strong> I didn’t wear them one time, because I was spending the day in the house and who wanders around that<\/em>\u00a0much when they are just to-ing and fro-ing in their domicile? Well of\u00a0course<\/em> that was the day I decided to do a lot of…every domestic activity that exists, and everything described (above) came back and that was weird because how heavy can Winter scarves be, you know what I’m saying? And then I realized that I was not\u00a0wearing my Upsteps and basically had been mean to myself for the whole day. If I \u00a0ever had a “light dawns on Marblehead<\/a>” moment it was that.<\/p>\n I do have an additional issue with my “terminal portions of the limbs that bear weight and allows locomotion” that others may not: I have very little padding on the underside of my feet (according to a physician). My feet are not as fleshy as the standard for whatever age I am\/have been. So the cray-cray expensive specialty-store inserts were a nightmare for me because they were made of hard plastic<\/a>\u00a0ow ow ow. The Upsteps have a cushiony top layer <\/a>that was perfect for my oh-so-imperfect feet.<\/p>\n Thin, but powerful<\/p><\/div>\n It just feels like the good people at Upstep know\u2014deep in their souls\u00a0know\u2014<\/em>what it’s like to have feet that don’t do what they’re supposed to do, and worked very hard to figure out how to create a product (and a process) that actually, really-truly works. Thank you, you good people you.<\/p>\n A perfect circle of cushy-ness, exactly where it needs to be.<\/p><\/div>\n If you’ve got “bad” feet, get yourself a pair of Upstep inserts.<\/p>\n I cannot describe how much of a positive difference they have made in my every day life.<\/p>\n Link:\u00a0<\/b>Upstep Custom Orthotics<\/a><\/p>\nugly-fugly footwear<\/del> treatment. Realizing that she was in a monumental<\/em> battle of wills from which she would not emerge the victor, she backed down, and I happily spent the rest of my childhood goofing around in sneakers and whatever else “all the other kids” wore.<\/p>\nNow.<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rainydaymagazine.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Upstep_Shoes.jpg?resize=650%2C431\")
<\/a>Enough already. Seriously.<\/h2>\n
It’s like I don’t have flat feet when I wear them.<\/em><\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rainydaymagazine.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Upstep_ForCarolynAll.jpg?resize=650%2C431\")
<\/a>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rainydaymagazine.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Shoe-Walk-NYC-785w.jpg?resize=650%2C649\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rainydaymagazine.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Upstep_Upstepped.jpg?resize=650%2C215\")
<\/a>What else.<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rainydaymagazine.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Upstep_ForCarolyn.jpg?resize=650%2C431\")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rainydaymagazine.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Upstep_ArchBottom.jpg?resize=650%2C431\")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rainydaymagazine.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Upstep_ArchTop.jpg?resize=650%2C431\")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rainydaymagazine.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Upstep_Heel.jpg?resize=650%2C431\")
<\/a>Final (I swear) words.<\/h2>\n
![the inserts you buy<\/a> at the foot section of the pharmacy AND the](\"http:\/\/rainydaymagazine.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/UpStep_All.jpg\"){kind=link}
![hard plastic<\/a>\u00a0ow ow ow. The Upsteps have a](\"http:\/\/rainydaymagazine.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/HardPlastic.jpg\"){kind=link}