Photo: Justin Boots
I rarely buy new clothes.
For most of my life, I have preferred to wear and buy pre-loved everything. Secondhand, thrifted, or gifted. Found at an estate sale, a garage sale, I enjoy the thrill of finding treasures out in the wild. I have been shopping this way for more than thirty years, way before secondhand became so en vogue. I have also been shamed for it. This is the story of the day that shame found me, and of how I sent it on its way.
Where the love began
In high school, I would visit my dad in Los Angeles. I spent days in the thrift shops on Melrose Avenue. When I visited my sister in Arizona, I went looking there too. Anywhere I traveled, I hunted. Vintage bell bottom jeans. Pieces with a past. Things no one else at school would ever be wearing, because there was only one of each.
I fell in love with secondhand shopping during those trips. That same love and excitement is still alive in me today, although I hit a few bumps in the road back home in the halls of my high school.
The pink boots
I grew up in a suburban, middle and upper middle class town on the South Shore of Long Island, NY, and I was not wealthy. So when my mother found a beautiful pair of pink Justin cowboy boots for twenty dollars, it felt like I hit the jackpot. She asked me to go to the seller’s house and try them on before she bought them.
I went, I tried them on, I loved them and said yes. As we were leaving, the girl whose boots they had been came down the stairs. She was one of the popular kids at my school. I smiled, said thank you, and went on my way.
I did not wear them right away. I waited for the perfect outfit. That summer in LA, I found it: a secondhand dress, blue with little pink florals. When I went back to school that fall, I finally wore the look I had been dreaming about, the dress and the pretty pink boots together.
I felt like a million bucks.
Then she saw me. From across the hall, she yelled, “Those were my boots!” and laughed as she told the story to her friends.
It was a gut punch. I felt a kind of shame I had never even considered before that moment. One of my teachers saw it happen and stepped in to rescue my spirit. She told me how beautiful I looked and how much she loved my outfit. It was kind, and it should have helped. Instead, it made me feel smaller.
I never wore those boots again. That part still makes me a little sad. I don’t know what happened to them.
Shame that was never mine
What I have worked through since then is the shame itself. It was never mine to carry. A teenager loving a pair of boots enough to wait for the perfect day to wear them is not something to be ashamed of. It is something tender. Something worth honoring.
High school is tough, teenagers can be cruel and the wounding can stick around if not tended to. I did the work, I loved my teenage self through that moment. In hindsight, I responded with grace, with dignity and with authentic hurt. I also left those hurt feelings back in that hallway by the smoking doors and I kept thrifting.
Seeing what others let go
The joy of thrifting comes from the experience of creativity and self expression.
Where someone else sees the end of something, I see the beginning. I can see beauty and potential in things other people would throw away. A worn pair of jeans with a perfect back pocket. Pieces that were discarded, forgotten, or simply outgrown.
That is what The Gracewell Studio is built on. Every piece in my shop honors something pre-owned. I take what was let go and make it beautiful again, with love, care, and intention. Sustainability is not a trend for me. It is how I have lived my whole life.
I still rarely buy new clothes. I am still that teenager on Melrose Avenue, hunting for the piece no one else will be wearing. The difference is that I know my worth now, and I know the worth of what I find.
If I could go back to that hallway, I would smile and say, “I know. And now they get a second story.”
Shame found me once. I sent it on its way, and I kept the joy. If you have ever felt small for loving something secondhand, that shame was never yours either. You do not have to wait for the perfect day. Wear the boots.
Seeing something new in what feels stuck is a skill, and it can be practiced. Gracefully Unstuck is my workbook for exactly that, made for anyone starting over or ready for real change.
Go gracefully. 🤍
