My Heals: Learning to Walk Through Healing

My Heals: Learning to Walk Through Healing

A Reflection on Aleks G. Hannibal's Poem and the Courage to Heal

By Nelly Vee

Abstract

My Heals by Aleks G. Hannibal presents healing through the unexpected metaphor of a man wearing heels. Beneath the visual imagery of red heels, vulnerability, and stepping outside conventional expectations is a deeper reflection on the experience of healing from past hurts and trauma. The poem considers what it means to confront wounds that are often difficult to acknowledge, much less discuss publicly. In this reflection, Nelly Vee examines Hannibal's use of the heels metaphor as a representation of the discomfort, courage, vulnerability, and personal reclamation involved in healing. The poem suggests that healing is not simply about leaving the past behind. It is about learning how to walk differently because of what the past has taught us.

Featured in Krafty Page ChronicleS

My Heals appears in the July 2026 Global Issue of Krafty Page ChronicleS, presented under Metamorphoses: Lives in Translation. The issue brings together voices, cultures, experiences, and creative perspectives through the collaboration between Krafty Page ChronicleS and The Rhythm of Vietnam.

Sometimes Healing Is Hard to Talk About

Some poems make you think.

Some poems make you feel.

And then there are poems that quietly make you recognize something about yourself that you may not have wanted to look at.

That is where I find Aleks G. Hannibal's My Heals.

At first glance, the poem appears to be about a man finally deciding to wear a pair of red heels. There is humor in the image. There is confidence in it. There is also a deliberate challenge to expectation.

But the poem is doing something deeper.

Hannibal's title is My Heals, not My Heels.

That distinction changes everything.

The heels are the metaphor. The healing is the heart of the poem.

Once that becomes clear, the red shoes stop being simply an unusual fashion statement. They become a way of talking about something many people have difficulty discussing: what it means to heal from the things that have hurt us.

And healing is not always comfortable.

The Poem as Published

Aleks G. Hannibal

My Heals

Learning to Walk Differently

There is something powerful about the simple act of walking.

We rarely think about it.

One foot.

Then the other.

We move forward almost automatically.

But healing can make us conscious of every step.

When someone has experienced hurt, disappointment, betrayal, trauma, rejection, or loss, moving forward is not always as simple as people make it sound.

People often tell us to move on.

Keep going.

Let it go.

Be strong.

But those words can sometimes overlook what healing actually requires.

Healing asks us to acknowledge what happened.

It asks us to recognize what it changed.

It asks us to decide what we are willing to carry forward and what we are finally willing to put down.

That is why I believe Hannibal's heels metaphor works.

He is not simply putting on a different pair of shoes.

He is stepping into a space that feels unfamiliar.

He is allowing himself to be seen differently.

And that is often what healing demands from us.

The Discomfort of Healing

There is a line in the poem that immediately establishes the tension: “I know it's frowned upon for a man, but I can't help myself” (Hannibal, 2026).

On the surface, the statement concerns the social expectations surrounding gender and appearance.

But underneath that surface is something larger.

How many things do we avoid because we are afraid of how people will see us?

How many truths do we keep quiet because they make other people uncomfortable?

How many wounds remain hidden because admitting that we are hurting feels like weakness?

Healing can be just as uncomfortable as stepping into those red heels.

It requires vulnerability.

It requires honesty.

Sometimes it requires admitting that something still hurts.

And for many people, that admission is harder than pretending everything is fine.

We have become very good at performing strength.

Healing asks us to practice something different.

Truth.

The Heels Become the Symbol

The red heels are impossible to ignore.

They are bold.

They are visible.

They carry cultural expectations with them.

That makes them an effective symbol for healing.

Healing is often visible only to the person experiencing it. Other people may see the same face, the same body, the same clothing, and the same daily routine. They may not see the internal work taking place.

But eventually something changes.

The way we speak changes.

The way we establish boundaries changes.

The way we respond changes.

The things we tolerate change.

The way we see ourselves changes.

That is when healing begins to affect how we walk through the world.

The shoes become symbolic because the person wearing them is no longer standing in exactly the same place emotionally.

“I've Worked So Hard to Get Them”

Another part of Hannibal's poem carries an unexpected emotional weight: “I've worked so hard to get them” (Hannibal, 2026).

That line can be read beyond the literal heels.

Think about the things people work hard to obtain after surviving difficult seasons of life.

Peace.

Confidence.

Self-respect.

Freedom.

Acceptance.

A sense of identity.

The ability to finally breathe without constantly looking over your shoulder.

Those things can take years to build.

Once we finally reach them, we should not be ashamed to wear them.

That may be one of the strongest messages hidden inside this poem.

If you have worked hard to become whole again, why should you hide the evidence?

Healing Is Not the Same as Forgetting

One mistake we often make when discussing healing is assuming that healing means forgetting.

It does not.

Healing does not erase history.

It does not pretend that the wound never happened.

It does not change the past.

Instead, healing can change the relationship we have with what happened.

The memory may remain.

The lesson may remain.

Even the scar may remain.

But the wound no longer has to control every step we take.

That distinction matters.

There are things that happened to us that we cannot undo.

But there are also things about ourselves that we can reclaim.

The Courage to Be Seen

Hannibal's speaker is not hiding the heels.

He wants to “strut about in them and let the world gawk on” (Hannibal, 2026).

There is something almost playful about that confidence.

But I also hear defiance in it.

There comes a point in healing when we stop organizing our lives around other people's opinions.

That does not mean we stop caring about people.

It means we stop allowing their expectations to determine our identity.

Healing can give us permission to say:

This is who I am.

This is what I survived.

This is what I learned.

This is what I choose now.

And yes, you may not understand it.

But I no longer need your permission to become whole.

Why the Title Matters

The distinction between heels and heals is not a small wordplay choice.

It is the doorway into the poem.

Heels are something we wear.

Heals points toward something happening within us.

The brilliance of the metaphor is that both ideas can exist at the same time.

The speaker physically puts on heels, but emotionally he is speaking about healing.

The outside becomes a representation of the inside.

That is what makes the poem more than a conversation about fashion or gender expectations.

It becomes a conversation about what happens when a person decides to stop hiding the process of becoming whole.

What Healing Looks Like to Me

Reading Hannibal's clarification changed the way I understand the poem.

I initially saw the heels as a powerful image of stepping outside expectation. I still believe they represent that. But now I see the deeper movement beneath the image.

The real transformation is not the shoes.

It is the person wearing them.

That distinction matters because healing does not always announce itself.

Sometimes healing looks like leaving.

Sometimes it looks like staying.

Sometimes it looks like forgiveness.

Sometimes it looks like a boundary.

Sometimes it looks like silence.

Sometimes it looks like finally saying what happened.

And sometimes healing looks almost ordinary.

You wake up.

You get dressed.

You put one foot in front of the other.

And you keep walking.

Healing Has Its Own Walk

That is what stayed with me after reading My Heals.

Healing has its own walk.

It may not look like everyone else's.

It may not move at the speed other people expect.

It may not make sense to people who have never had to carry what you carried.

But that does not make it less real.

We spend so much time trying to look normal after abnormal experiences.

We learn how to smile.

We learn how to answer, “I'm fine.”

We learn how to keep moving.

But perhaps true healing begins when we no longer need to pretend that the difficult parts never existed.

We can acknowledge them without allowing them to own us.

We can remember without remaining trapped.

We can hurt and still grow.

We can carry scars and still become beautiful.

We can change the way we walk.

My Reflection

For me, Aleks G. Hannibal's My Heals is ultimately about reclamation.

It is about taking something that might make you uncomfortable and refusing to allow that discomfort to dictate who you become.

The red heels are not really the destination.

They are the statement.

They say that healing can be uncomfortable.

Healing can be visible.

Healing can challenge expectations.

Healing can make people stare.

And healing can still be worth doing.

Maybe that is why the poem works for me.

Because eventually every person has to decide how they are going to walk after life has changed them.

We cannot always choose what happened.

We cannot always choose who hurt us.

We cannot rewrite every chapter.

But we can decide whether we will remain defined by the wound or begin growing around it.

That is not weakness.

That is healing.

And sometimes healing means putting on the shoes that once made you uncomfortable, standing up straight, and taking the next step anyway.

About the Poet

Aleks G. Hannibal is a writer and the founder of TalenTourney, a creative competition and literary platform developed around his long-standing interest in writing, storytelling, and creative expression. His work reflects an interest in imagination, personal experience, and the many ways people use creative expression to make sense of the world around them.

Hannibal's creative work includes poetry and short-form writing, with My Heals presenting a particularly personal examination of healing, vulnerability, expectation, and self-expression.

His work appears in the July 2026 Global Issue of Krafty Page ChronicleS, contributing to the broader conversation of Metamorphoses: Lives in Translation.

A Note on This Reflection

This reflection is written from my perspective as a reader and fellow writer. After reading the poem and receiving clarification from Aleks G. Hannibal regarding its intended meaning, I understand My Heals primarily as a meditation on healing from past hurts and trauma.

The heels provide the metaphor. The healing provides the emotional center.

That distinction deserves to be heard because conversations about emotional wounds are often the conversations we avoid the longest.

References

Hannibal, A. G. (2026). My heals. In Krafty Page ChronicleS: Metamorphoses: Lives in Translation (p. 30). KVI Network Creations.

KVI Network Creations. (2026). Krafty Page ChronicleS: The Rhythm of Vietnam—Metamorphoses: Lives in Translation [July 2026 Global Issue].