Life Is More Than Fingernails

Sometimes letting go of what we think is most important can be a liberating experience.

Lee Redmond learned that the hard way after a car crash in February cost her her 28-foot-long fingernails. Yes, you read that correctly. Her fingernails were a whopping 28 feet long! So long they had earned her a spot in the Guinness World Record book.

However, as we all learn eventually, life can be unpredictable, and Redmond was stunned when the car crash left her with serious injuries and took the nails she had been growing since 1979. This past week, Redmond reflected on her loss to the folks at Guinness, in a story released on PR newswire.

"Losing my fingernails has been the most dramatic thing that's happened in my life,” she explained. “I think it was my grandson that said: 'Grandma, they are like your baby: you've taken care of them for 30 years and lost them in a second.' But then when you think about it, you know our whole life could end in a second, not just part of the body, but your whole life."

Now, she is learning to create a new life for herself, sans the super-sized fingernails. "The thing that bothered me with losing the fingernails, was that it becomes your identity and I felt like I'd lost part of that, yet I would always say when people would make comments about my fingernails, 'you know there's more to me than my fingernails.'"

As she herself put it, “there’s more to life than nails.” And we must agree.

Photo courtesy of Ranald Mackechnie/Guinness World Records. Photo features Redmond before the crash with male record-holder Melvin Booth.