Life is Like a Biscuit
Have you ever had a really good homemade biscuit? One with flaky white layers that the butter just drips across when you pull it apart. It's light and airy and makes your mouth water just considering how to eat it without devouring in one bite.
It took me years to learn how to make good biscuits. I had so many failed attempts. My husband would roll his eyes when I said we were having home made biscuits with dinner. Most often, they would be hard as rocks, hockey pucks or some other disc like object. But when I learned how to be gentle with the dough, life changed. They were light, fluffy and tasty. I didn't know I had been too hard and intense when kneading the biscuit dough. Life is hard and intense much of the time. We get beat up and pushed down often. When this happens to children they learn to mistrust their feelings. They never develop a healthy intuition. As an adult, I have spent years developing these things that I should have learned as a child. It has taken repeated effort, intention and hard work. I have had to revisit situations with the help of trained adults to interpret them with truth. My recipe for life started with everything, I mean everything, being my fault. Being blamed for things that were not my fault as a child made me hard and intense as an adult. I also lost my childhood to the desires and needs of sick people around me. Which made me determined not to come apart.
As a result, I have been forced to unpack layer after layer of lies that I believed about myself. It has hurt more than I can say and sent me reeling more times than I care to admit. I have also had to unpack lies about the people around me growing up, those who were charged with my care. People who should have helped build me up, berated me and tore me down, often daily.
As I am learning to be more gentle with myself I am learning to appreciate different things in life. Simple things, like a delicious biscuit dripping with butter. I am learning that life can pile things on us, but we can choose to take our pain apart and face it. In doing so, we can heal layer after layer. As Kelly Clarkson sings allow others to piece by piece fill the holes burned in our soul. So Forest Gump's mother says that life is like a box of chocolates. I say life is like a biscuit. It can be hard and dry, but when we learn to be gentle with ourselves, it can be light, airy and bring smiles to my face.
