Oola Body Care

The soap making process starts with a recipe that almost always more than one type of oil. They're chosen for the different properties they add, not unlike the relationships we have in our lives that support us in various ways.

Take coconut oil for example. Its got great cleaning properties, but can leave the skin feeling a little dry. Similarly, we may have those in our lives who are super helpful when it comes to helping us get our act together and down to business. 

Then there's olive oil, comparable to those friends who just meet us where we're at. They're very good at helping us to feel confident because they're so accepting. Whether the house is dirty or clean, they don't seem to notice those things.

Some recipes call for small amounts of castor oil; which can be deeply therapeutic as well as a contributor to a fine lather. These could be compared to the friends we love deeply, and a little time spent goes a long way.  Small doses make great memories.

Some oils are hard and take a while to warm up, while others are very good at going with the flow. Balancing the mix of oils, (or for the sake of this metaphor the people in your life) is important to the longterm outcome of the soap.

Then there's trouble, also known as lye (sodium hydroxide). It's caustic and mean and will cause nasty burns if you get it on your skin, or worse, let it get under your skin. When lye is added to water, a chemical reaction happens and the molecules speed up, and this friction generates heat. You can't have soap without lye, just like life doesn't exclude anyone from experiencing trouble, pain, or grief.

When you add the lye mixture to the oil everything changes. There's no going back to the way it was, only forward. The process of saponification has begun and a chemical round of speed dating begins matching the supportive molecules of the oils with the hydroxide molecules of the lye. A good recipe for life (and soap) is to carefully balance support with the amount of trouble. If you have more lye than oil, the soap bar is hard and crumbly. If there's not enough, the soap is soft, melts easily, and doesn't hold up over time. Ideally, all of the trouble (lye) is matched by supportive help (oils).

There is always a period of agitation and blending that follows, as the two opposing states of being come into balance until eventually it becomes one pourable substance. It doesn't look like oil, and it doesn't look like lye. The hydroxide in the lye is transforming into salts, not unlike the way our tears help us to process difficult experiences.

Then it's time to mold the soap. As in life, sometimes we need a safe space to settle, and like the grief in our life, no two incidents will be identical. We can do our best to replicate, but it's unlikely that we can duplicate what we did exactly from batch to batch, or in life, duplicate solutions for our painful experiences.

But it's not over yet. The soap still has to cure, and it takes a period of time for the transformation to be complete. The soap comes out of its safe place, but it's still vulnerable to bumps and scarring. It needs to be assimulated into the open air, but carefully.

When the soap is finished and ready to face the world, none of the lye will have been removed. Rather it will have been transformed through the experience making it a usable and beneficial part of life.

I hope that when life brings you pain, you'll think of a batch of soap in the making. The only way forward is through the process.  Find the right kind of supports for yourself, knowing they all have a role to play. An amazing transformation is inevitable and underway.  You'll need a safe place, and some time to recover. You will not be the same, and while you can't remove the pain that life brings, you will eventually find a way to live with it and recognize some benefit from the experience.