The Good, The Bad and the Better -- A Lesson From Making Soap

It's a simple chemical formula combining different types of oils, water, lye and sometimes scent. If you want to impress someone, you can tell them that the chemical process of making soap is called saponification. That just sounds more impressive.

People have been making soap for a very long time. My grandma would talk about the lye soap her grandmother made that burned her skin. It probably burned because back in the olden days, they didn't have computer generated formulas that analyzed just how much lye was necessary to cause the transformation process to begin.

Lye is caustic. Gloves and eye protection are recommended when using it. It is in fact, the typical main component in products that aid in unclogging sinks. Picture a white powder than can eat its way through compacted hair and other disgusting oddities in your drain. Yuck.. Lye is that powerful.

Each ingredient carefully weighed in the exacting process of making goat milk soap

The formula generates its own heat as it is mixed
in the pot.

I continue to be amazed knowing lye is at the heart of the equation that produces such a gentle, nourishing soap I safely use all over my body.  If I were to apply lye directly to my skin, I would be burned and in pain. It would be an awful experience. It took me forever to actually make my own soap because I was so intimated by  the caustic lye.

Lye + oils =soap
Something harmful/bad + something else = good

We can't get through life without sad things happening to us and those we love. We fail, we're disappointed, relationships end. people die --- and on and on the litany of negatives  goes on. But the positive spin, is all the rest of the good things in life that are mixed in.  When it's all blended together, and if we are intentional about looking for it -- we can just about always find amazing things resulting from negative experiences.

Beautiful goat milk soap curing in the molds they were poured in.