My cast iron skillet

One night, Matt was painting his new office space upstairs while I went downstairs to start dinner. While cooking and listening to my latest Audible book, I heard a bang followed by profanity. Concerned for my carpet (and my husband ), I ran upstairs.

The paint 🎨had gotten knocked off the ladder and onto a part of the carpet that wasn't covered in plastic. It was not a lot, but enough to send us both scrambling to clean it up as fast as possible before it dried.

After doing all we could, I walked back downstairs into a very smoky kitchen. Oh, Shite...I had left my old beloved cast iron on the stove. I quickly got the hot pan off the burner, turned on the vent, and opened the windows to deter the smoke detector.😓 When I looked at my pan, a huge piece of seasoning had completely burned off. My heart sank. It looked awful and unusable.💔

Matt likes to hashtag his cooking posts on social media as #castironDad . So when he came downstairs tired and hungry and saw the scorched pan, he understandably went to woe.    First, there was a paint debacle on the carpet, and now his favorite pan was ruined!

Like Alexander, we were having a terrible, horrible, no good, very, bad day.  (high-five if you read that book as a kid.)

When everything seems to be going wrong, even a tiny misstep FEELS like a big detour. When we make a mistake (especially as recovering perfectionists), we can quickly go to critical and pessimistic places.😏 As a theatre family, you might even say -dramatic places- "It's all a disaster!" We both felt miserable.

Thankfully, we discovered an important metaphor and reminder—all thanks to that cast iron skillet 🍳—that has now become a 💡wisdom key for us.

When it all goes bad, you can always reseason the pan.

Despite how it seemed and how the pan looked, we can recover and rebuild after making a mistake or things going wrong. We are more resilient than we think we are.💪🏼 I know it might be a bit cheesy, and it's not a perfect metaphor- but I've been saying it to myself ever since.

The seasoning on a pan creates a non-stick surface and prevents rust. When that barrier is burned off or rusted over, taking it through the process of reseasoning is akin to how we can also repair and recover whether after a mistake or a bad day.

Here's how you reseason the pan... and yourself.

1. Clean the skillet. 🧼 Reflect, access and acknowledge what's really happened. What's happened and what can you do? Maybe upon closer inspection its not that bad.
2. Apply oil.  Soothe the inner critic with self-compassion and offer a coat of grace to yourself. Do something to shift the energy and your outlook.
3. Heat 🔥 the skillet to bond the oil to the metal. Get into action if needed. Remember the challenges, pressure, mistakes, and discomfort we encounter in our lives are part of the process of growth. Even going through hard times can create the alchemical transformation that creates a stronger bond with ourselves and others.
4. Repeat 🔁the process. Sometimes, it takes more than once on our journey, whether that is the learning or repairing process. Have patience that the repetition builds resilience.💪🏼

The best cast-iron skillets are the ones that are well-used. They've been through a lot and reseasoned many times.

We can wallow in the woe, or we can remember this.

We can always reseason the pan.

In fact, I'm using it for tonight's dinner.

DM ME and let me know your thoughts. 

#Cast iron pan, #Reseaoning, #Resilience, #Mistakes, #Setbacks, #Recovery, #Growth, #Metaphor, #Life lessons, #Perfectionism, #Self-compassion