Hi friends! My life has changed A LOT since I started The Green Giraffe Eats…time for blog posts and recipe creation has all but disappeared from my life. I still try to carve out time in my day to do what I love – cook and create. And sometimes I still even make a little food for you 😉

Not only do I love cooking, but I also love to write – I believe that both written and spoken word can be as nourishing to the soul as food and water are to the body. As much as I wish I could sit at a coffee shop and transcribe my thoughts on life and food, that just isn’t in the cards for me right now.

So what’s a girl to do? Take one step forward and inch towards her dreams. I have decided to start with small tidbits – little quotes and sayings that help me to see the world with different eyes. What does that mean for my followers? You may start seeing quote boxes from me pop up now and again. I hope that what I have to say resonates with you and that you find encouragement and truth that feeds your soul.

Cheers,

Laura (The Green Giraffe)

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I posted this ↑ to my Facebook page back in August – a quick update to my FB fans and followers letting them know that things at The Green Giraffe Eats may be changing. I haven’t had the time or the emotional energy to sit down and actually write about this change. Until now….. 

Becoming a colander

I don’t know about you, but when I was little I never once said I can’t wait to grow up and become a colander. You read that correctly, I wrote the word colander. It seems like such a silly thing to write or say aloud – try it, “I feel like a colander.” But I’m telling you – it fits the bill for my life right now and in the strangest possible way, it’s exactly where I’m meant to be. This season of mid thirties motherhood, can be easily summed up by a kitchen tool. 

Think about a colander, I have – well, a few. Okay, I counted …I have seven – yep, seven colanders. Just stop yourself right there, I know, I know, I have a problem with kitchen gadgets, but we can talk about that another day.  Back to my colanders – my favorite one is a rounded off white cube of a thing – it’s smooth and easy to hold and I use it just about everyday. Here she is in all her glory….

Light Bulb Moment

So one day, I was rinsing some pasta in the sink, in my favorite colander, and I was just in this sort of trance watching the water bead up on the bow-tie noodles; it would pool up in a crevice and then run off, through the holes and wash down the drain. I watched the water and the pasta and the colander for what seemed like an eternity – in reality it was probably like 60 seconds, but it felt like hours. And I just couldn’t stop thinking about all that water washing down the drain – serving its purpose, rinsing the pasta and then poof – gone. It’s actually really embarrassing to be typing this and knowing that people will read it and picture me staring at pasta and not being able to stop thinking about it. Phew – I did it, I typed it, you read it.

For days, I sat with this idea in my brain, just taking up all the space and I finally blurted it out to my husband in one of my stress ragey PMS triggered outburst – yea, I have those – and he still loves me, so I’m just going to go on record here and say he’s a hell of a guy. I yelled through tears and said, “I am SO sick of being a colander, it all falls to me.” And I cried and he looked confused, and I cried more and he tried to look reassuring, but he was still totally confused. But I said it, I got the thought out of my head. And that night that was all I needed to do – just get that thought out of my head and let another human, my human, know that I felt like my life had become equivalent to a kitchen gadget. Even me, the lover of all kitchen gadgets, wasn’t really OK with it. 

Now it seems ridiculous that I would equate my existence to straining “things” in life, but that is what I thought I had become – the chosen one who would pick and choose the things that my family needed to hold onto and the other things that we needed to let get washed away. It’s actually very poetic when you think about it – hold onto what is dear to you, what brings you joy and fills your life with meaning, and let go of everything else – let it serve its purpose in your life and then let it wash away. It’s a beautiful analogy, but a very hard one to live.

See for a long time, I thought, and therefore believed, that I was being a colander, picking and choosing what we needed and did not need – what I needed and did not need. But somehow what I thought I was doing and what I was actually doing didn’t really align. I realized that I hadn’t been straining anything from my life – I had, in fact, been doing the exact opposite. I spent my time plugging the holes, not letting things go or be washed away. I put my head down and got to work trying with every ounce of my energy to patch the places where there might be another leak – where we (read:I) might lose something. And I was tired, so emotionally tired of trying to keep my head above the rising waters. My life had become a bowl – all the holes had been plugged and I was drowning.

Realization

I came to realize that I wasn’t sick of being a colander, I was sick of being a bowl. So how do I change, how do I become a colander?

Let’s look at the definition of a colander: a perforated bowl used to strain off liquid from food, especially after cooking. A perforated bowl – a bowl that is meant to let liquid through its many, many holes. And that liquid is often something that has helped to transform and change the food that is in the colander. See this right here – this was major for me. The “liquid,” in our life is there to help us and change us and make us into something new, but it’s not there to stay with us.  I spent so much time and energy and worry and angst trying to keep the liquid in my life – when it wasn’t supposed to be there. 

Mind blown. Or as my daughter would say, “My mind just blew up!” 

Seriously, my mind was blown when I realized this – at 35 years old, a husband, 4 kids and a lifetime of learning behind me – I just now owned up to how much I had been unnecessarily holding onto. I held onto the people, the things, the feelings, the highs and lows of life like a hoarder – these were mine and my family’s and I wasn’t going to let them go.  Until, I just couldn’t anymore – I couldn’t plug all the holes. And so I decided right then and there to stop being a bowl in life and to embrace the gift that is “being a colander.” Picking and choosing MY best life and the best life for MY family, and letting the other stuff just wash away. Sure, I still let that stuff in, the people, experiences, joys and sorrows. And I hope you do, too – please, let them in, let them change you, make you better, stronger, different – but then let them go. I know, much easier said than done, but there is freedom in simultaneously holding tight and letting go. 

Maybe you are way more evolved than me and this colander business is old news to you – if it is, I applaud you, I commend you and hope to get to where you are someday. For now, I’m here…slowly, sometimes begrudgingly digging holes and letting the stuff I’ve been holding onto for so long wash away.  I’m not here to dump all my stuff on you, but what I am here to do is say we all have “stuff” in our life – you know your stuff. What are you holding onto? How many holes are you resentfully plugging with your time, and energy? What would you rather be doing with that time and energy?

Doing What I Love

For me, it’s writing – I love to write, always have, always will. I lived in France for a summer in college and I filled journal upon journal with words – in another language – that’s how much I love to write. I write because it makes my soul feel alive, kind of like when I’m cooking – I can create and express myself and I just love it.  Before my realization, I was always busying myself filling the holes in my life and never making time for what I really wanted – and I was mad about it. And I just didn’t want to be mad or sad or resentful anymore – so I decided to write something and put it out there for the world to see. Right now, I write quotes about life, maybe someday it will be more – I have always wanted to write a cookbook and a children’s book and my ideas are just overflowing.

Writing is something I want in my life, I want to hold onto it and keep it in my colander. I let some other “stuff” in my life go, so that I could find a time and an outlet for my writing. Maybe no one will read this, maybe ten people will read this – I’m not sure and that’s how I know I’m doing it for the right reason – for me.  My hope is that through my writing and my shared experiences that you might feel encouraged, welcomed, refreshed and motivated to explore what makes your life meaningful. And I am right here to tell you, it’s never, ever too late to change your mind, change your path, change your life. YOU are in control and you can be a colander, too.