Every decision you make is a slice of lasagna. Every decision. Whether or not you accept the job, apply for the job, quit the job.
If you decide to go on vacation, for how long and where.
When you decide against having kids or having another kid or having kids by yourself.
If you move to another city, town, state or country.
Whether you decide to eat the birthday cake, throw out the cake or say you don’t like cake (even if you do).
Every decision you make is a slice of lasagna made up of three essential ingredients.
Noodles are community. Community includes your right people, right relationships but also co-workers, fellow church members, your social media contacts and your kids’ friends’ families. Everyone your life touches.
Cheese is your lived history. That includes your trauma history but also your professional history, your growing up and school experiences.
Sauce is white supremacist capitalist patriarchy culture aka the systems of oppression under which you live work and play.
These three essential ingredients don't change. They are what make lasagna, lasagna. They are in every decision you make. You can’t parse them out because they are the water that you are swimming in every moment.
But you can always add more ingredients to your lasagna. You can’t take away the sauce, noodles and cheese but you can make the lasagna more to your taste. And when you do that slice will taste better, feel more satisfying and keep you full longer.
Adding your own ingredients make any decision taste better. You can’t eliminate the influence of patriarchy and by extension, diet culture, on how you think about your body but you can decide for example to practice intuitive eating to build a better relationship with food.
Or you can set a boundary around how much you expose yourself to photoshopped body types or the hash tag “clean eating” for example.
Or you can share a vulnerability statement with one of your right people around how you are feeling about your body.
These are all examples of how you can make the decisions in your life taste better, feel more like you and in doing so start to free yourself from some of the confines of daily living under systems that were not designed for you to thrive and grow.
It can feel impossibly hard to go through day after day feeling as if you have so little choice over some of the most important aspects of your life. Or feeling as if there is really no choice even though it seems as if there is supposed to be a choice. You deserve to feel more ease and satisfaction around the decisions you make. You can’t get rid of the three essential ingredients that shape every decision, every facet of your life but you can make decisions feel better. Add your own ingredients to that lasagna. See what it tastes like when you do. I bet it’s a bit more savorier. Or sweeter. Or more filling. Mmmmmmmm.
Want to know more? Head here for my 60 minute personal growth webinar, “It’s Not People-Pleasing; It’s Patriarchy!”.