Goat Milk Soap Disaster
A creator I admire often says “never compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.”
It’s so easy to see the perfectly curated social media feeds of others who do what we aspire to do and, rather than get inspired, get discouraged because our first attempts look absolutely nothing like what they are posting about. But what we aren’t seeing in those curated feeds are all the mistakes and tears and YEARS of immersion in these skills that they now can make look so simple. Few things are ever as easy or go as smoothly as they seem to online.
So here’s a funny story about my first batch of goat milk soap five years ago:
I was SO excited to make my first soap, it was just the next logical step after I got dairy goats. I chose my scents, did my research, built a soap mold, harvested some beeswax, made my soap. My FIRST disappointment was how LITTLE goat milk actually went into goat milk soap. Like how was soap making actually a viable way to use up the insane amount of goat milk I was getting every day?! I felt like I’d been lied to. My SECOND disappointment didn’t come till much later.
When you’re making soap, you use a chemical called Lye. It’s extremely caustic so when making the soap, you need to wear thick gloves, safety glasses, and be in a well ventilated area. After your soap is finished, you put it in a mold and let it cure. You can’t use it right away because it’s acidic. (OK for the soap/chemistry nerds here, it’s ACTUALLY basic, but 99% of people, including me, prior to this incident, don’t know that basic burns are a thing ;))
I think you see where this story is going...
As time passes, the PH level normalizes and the soap becomes ready to use. Well, my soap curing process was due to be complete about the same time I had one of my first paid traveling speaking gigs. I LOVED those gigs back then because even though I was still working, I would get to go back to a hotel room all by myself and there were no chores, no dirty laundry, no NOTHING more I had to do. AND, most of the hotel rooms had a BATHTUB. A bathtub was a pretty big deal back then because our dilapidated, one bathroom farmhouse technically had a bathtub, but, considering the state of so many other things around the homestead, I would not have bathed in it if someone paid me.
I SO proudly packed up my little bar of homemade soap and took the longest, most delightful bath and relished each moment, thinking back on all the hard work that had lead me to that moment. Not just building my business and reputation to the point that someone might care what I had to say, but also, buying a broken down farm and fixing it piece by piece as I learned how to do everything from scratch. I soaked long and savored every moment enjoying the delightful smell of my homemade soap and a rare, wholly quiet moment.
About halfway through the bath, I started to feel a little tingle. I didn’t think anything of it, because I’d used tea tree and peppermint in my soap recipe, and, you know, that should be normal. Welp. It wasn’t. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of the unbelievably hilarious acid burn that covered every single inch of my body the next morning, and yep, I got up the next day and had to give my talk in front of a whole bunch of people way older and smarter and with their lives WAY more together than I did, looking like I had the worst sunburn of my life in the middle of January.