The Whole Chicken Identity Crises

I love roasted chicken. Recently instead of purchasing as I usually do a few chicken pieces for a meal for my husband and myself, I decided to buy a whole chicken. 

Potatoes and carrots joined the chicken in the roasting pan with onions, garlic and herbs filling the cavities. In a little over an hour a most delicious meal was served. 

After the meal, it was time to refrigerate the leftovers. There was a lot of chicken!

I sliced the breast meat and put it into a container for sandwiches. 

The remaining chicken I set aside for making chicken salad. 

I got out the big soup pot to put the carcass in so I could make chicken vegetable soup. 

And…even the kitties had a container for some juicy skin scraps to enhance their kibble.

As I was doing all of this, I realized my life had changed from the long ago days when I would roast whole chickens. Now there was only my husband and me. The kids are all grown, in their 40’s and 50’s, with families of their own, so who was going to eat all this chicken? 

 While rearing a family, cooking a whole chicken was far more economical for feeding five or more at a meal than would be purchasing separate pieces of chicken. Besides, I could count on the chicken soup providing a second meal, another money saver. 

Digging a little deeper within me, while digging deeply into the sorting of all the left-over cooked chicken, I realized the woman who used to cook whole chickens no longer existed. Her role was gone. As I realized this, an aspect of me became momentarily anxious about this new awareness. Well then, who would I be without that woman? That role? As I deep breathed, dismantling the chicken while doing so, I reassured myself I no longer needed to fulfill a role that I hadn’t carried out in years. I don’t need to provide nourishing food for numerous others seven days a week anymore. Besides,  prepared take-out on occasion is a great option for my husband and myself. In other words, part of me was creating a crisis story when it was unnecessary because I had years ago stopped performing in that capacity. I just hadn’t been conscious of it. 

Thanks to this whole chicken experience, I am more attuned to discovering any additional no longer viable life roles and their stories unconsciously running my life. As I become aware of them, I thank them for all the direction they provided to my life and joyously relinquish them.

We all have roles we have moved beyond. That’s part of living. Yet, even if we are not aware of them, they are still presiding over our lives. It was an old role story which had me, out of habit, reach out for the whole chicken in the grocery store instead of a few pieces of chicken.

Thank you, whole chicken for revealing to me a role I had long ago outgrown.  

Are there roles you are living which no longer serve you? Are you ready to uncover them, thank them, relinquish them and their stories, so you can more fully live your current roles? 

©2020 Cristina Whitehawk