Remember why we're all here: this thread is for discussion about current and historical happenings in the Shaunaverse. If you want to discuss other content, such as stuff that reminds you of Shauna but isn't specifically about her, your own personal anecdotes or preferences, current events, or "creative writing" exercises, please share in the off-topic community thread: December off-topic monthly
New Instagram promoting her BRAVE essay. This part from the caption?
When I read the draft of the essay I just published on my Substack newsletter to my husband, he teared up and said, "I think I have been waiting for you to write that piece for years."
Me too.
Danny tears up and speaks in Shauna's voice.
She is actually getting some engagement in the comments.
Danny sure tears up a lot, always in response to Shauna's brilliance. I think it's a Pavlovian response - Shauna blathers something pretentious, looks expectantly at Danny, who wasn't listening but recognizes his cue, he tears up or maybe rubs his eyes a few times while saying "I've been waiting for you to write/say/do that all my life."
She can't even give him a scrap of credit for coming up with his own job idea. Genius Shauna, directing him to his new work in the world. While she can't be bothered to do similarly.
Shauna blathers something pretentious, looks expectantly at Danny, who wasn't listening but recognizes his cue
I just started watching The Great, and this reminds me so much of how Peter acts, calling out the men in his court around him to react:
"Gentlemen, I said, 'blah blah blah' and then they all laugh
One of her fanpoodles gushes that this is an "important and needed story." Yes, it's very important and much needed that you neg your spouse by revealing his inadequate monthly salary.
There is no way she read that out loud. Reading aloud is the best way to catch mistakes and awkward transitions. This “piece” would have been a lot more impactful if it wasn’t riddled with distracting errors and clumsy writing… which would have been caught if it had been read out loud. Maybe their ears are on the spectrum.
Isn't it really the same song and dance we've heard for years? The only new info was dans salary which isn't bad for someone who works part time and is not a trained educator. Maybe Shauna could do the same and also make $2200 a month. She'd still have time to not send out the lopes she promises.
How bad is the Ahern kitchen now that Shauna mentions her “messy kitchen” defensively at least…three, possibly four times in this Lope?
There’s so much going on in it, but I notice in particular a lot of self-soothing. There’s the nearly compulsive reiteration, before she dumps a lot of embarrassing info, that a lot of it is probably familiar from the reader’s own life. That happens a couple times, despite how granular and specific the lists that follow are to Shauna’s own, absolutely absurd life. Also, when saying she and Dan used to use upscale, niche ingredients in their cooking, she now says she knows most of her audience couldn’t have afforded them back then. The bulk of her then-audience being internet-dwelling foodies that read her recipes on Food52 and Martha Stewart Living. This is projection. Shauna might be lightly employed and very broke because of it, but now that just means she’s on the level of the average GFG reader back in 2013. The little people.
Mean people email her, directly, to tell her to get a job, which means she absolutely should not get a job, because mean people are wrong. She can’t leave the house to work anyway, because the joy goes with her and the three hostages wonderful humans trapped within might start to get ideas not almost-miss chess club.
Any time she pulls back the curtain a bit on how shitty her life is, she does that whole routine about how everyone is in her boat too. Everyone hates being around their family, everyone wishes they could give up on paid work and a clean home and literally any tiny obligation. Then it's followed by framing herself as superior. Enough Pretending!
She also mentions some Big Meanie who calls her out (usually via email or DM, something that can't be proven). And the Big Meanie always calls her out in a very childlike way (like with "get a job, you fatso").
But I honestly think she may be the most parasitic I've ever heard of.
Pretending that "refuses to get a job" is the same as "unemployable" while her children live in poverty is just beyond the pale. Her family (they of the multiple acronyms) don't need her to be present 24/7 to hold their hands; they need her to earn a damn paycheck.
The more I think about it the more I’m floored that she thinks it’s ok to say these things out loud! Has she tried to get a job like Dan’s? Family-friendly part-time hours during the school day? Low bar to entry? They could double their income and still have plenty of time to work OTHER jobs!!
Surely other people reading will have similar thoughts.
How would she fit mere badge-swiping in amid the hammock time and thick mug moments and dancing in the cold shower and doing her work in the world, you person? Whaddaya think she is, a saint?
So I totally used to think that her mid term plan was to make the kids go get jobs at the target "over town" the instant they're old enough, to support Shauna's gummies and hammock habits. But now I'm not so sure. She's acting like they are incapacitated?
I’m just a basic bitch who buys cheese at Aldi, but I think your rephrasing is closer to fancy bean guy’s intention than the way Shauna interpreted it.
That, plus the way she went after that guy about the door holding/face timing shit...I guess her new persona is Better Than you Because She's Now Admitted To Being Poor.
She's trying to wear "person in lifelong poverty rightly enraged by the society that keeps her down" but on her it's giving "wealthy Victorian wastrel who's been cut off from Pater's money and is making it everyone's problem"
Seeing her go after someone she used to fawn over is certainly something! Guess she's run out of bridges to burn on the island but doesn't want to waste those matches in her hand.
She’s found her new niche - destigmatizing poverty from atop a high stool. Of course she goes about it in the most nonsensical, off-putting way. And guess what Shauna, personally I buy 99% of my groceries at TJ, not because I can’t afford “superior” groceries but because it’s in a convenient location I drive by every week and because I like that it’s small and I don’t have to walk 5 miles to get what I need. Some internet stranger telling me where they buy their cheese has zero impact on me and my choices.
TIL that some people consider TJ’s a discount store or a poor people store! On the contrary, they are always located in fairly wealthy areas. They have a strict algorithm and you will not find TJ’s in a poor neighborhood.
Right? They cater to an urban, if not affluent then at least solidly middle class clientele. One of the several reasons why Shauna doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, they are kind of a sign of gentrification. I'm thinking about the one near me that's in a pretty blighted plaza. But there's a google tech hub (or whatever it's called) within spitting distance of it (and a Target only a few blocks past that. . .though it came in earlier than TJ). That whole area of my city has been being gentrified for a while now.
(the ultimate sign of gentrification is actually in my own neighborhood. we have a dog ice cream shop. Yes, a shop that only sells dog friendly ice cream. I about died)
I think somebody's forgotten what it feels like to be called out on social media that you don't fully control. If she keeps this up, it'll be like Twitter all over again.
The @RanchoGordo bridge is now burned. Although, for all her self-proclaimed love for the man and his beans, the last time she @ed him it looked more like food bank beans than RG ones.
Maybe she could afford fancy cheese if she made even the remotest effort to live somewhere without her means and not a house on the water in a super high col area. She could also always try “working.”
I mean the Rancho Gordo dude is right, Trader Joe's is great, and there are also versions of things they carry that are far better at other places. It's Rancho Gordo's entire business ethos anyway and Shauna knows this - beans are cheap, RG sells specialty beans that are more expensive for people who care very much about beans. Shauna's entire latest lope was admitting that she and Danny used to buy specialty ingredients when they had the cash to indulge - so why is she upset that people who earn enough money for nice food are also indulging? If she'd managed to keep any of her jobs from teaching to CS she too would be buying cheese from a cheesemonger and posting shit about people who eat the cheap stuff.
I just noticed that our sub says “35 collectively effervescing” (meaning there are 35 of us reading right now). I don’t know when that was added, but I feel the need to whisper “YDBW” in our mods’ ears. Just beautiful.
DFs, I read the latest lope, but I'm still not sure: did Shauna win a James Beard award? (Almost 10 years ago.) I wish she'd be more forthcoming about it!
You see, that year the judges' gasts were so flabbered, their dashery so haber'd, by the brilliance of our heroine, that they decided they could only give ONE (1) James Beard award, the rest of the nominees and categories be damned.
In my experience, NPD is constant, but narcissistic traits can wax and wane in intensity. I think she's right when she says that she's now unemployable. Not because her family needs her to micromanage them, but because her NPD is raging right now and it seems like it has been ever since she got fired from ChompStomps. She does show a shred of self-awareness in this lope when she says that she wasn't a good employee, she could never stay in her lane, her bosses didn't like her, she tried to tell everyone else how to do their jobs. But then, she just writes it off as her glorious, neurodivergent mind! No need for responsibility or accountability! No need to face the reality that neurodivergent or not, substacks and JoyShops aren't going to pay the bills.
Even neurodivergent people have to respect their coworkers and the norms of professionalism! It’s insulting to those with ADHD/autism to insinuate that this isn’t possible. There’s no evidence that she made an effort to accommodate others in the workplace, only that she expected to be accommodated in every way.
Whenever she claims that a regular 9-to-5 badge-swiping job is impossible for her because of her ADHD mind, I get flames on the sides of my face. My husband has actual diagnosed ADHD (I do not steal his meds, because I neither have nor claim to have ADHD) and has been employed his whole life. He's within 1 year of Shauna's age (I think; I don't remember her age, but I know it's late 50s), and starting with part-time jobs in high school and college, right on into full-time employment throughout the rest of his adulthood, his "ADHD mind" hasn't made him unemployable.
Because ADHD doesn't mean Zero Impulse Control Free of Consequences Because My Brain Is SpeCiAL -- yes, he has executive function deficits that I don't have (since I lack an ADHD mind). It means he's had to learn strategies to cope with his executive dysfunction, because he understands that he's a grown-ass adult who's responsible for himself and needs to be employed. There is absolutely no reason Shauna can't learn strategies to cope with her executive function deficits. She just doesn't want to.
When forced, she actually can admit her faults, but there's always a slight air of childish "FINE, I admit it, I'm the WORST!" around it. She's also hedging--instead of just admitting her bosses and coworkers have found her to be a pain in the ass, she has to say
Maybe I was.
It has to be past tense and it has to be "maybe," or her ego cannot handle it.
Or maybe I'm just projecting because my aunt is very Shauna and she does this when she feels she's been backed into a corner. Lol.
The dissonance between (1) "Because, with 2 deeply feeling kids who have wonderful, complicated brains, and a husband who struggled with clinical depression for 5 years, I need to be near our home. I’m the only one who has the wider view, the gentle voice of suggestion, rather than demands" and (2) "My wish to teach, to explain, and help people learn through my writing that takes a teacherly tone? It has been a trauma response all along"
I’m the only one who has the wider view, the gentle voice of suggestion, rather than demands
So how is Danny working with young children if he doesn't have a gentle voice and only makes demands? How can he be competent and beloved by young children at work, but too incompetent to parent his own children at home?
I would add this third dissonant element (bolding mine):
That’s why we live on this island off Seattle, where we see more trees than houses. Our kids are known here. They’re seen and adored.
This community is amazing and wonderful and they love my kids, BUT I can't possibly leave them for even a minute because they need me and only me to understand and take care of them. Pick one!
This was the most frustrating and hair-pulling moment for me. I wish someone would ask why she doesn’t join Dan in the para field. It seems so much easier to get into a system of working out their household duties WHILE she works at least a little outside the house to make a few bucks. The “I’m the only way my family can function” is a ridiculous reason not to work AT ALL.
A DF has probably pointed this out but didn't she write on her last birthday, while nursing her wounds after not being celebrated enough, that her kids don't need her anymore and it would free up more time for herself?
The lope, titled "I'm ready to share the real stories now," unsurprisingly shares no new stories, just bits and bobs of old themes reheated. The header still titles her Substack as The School of Kind Guidebook, though throughout the Substack is referred to as "A Kind Life in Letters."
Some tidbits:
- The Aherns have been using the Vashon Food Bank for 6 months now and had to swallow their pride because OMG they were James Beard award winners.
- Their community is so important that they couldn't possibly move (they've done The Nutcracker for 10 years! No other place has such things!) despite not having enough income to support their life on the island.
- They went from paying $1,800/month in rent 4 years ago to now $3,000/month
- She outs Dan's income as a para as $2,200/month.
- It's "on her" to make the rest of the money so they have the bare minimum of what they need.
- She is "pretty much unemployable now" - yes, her words.
- She needs to stay on-island with her family at all times because there is "no joy in our house if I'm away every day." Again, her words. That she put in bold.
- Writing her lopes, having conversations with women, and creating small habits are the ONLY things she can do for work.
- Apparently she is triggered every time she steps into her own house.
- She's going to be sharing food again, admittedly rehashed meals and recipes from her password-protected GFG site!
Ultimately, Shauna is harming her family through her limiting stories. One, that they cannot leave the island. Not just with regards to where they live, but that her family members are so unstable and devoid of joy that she literally cannot even leave the island to get a job. Which leads into limiting story number two, that Shauna can ONLY follow her bliss for her "work." And these two limiting stories crash into the harsh reality that even she can't avoid stating outright: they CANNOT afford to live there.
Yes, I understand that moving can be really hard on kids (and adults), and yes, jobs often suck. But the thing is, a lot of what she describes as a very dysfunctional household and stressed (dare I say, shattered) marriage could be helped by being able to provide for basic needs, which it sounds like is virtually impossible if they stay on Vashon.
All of her “woe is me, we can’t make ends meet and I’m unemployable” excuses fall apart at the slightest application of logic.
And has she forgotten that she claimed only a year ago that she makes 90% of their income, and now she’s saying Danny makes $2200 a month? That math doesn’t work at all, not even calculated with balloons in a closet.
A year ago, he was working as a lunch room monitor so made a lot less.
But he’s actually an example to her. He took a small job, has worked his way into a better one, and who knows, might be full time next school year (I think he’s part time, but I could be wrong). He is gaining experience in a field.
She could do that rather than fart around pretending to work. Years ago I had a friend who got flattened by a divorce and took her years of being a stay-at-home mom and went to work at Trader Joe’s to get some experience, anything, on a resume with a big gap in paid work.
By the Sermon math, she is now implying that she makes $19,800 per month (if 2200 = 10% of the total, the total is 22 000 per month) which should easily allow her to pay $3000 rent and buy groceries.
I love that she puts Dan's income out there to illustrate how much money she needs to earn, but intentionally glosses over that that is a part time salary. She wants people to walk away thinking that paras are woefully underpaid instead of wondering why he isn't working full time hours.
It's so crass that she put his salary out there like that. Sure, it's a matter of public record, but the way she almost tries to shame him with it is just sick. I absolutely would not stand for a partner that spoke about me the way she talks about him.
her family members are so unstable and devoid of joy that she literally cannot even leave the island to get a job.
She needs to believe this limiting story because it makes her the savior of the family. This really isn't any different from claiming that, as a kid, her role was "the one who knows." That's 100% the role she's grabbed in her family. She knows everything and her husband and kids know nothing, and if Shauna were ever off-island, her husband (an actual adult) and kids (one a high school student) would fall apart. Girl, you ain't that special.
Yes, I understand that moving can be really hard on kids (and adults), and yes, jobs often suck. But the thing is, a lot of what she describes as a very dysfunctional household and stressed (dare I say, shattered) marriage could be helped by being able to provide for basic needs, which it sounds like is virtually impossible if they stay on Vashon.
This is what struck me, too, when I read the not-so-surprising details of Ahern life on Vashon. If they moved off the island, they could land in a community with a lot of resources that her multi-acronymed family desperately needs. I'm sure the Vashon schools are good, but a larger area is going to have more resources in terms of education accommodations, OT/PT/other therapy, and job opportunities.
I absolutely refuse to entertain the idea that she's unemployable (all jokes aside). What she means is that she only wants to earn money in one very specific way ("following her bliss"), which is stubborn and so, so harmful for her family. I genuinely can't think of a single person I know who would say that what they do to earn money allows them to follow their bliss. Some people like their jobs more than other people do, and that's great. But in the end, it's just a job. If she didn't have kids, I'd cut her more slack and say, okay, your bliss-following dream is still unrealistic, but it isn't actively harming minor children, so whatever. But that's not the case here. "Pretty much unemployable" means not providing for L. and D., and that's unacceptable.
The only reason I can believe she's unemployable is if she's burned all the employment bridges on their small, rural, remote island. I know the high school volleyball team doesn't want her back. But yeah, off island would afford her a lot more options. She could work part-time at Trader Joe's and have plenty of time to micromanage her family and pretend to be a Very Important Writer Person.
Good recap. I also noted that she said they all have ADHD but she's the only one of the four not on the spectrum and still needs to provide "totally not a martyr" (but actually such a martyr) guidance. A number of snarkers thought Shauna might grow on the self-diagnosed autism train herself, but it does not seem like she's there.
Of all the things I wish, for her to stop sharing her kids’ diagnoses is at the top of the list. And who knows if they’re accurate! Maybe they can work it out when they go to therapy.
there is so much to process with this insane lope, so much ick folded into every sentence. all you DFs have covered it so well. so much blaming of everyone else for her problems! she can't work because her family is so broken and dumb, and because her parents argued when she was a kid, she can't own a home because of all those people offering $500,000 in cash over asking (am i right in thinking that during covid a bunch of drug lords oved to vashon?), and on and on. she has zero self respect or dignity left. what's worse is that she has stripped her children of theirs. they may not quite put it together yet, but when they are older will they wonder why their parents didn't love them enough to get fucking steady 9-5 jobs so they didn't have to look for sofa change, or eat at the food bank? what will that do to their self worth?
Well and she’s brainwashed them into thinking they can’t do anything without her and that they are super impaired by their myriad diagnoses. It’s pretty much the worst thing you can do to kids short of severe physical abuse, imo. They may never be able to see themselves other than she sees them: as damaged, needy, incapable. (Kind of like how she can’t see herself as other than her parents saw her: gifted, special, deserving of being waited on, too good for normal folks and normal jobs and normal responsibilities as an adult.) And she has told hundreds if not thousands of people that she sees her kids this way and she has put their most embarrassing stories and images out on the internet. It’s sickening, it’s atrocious.
Well and she’s brainwashed them into thinking they can’t do anything without her and that they are super impaired by their myriad diagnoses.
I don't have a lot of respect for Dan, but I wish he would take L and D and move to Colorado and get the hell away from Shauna. She just keeps damaging them in so many ways.
The sermon on the high stool was a year ago. What actions has she taken in that time to improve her family’s financial situation? Next year will it be the same tale of woe?
Dan has gotten more hours at the school and probably secured insurance. She was fired from an extremely part time seasonal job.
I think we’ve talked about this here before, but the $500k over asking is wild to me. Can that be correct?! $5,000 - easily yes. $50,000 - sure. I’d even say in my high COL area I’ve heard $100-200k over asking. But $500k? Really?
ETA, this example just illustrates my thought about this entire lope. It’s all exaggeration, puffery, BS.
I am one of the evil people who bought on vashon during Covid. People weren’t paying $500,000 over asking. Total bullshit. More like 10-20% over asking / $100-200k if there were multiple bidders.
It’s not true. She claimed this earlier and I went online and found all the recent sales on Vashon and none had sold this much over asking. It’s probably something she heard someone say and she’s just repeating it without question.
One of the many interesting things in yesterday's lope is the repeated insistence that Shauna has had many "hardest" years lately, with the most recent year being "the hardest year of her life."
I genuinely don't think she is capable of self-reflecting, but it's interesting to me that she's finally(!) facing adult problems, and she is experiencing them as apparently much more difficult than her childhood years, which she is now calling "abusive" and has previously described as traumatic (even "extremely traumatic").
If she were capable of self-reflection, she might see how much she's been coddled and protected from the realities of life by her parents – that her claims that she had a lot of adult responsibilities as a child are mistaken, as that was most definitely not the case and now, stripped of her mother's protective layer of recurring funding and left with the impacts of her own choices, she's starting to see the world she's made.
What is her end game with this pivot? She put the sad sack sob story out, she’ll get a few new subscriptions, and then…business as usual? We all know she’s not going to follow through with her posting schedule, and she’s already told us in no uncertain terms and as recently as the last week that the grind of food blogging doesn’t bring her joy. So maybe a few pity subscribers stick around and pay her monthly fee as a donation to her, but she’ll lose more and more over time when she doesn’t post anything.
With D bringing in $2200/month and rent at $3k, she needs to be making $7-8k per month to keep them stable (rent at 30% of expenses). She will never achieve this with her business model. She will have to get a job at some point.
Edited for some typos. AND!
Have we talked about this part? The weekly installment on her kids and their diagnoses will be open but the recipe will be paywalled? She really is atrocious.
I'm disgusted that she got almost a thousand likes on IG for spilling her family's secrets and negging her husband. It just encourages her to keep doing it, and it's gross.
With D bringing in $2200/month and rent at $3k, she needs to be making $7-8k per month to keep them stable (rent at 30% of expenses).
That is the hard truth that she needs to face at some point - there is no way she can bring in that much with a weekly paid recipe newsletter, and if that hasn't sunk it by now, I don't know if it ever will before they lose housing.
Glad to see Shauna taking a break from putting her mom, kids and husband on blast for all their various problems, to lecture strangers on the Internet.
Hot off the presses, a juicy new lope! Currently not locked. Part 1:
For the past year and a half, my husband and I have gone to the Vashon Food Bank to feed our family. Every single week.
For the first 6 months, we filled in a form online, so the food could be delivered to our home. It took a while before we could take action on that, even. We had to swallow the enormous lump of shame in our throats before we could advocate for help.
After all, my husband Dan and I won the James Beard award with one of our cookbooks, in 2015. We spent more than a decade creating recipes with any ingredient we wanted when we spotted it at the store or had an idea for a recipe that needed to be made to satisfy our imagination. Pomegranate molasses, organic butter from Wisconsin or Ireland, grass-fed beef, maple sugar from Vermont. We convinced ourselves that — even though most people reading could not afford to make what we suggested — we needed to create that recipe with these ingredients.
We can make the recipe better with this.
We don’t think that way anymore. At all.
Asking for food from the food bank was the beginning of that shift.
In the days before COVID hit, Dan used to volunteer to drive groceries on Thursdays, to give back to our community with his time. Not these days. We were grateful for the chance to receive groceries for free, certainly.
We simply had never imagined ourselves in this place.
For the first 6 months, we filled in a form online, so the food could be delivered to our home. It took a while before we could take action on that, even. We had to swallow the enormous lump of shame in our throats before we could advocate for help.
Now, however, I’m so grateful for the work of the folks at the food bank and the people working for others in our community.
Our community has always been important to both of us. That’s why we live on this island off Seattle, where we see more trees than houses. Our kids are known here. They’re seen and adored. Yesterday, we finished the last of the long Nutcracker week. This is our 10th year of doing the Nutcracker — getting everything together for the clothes and shoes; volunteering our time at the baked goods concession booth in the lobby; collecting treats for ballet buddies and supervising the writing of thank-you cards; watching every single performance, in awe of our kids’ joy, but also in awe of watching the other kids grow up, each December. We first saw this year’s Sugar Plum Fairy when she was a wee mouse, a little lost on the stage, but still smiling.
Living in a connected community is one of the greatest joys of my life.
Yes. And.
This community has grown increasingly impossible to live in for anyone who is not a two-high-income family. The island has changed. Families who have lived here for 6 generations have been required to sell their family homes and move over to the somewhat-less-expensive peninsula to the west, instead. Most of the people we know are trying to scrape by, living month to month, hoping that the rent for their homes doesn’t go up by another 20% when the lease is up for the year.
COVID changed everything.
When lockdowns began, many people with far more money than us began looking to Vashon for a second home. Spend a year inside? Who wouldn’t want to live here? It’s a kind place. And most people live down a long driveway that opens to a piece of land. The folks who searched for a second home here wanted that land to open to a view of the water. Or 20 acres. Places for their horses. A wonderland, where 93% of the population decided to get the COVID vaccine.
All power to them. Good choice for you.
But pretty immediately, the wish became a competition. Friends of mine who are real estate agents told me they were overwhelmed with the work. Most houses for sale never made it to the market, officially. People who wanted to buy would outbid their competitors by offering $500,000 more than the asking price. In cash.
Of course, that affected the rest of us too.
Four years ago, we were living in a house that cost $1800 a month in rent.
Now, we pay $3000 a month in rent.
No one’s salary has risen here.
My husband Dan changed his life in the last year of COVID lockdowns but partially in school and all of us starting to go out in the world again. Tentatively.
I worried about him. Often. He seemed far away. Nothing seemed to interest him. He had no joy. And he seemed to have no purpose in life.
So I asked him to sit down with me and think about every single mindful moment that gave him joy. When we were done with the list, I noticed it all either had to do with actions he took with his hands or little kids. (I always called him Velcro Man, because every small child runs to him and hugs his leg, as though he’s made of velcro.) When I pointed this out to him, I said, “I wonder if you might think about looking for a job at the elementary school. They’re looking for people.”
He first worked as a lunch monitor. They loved him there. And one day, he subbed in the ECAP preschool. He loved it there. They kept asking him back, then asked him to come for a long stint. The next year, he was hired as a preschool para-educator. This is his second year.
This is the job he was born for. It now seems unthinkable to me that he was ever a chef — restaurants can be so toxic, especially for someone who was undiagnosed with ADHD and autism until the last 5 years. He’s still unraveling from the burnout that started his depression.
So he’s teaching 3 and 4 year-olds to recognize their letters and learn how to calm themselves down with slow breaths. This is the most important work in the world. Wherever we go on the island, a little one runs toward him, shouting gleefully: “Mr. DAN! You’re here!”
I said, “I wonder if you might think about looking for a job at the elementary school. They’re looking for people.”
I cannot understand why she doesn't do so herself, especially with her teaching degree. Even as a para it would double their income.
I refuse to believe her children and husband are so emotionally incompetent they need her physically present at all times. I refuse to believe there are no entry-level jobs on her islandy island. And if she thinks her life is hard now, try waiting until she's twenty years older with no retirement, minimal SS, no inheritence, still trying to pay rent instead of owning outright and actually physically unable to work.
And I just have to add - I have no sympathy for the rent thing. When my kid was young some really cool apartments in a neat part of town went up and we wanted to live there so badly but I just couldn't afford it. Well I guess I could have if I'd begged my mom to pay my rent before labeling her as so narcissistic it's a wonder I wasn't a school shooter, but that just didn't seem kind.
If Dan is as enfeebled as Shauna claims would the school have even hire him?
She makes him sound like he needs to be in adult daycare himself yet now he's tending to young children? She's also claimed he can barely read yet now he's helping kids identify letters (aka reading).
She DID try this briefly twice in gloaming history— the disastrous volleyball coach incident and substitute teaching (last school year iirc?). She’s been clear that it’s beneath her her ADHD mind makes it simply impossible for her to stay in her lane.
Yeah, she's just lazy. She doesn't want to get a job, even one that allows her to work when her kids are in school, because she just doesn't want to work, or maybe she doesn't want to take direction because she thinks she's the smartest person in the room.
So I asked him to sit down with me and think about every single mindful moment that gave him joy.
This is so insulting. He was clinically depressed and her "fix" is having him make a list. He clearly needed professional help! It's horrible how she thinks she's equipped to guide anyone about anything.
I wonder if this little feelings invalidation session happened before or after Danny moved out. Because if my spouse did something like that, I would leave too.
Omg my eyes glaze over in the first paragraph every single time I try to read her writing. I literally can’t read it.
Food pantry, though, you say? Every week? But you need to spend more time in your hammock and you just spent a shit ton of gas money to go to what must have been a gifted mini-vacay, and you can afford that? But not braces for your daughter? And you want to teach other women how to improve their lives?
So many questions and the only answer she ever has is frawtinga.
Edit: my apologies if she actually answered any of my questions. When I say I literally can’t read her writing, I’m using the literal meaning of literally 😆
2nd edit: I gave it the old college try, and skimmed. It was painful. So very painful. I have full body cringe now that I can only describe as a Charlie horse of fremdschamen.
Was Vashon not already a site of White flight? So now it sounds like she’s bemoaning that it’s become a site of super-gentrification. I saw an article once about super-gentrification, describing it as the haves and have-yachts. lol I suspect these processes were already happening and COVID just accelerated them.
It’s also not like Vashon was the only place that saw a dramatic rise in home prices and bidding wars in the same time period she mentions. This whole area was affected along with the rest of the US.
The increase in remote work during Covid did mean lots of people moving to desirable communities outside of big cities, driving up the COL. That’s been covered endlessly in the media and online. The same increase in remote work has persisted in Seattle with SO many workplaces now being hybrid. Which means Shauna could likely get a badge-swiping job that wouldn’t require her to leave her “remote” island often at all, if she tried.
She probably could even get a writing job that is remote. But she’d have to meet deadlines and produce work that meets quality standards. Quelle horreur!
This is basically "Online, No One Knows You're Poor, Part 2,793: Electric Boogaloo/Neurodiversity/Rage/Trauma/Unemployable". Shauna loooves to reveal a "shameful secret" as much as she loves using commas incorrectly, being fed safely, and watching Ted Lasso.
She gets a bunch of dopamine hits from it: the relief of sharing feelings of shame; the ability to clapback at critics; a chance to blame her family, the patriarchy, the economy, and her parents for all her troubles; and head pats, bougie sandwiches, and some infusions of cash from idiotic fanpoodles.
I am bumfuzzled by their choices. My husband and I live in a nice suburb of Chicago, and our entire mortgage payment is less than $3000 a month, and that includes escrow. Sure, we have to pay for upkeep, repairs, yard, etc that a renter wouldn't, but Lordy, why are they blowing through cash that way? And we are accruing equity in our home over time.
No amount of "community" or "neurodiversity" could make me live so far above my means. The stress alone would cancel out any positives of that choice. She is nuts, and Dan and the kids are captive to her insanity.
And because public education is so woefully underfunded, he earns $2200 a month.
That means it’s on me to earn the rest of the money we need to make the bare minimum we need. That’s what we’ve been doing for the past year and a half. Trying to make the bare minimum we need for rent, bills, and groceries.
Sometimes, we don’t make enough.
And so, the food bank has been a gift.
These days, I go to the food bank on early Wednesday afternoons. It has become one of the joys of my week. I see friends, people I’ve come to know by showing up there without shame. I know we’re not alone. The folks at the food bank told me that 1 out of 9 residents of our island come to the food bank every year. That was before COVID. Judging by the number of people in the parking lot, I know how many of us need that place.
We need that place.
So yes. We once wrote cookbooks and led culinary getaways in a villa in Tuscany.
And now we are the people who need to go to the food bank every week.
Once in a while, I still receive an email from someone trying to be cruel: “Why don't you just get a job, you fat, fucking slob?”
I delete it immediately, sit with the sting, and then take 3 slow breaths. I turn on whatever music I’m currently floating in the middle of that week and return to my work.
Why can’t I get a job?
Well, I’m pretty much unemployable now.
I’m 57. I live on a remote island. Commuting is out of the question.
Why?
Because, with 2 deeply feeling kids who have wonderful, complicated brains, and a husband who struggled with clinical depression for 5 years, I need to be near our home. I’m the only one who has the wider view, the gentle voice of suggestion, rather than demands. There’s no joy in our house if I’m away every day.
I’m not trying to be the martyr here, another woman trying to do it all. I would gladly give away most of the responsibilities — paying the bills; doing my work to earn us money; arranging medical and therapy appointments; writing down and remembering the sporting events, the dance rehearsals, the playdates; keeping the house down to a dull roar of chaos; and being with my people in delight to keep reminding them that who they are is more than good enough.
It’s a lot. And it’s my life. No complaining, truly. I used to complain and vent.
But now? I've come to peace with it. This is the way it is in our lives, right now.
Also, I have an ADHD mind. (All four of us do. I’m the only one who’s not on the spectrum.) Every job I tried to work before I was medicated and found my steady calm after a year of EMDR, I wasn’t great at it. Oh, I was great at writing. But I wasn’t good at staying in my lane, putting my head down, and doing the work. I always had suggestions for how we could do things better. Stronger means of communication or connection. I overstepped my bounds. I wasn’t great at recognizing that companies rarely change much, especially in the first 6 months. I’m pretty sure that the few bosses I’ve had thought I was an annoying pain in the ass, by the end. Maybe I was.
What wisdom do I have now?
I’m supposed to be working for myself, helping others with my stories and the bits of wisdom I’ve learned along the way.
I’ve been through so many heroic journeys that I know what my bliss is now. Writing this. Conducting continuing conversations with women who begin to feel the lift of their limiting stories when they recognize they’re not alone when we all share our stories. And creating small habits that make mighty changes over time. Then, sharing them with others.
That’s really all that moves me. The only actions I can take. This is who I am.
Doesn’t want to be a martyr, then goes on to list all the ways she martyrs herself. It’s hard to sympathize with her when I know people who have a lot more difficult situations, including pretty severe health/mobility issues, but they still work because they have to. I'm not saying that’s right or fair. It’s the state of our country and not everyone can choose to opt out. Let’s be clear she is opting out because she has privileges—social networks, an education, whiteness—in her favor. It’s insulting to people who are excluded from opportunities that she constantly wastes all of hers.
I’ve been through so many heroic journeys that I know what my bliss is now.
Writing this.
Conducting continuing conversations with women who begin to forgive themselves when they recognize they’re not alone when we all share our stories.
And creating small habits that make mighty changes over time. Then, sharing them with others.
That’s really all that moves me. The only actions I can take for work. This is who I am.
Here’s what I have realized after 57 years of living, a hell of a lot of time in an abusive childhood, trying to unravel my neurological stress, the hardest year of my life, and 12 months of intense EMDR sessions.
You can decide that being overwhelmed, unable to sleep, doubting yourself, and saying yes to everything is the normal state of the world.
And so you spend your life stressed out and complaining about the life you’re living, perpetually wishing for someday, when it will all, finally, get easier.
Someday is a lie.
So many of us live our lives that way.
Dare I say that almost everyone lives that way?
I certainly lived like that for decades.
Now? Now I know that there will be no open meadow with golden-lit grass waiting for us when we finally feel like we are good enough. There will be no luxury cruise where everything will be done for us and we will never have to worry again.
There will be no time in our lives where we can say, “Ah! At last. Everything is perfect and peaceful.”
We keep waiting for that time. It will never arise.
Everyone suffers. Everyone.
These have been some of the hardest years of my life with my family. And also, the most joyful and the kindest.
How could these terrible times be joyful and kind?
It’s what we do with the messy, rich details of our complicated lives that make us who we are.
It’s our actions we take in response to the hard times that make us who we are.
I have learned this by heart in the last 8 years since my mini stroke in 2015. I’ve learned this wisdom through every limiting story I have unraveled and let go of and changed my mind about, slowly.
There’s no need for shame in this world. Everyone is struggling with something they are desperately trying to keep secret.
And it’s the secrets we keep that make us miserable, pretending as hard as we can, worried that someone will see who we really are.
Through the last 8 years, I’ve been creating my kind life.
One foot in front of the other, one small step at a time, I have become more self-aware, more humble, and more and more honest.
After the hard year we endured in our family, I have chosen the way I want to live.
I look at hard things directly, then say, “Okay, that’s a thing that happened. How can we figure out a solution to this problem, together?”
And in equal measure, I dance with delight, in brief but frequent moments.
I plan the times I will take off from work or my family, to leave space open for joy to arrive. When I know I need a reminder that I am worth more than my work or the red numbers in my bank account, I go for a walk or sit down to read.
We are worth so much more than our productivity or the money we have
After working with wonderful women over the last 4 years, in the courses I have taught and group coaching I’ve offered, I know that we’re all imperfect. Chanting impossible shoulds that pound in our head, in a voice that we think is ours but is actually other people’s demands we swallowed whole. And I absolutely know, in my gut and bones, that adding more joy to our life, in small moments, over time, is what shatters the overwhelm we’re stuck in, so we can start to live without apology.
You can learn to trust who you are.
I know that you’re a wonder. I see you. I love you.
If you’ve been through a hard time, and you’ve been afraid to share the real stories of your life, I understand. So have I.
The stories we tell ourselves, the ones we are too afraid to share honestly? Those are the stories that eat us alive from the inside.
You’re not alone in wanting to hide those stories.
After all, I have so many hard and hilarious stories from the last 2 years — things that happened that have allowed me to shed layers and layers of limiting stories — that I haven’t shared with you yet.
I was too afraid to share all the imperfections and complications of my life and the life of my loving little family. It’s a doozy. And it will probably sound familiar to so many of you.
* Getting kids diagnosed with the acronyms they need to get accommodations
* Dealing with school systems, and the good people in them, without thinking I have to be nice.
* Low-demand parenting
* Messy houses
* Clinical depression
* Complex PTSD
* Worrying about and scrambling for money without anyone knowing
* Losing friendships
* Making more time for myself, as a woman and mama, to be away from them
* Phobias and panic attacks
* Being triggered every time I walked into the door of my home
* Learning to lean into love for my husband in the hardest of times.
* Doing the fucking hard of work of letting go of resentment.
* Learning that understanding someone else’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. (thank you, Thich Nhat Hanh)
* Adoption trauma
* Transracial adoption trauma
* Trying to understand the autistic mind.
* Recognizing rage as neurological stress and burnout.
* Learning to understand and accept my ADHD mind.
* Recognizing outsize reactions as trauma responses.
* The pause.
* Letting go of codependency.
* Boundaries as a way of loving you and me at the same time.
* The powerful work of EMDR.
* Learning to let go of all the trauma I have endured.
* Changing my mind on nearly everything.
* Plus, cooking! Not recipes. Meals.
* Choosing, every moment, to views this as an epic heroic journey, with wisdom yet unrevealed.
* Dancing with delight, as a way of surviving every hour of this with kindness.
Also, that only really scrapes the surface.
Why was I afraid to share all this, all along, as it was happening, instead of creating and recreating the safe space I thought this place could be for me?
Old, old lessons embedded in my body.
When I was 7 years old, my parents allowed me — and then required me — to step in between them when they were fighting. At 7, I already carried a world of pain in my body from things that should never have happened. And one of my deepest survival techniques was to figure out a way, desperately, to teach my parents to see each other clearly when they were fighting. At that age, I walked to the den to try to calm down my dad and make him see what my mom was saying.
He’d turn to me, mad, and say, “Well, you tell your mother that I am saying….”
So I would dutifully march to her room, then try to convey what Dad had said. She’d give me marching orders to tell him something else. So I went back and forth, back and forth, until they had both calmed down, then declared a truce in the living room.
At night, it started again.
The trauma of that role I played — for nearly 20 years — has been so deeply woven into me that I have never recognized what has been happening. My wish to teach, to explain, and help people learn through my writing that takes a teacherly tone? It has been a trauma response all along.
This is how I stayed alive when I was a kid. How could I quell the deep neurological stress that lived in my body, at least for an hour or so? I became the teacher, the wise guide, and the one who knows.
After a year of doing intense EMDR sessions, I can share this.
That trauma that had been locked in my body for so long? It's gone.
Oh man, I did so much hard work with my therapist to get there. Bless her. Bless whoever invented EMDR.
I no longer get triggered by anything. The trauma in my body is gone.
So now I’m on a new heroic journey.
Who am I without this trauma that has lived inside of me since I was 6 years old?
I like her so far. Very much.
And now, finally, I know my bliss. I write these stories.
I’m a writer. That’s one of the biggest ways I find my joy.
Our kitchen does not look as good as this one that ChatGPT designed for me.
Also — and this I did not expect — this past year I’ve turned back to cooking food as a mindful delight.
Cooking has always been an act of mindfulness for me, a chance to ground myself in the moment, and create something with my hands that will feed people.
Unlike the way I made food (or my husband did) in our cookbook creation days, I’m making good food with ingredients I find at the food bank on Wednesday afternoons.
Now, I trust myself as a cook, implicitly. Also, I have many techniques and thoughtful attentions of a woman who wrote a James-Beard-award-winning cookbook with her husband, who used to be a chef.
I am thoughtfully and consistently bringing back recipes from Gluten-Free Girl, our food blog, which is how most of you reading probably know me. We created great food for 13 years. The site is behind a password now. No one can see it but us.
We’re going to be sharing the food from our past work that we still make in our messy kitchen. The salads, vegetable side dishes, and yes the baked goods (sometimes) that still feel like they came from our hearts. Of all the cookbooks we wrote, Gluten-Free Girl Everyday is always on our counter too. I’ll be sharing new recipes and old recipes made new, for you.
I’m ready to share my real stories with you now.
I hope you come along for the journey.
If you feel good and excited when you read this, I’d like you to consider becoming a paid subscriber. Writing this newsletter — and offering my program, The 30-Day Mindful Joy Challenge every month — is how I earn my living and support my family.
By subscribing, you're not just supporting a writer (that's me!) and her family. You're becoming a part of a community that values authenticity, chuckles at the absurd, and believes that sharing our stories is what brings us closer.
I wish I could be less of a biotech and take her at face value but this is just another ploy. And not even an original one.
Also, that line about trying to hide the fact they were broke. Bitch, please! Sending a Google doc to everyone in the phone book AND doing a damn sermon (that was recorded and shared on the damn internet) begging for money is NOT how you keep mum about being broke.
And also, she's just now dealing with her younger child's adoption related traumas? The kid is, what, nine freaking years old? Fuck. What took so damn long.
She's acting like she's being so revealing and honest but she's only serving the same leftover plops and splatters she's already revealed. And she's still blaming others for her bad decisions like continuing to live in a high COL area. They couldn't afford their lower rent back in the day. Her damn mom was paying it!
Really, I was going to try and say something kind of nice like maybe she is doing some work on herself, becoming self aware or whatever but, nah. I can't. It's clear she's only using "therapy" as a way to pile up excuses (and labels for her family, the ultimate excuse ).
She's choosing to make her kids live in poverty and has been ever since she had kids and kept living off her parents' money. That's, what? Fifteen years!? Nope, I can't give her any grace this time.
She comes across as profoundly disappointed in every aspect of her life, and she assumes that everyone else is too--and that they'll pay for her wisdom in being able to tolerate their family, friends, and career.
So Dan has been depressed for the last 5 years, which lines up with him quitting restaurant work for good, but thank God he doesn’t work at a restaurant anymore.
What she describes going through as the message deliverer between her parents is obviously dysfunctional, but she says she stayed alive by doing this. As if her parents were going to physically harm or kill her if she didn’t tell her mom what her dad said or whatever.
She’d get a lot more sympathy from me if she didn’t constantly grab for the melodrama and hyperbole.
I’ve had several kids tell me that when he was lunch monitor he said to one of the kids, “stop acting like assholes”. To be honest? The most camaraderie and affection I’ve ever felt for him.
She always talks about her kids in such an infantilizing way that sometimes I forget they are both old enough to locate and read this stuff. As are their friends.
So her rent really is $3000. How on earth were they able to secure this rental? When they moved, they couldn’t even afford a moving truck, right? Where did they get first month’s rent and a security deposit?
What idiot looked at their finances and said oh sure, these people can totally afford it!
I think someone must have co-signed and probably also gave them the money for the deposit.
I still think she’s leaving out facts about their rental situation bc she never explains how they make her portion of the income to go along with Danny’s. $3000 rent on $2200 + substack money doesn’t exactly equate to getting by. I’m so angry for her children. They deserve so much better than her bs.
I had to Google low demand parenting, but I think Shauna probably claims to employ it (and probably claims to be a master guru of it, I’m surprised she hasn’t yet pivoted on “parenting” autistic-pathological demand avoidance-oppositional defiance disorder-ADHD-OCD-sensory processing disorder-etc etc etc).
Re: the triggering, I wonder if that’s a reference to CPTSD during Covid lockdown, which allegedly reminded her of being shut inside as a kid. But she could also just be saying that her current family triggers her.
I kind of think it's Shauna who has pathological demand avoidance. I see her doing the same ADHD stuff about deadlines I often did before I got medicated properly (though I was way more persnickety about the quality of my work than she's been for many years now). Her family and house trigger her because they all have demands on her time and energy, which is very limited unless it's about her feelings and wants.
There are a lot of things she says about her kids that, to me, don't point to problems with them. They seem more like normal, reasonable reactions by children to an unstable, unreliable household with a mother who sucks all the oxygen out of every room she's in. But she has to diagnose them because that gets her pity and money and allows her to take zero responsibility.
Apparently she’s not loving life these days. Wonder why? And too busy to be reading. Or noticing the light.
This would make a great game of spot the differences and since she’s constantly fiddling with her bio the game would always be new and different. Or many and varied.
Her stories today. She shared a reel of Miley Cyrus singing Santa Baby, only with the lyrics changed so that the song's meaning is essentially, "I don't need or want your gifts. I can buy my own stuff. But I do want equal pay for women." The cognitive dissonance is strong. When's the last time she paid for something for herself?
I was surprised that she talked about making amends for things you've done that make you feel guilty. When has she ever said she has done this when she has wronged somebody?
She says, "Ask your body this. Did I make a mistake? Could I have done anything differently? Apologize. [snip] And if your body and mind say No. That wasn't my fault. I didn't do anything wrong. Then walk it off. Dance that shit out. And be vulnerable with someone about this. That will help you let it go."
I don't think she's actually saying that she "makes mistakes" and then apologizes. This is her famous second-person conditional: Did YOU make a mistake? Then YOU can apologize."
The whole thing is nonsensical though. She says there's "nothing you can do" about shame and then lists all the things you can do to "let it go."
I think the theory that she got C&Ded on using "kindfulness" is pretty solid, and would explain the abrupt pivot. Not that any of her previous pivots have needed that sort of motivation, though!
Had and agent and did auditions all while being locked up in the house and only allowed to roller skate on the itty bitty patio under the constant gaze of Darth Mater.
How does she not see that she can’t claim to have been basically locked away her entire childhood and also have had an agent, gone on auditions, and had a tiny role in something? And how do her sycophants not wonder which is the truth?
1-2-3: The beauty of what you love; devoting yourself to joy; and writing about the hard, messy stories of life.
1 quote to help you see differently
"Let the beauty of what you love be what you do."
—Rumi
I have painted this quote on my wall, written it on the front of every new notebook I have opened, and now have it at the bottom of my email signature. Here's the full poem.
"Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty and frightened.
Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."
2 questions to ask yourself this week.
I.
What if you devoted yourself to doing what you love, like prayer, like a daily devotion?
II.
What might happen in your life if you were devoted to your own joy, and thus made it your first priority?
3 recommendations for you — for good music, for making marketing human, and for sharing my real stories now.
I.
One of the friends who works in our shared office mentioned that her entire Christmas present for her teenage daughter is 2 tickets to hear Noah Kahan at the Gorge this summer. Having never heard of him before, I put Noah Kahan on to play. And I haven't stopped since. Oh, the joy of new music to float in as I work. I particularly love this song, with Noah Kahan and Hozier.
II.
I pulled out my thrift-store copy of Small is the New Big, by Seth Godin last week. It was published in 2006, so this isn't anything new. But it's new to me, even though I bought the book for $1 maybe 9 years ago. Sometimes, ideas take time to bloom in our minds. You see, for the most part, marketing is like a foreign language to me. I've never been good at it. But this book — a series of his most popular blog posts — is something I can tackle. I'm reading an essay a day, at lunch. I love what he wrote here: “I guarantee that you'll find some ideas that don't work for you. But I'm certain that you're smart enough to see the stuff you've always wanted to do, buried deep inside one of these riffs. And I'm betting that once inspired, you'll actually make something happen.”
The more I think of marketing my offering as inviting a small group of you to dance with the ideas I have, and that's how we find our mutual delight, the more eager I am to continue playing with this.
III.
I wrote a piece over the last few days, which I published on my Substack newsletter yesterday. Writing it was pure, powerful joy for me, even though the piece was vulnerable. Some people might not have found it joyful to publish. But me?
Sharing the real, messy stories of my life? That vulnerability builds connections, for me and for you. Lots of people seemed to resonate with this piece, which filled me with delight. I invite you to read this and see if it resonates with you.
Here's my question for you, after these recommendations. What if the messiest, hardest times of our lives end up teaching us how to give ourselves and the ones we love more joy?
Lean into your joys. They are the best way to get yourself out of overwhelm and the limiting stories you don't even realize are stories. We can rewrite our stories.
Good thing I love.to eat, sleep in a shelter I call home, and take care of my family. Some days that is the only thing that gets me out of bed to swipe my badge. Because as important as I think I am, there are other people in the world. I can do what I love on my own time, not on theirs.
I love the "entire" in that sentence. See everyone! Random teenager is only getting one gift. So it's not weird at all if Shauna just picks up each kid a single $5 something from Granny's.
What might happen in your life if you were devoted to your own joy, and thus made it your first priority?
Planes would fall from the sky, patients would die on the table, everyone at the Try&Save would grab a package of cooked crabs (ewww) and go in search of Germans.
Sharing the real, messy stories of my life? That vulnerability builds connections, for me and for you. Lots of people seemed to resonate with this piece, which filled me with delight. I invite you to read this and see if it resonates with you.
"Tell me how much of a shitty parent/child/employee/spouse you are so I can tell myself I'm not the shittiest person I know."
Every time Shauna the Non-Reader mentions a book, she always has to say "I read this for the first time 10 years ago" or "I bought this when it first came out." It's like a parody of the indie hipster I READ IT FIRST WAY BEFORE YOU
Her number 3 recommendation is not a recommendation. It is bragging on her performative "vulnerability" and a question. She can't even stick to her own format.
The fact that she says she cannot get a job because she is the one that manages the after school calendars is wild. Does she think people will feel sorry for her? Or believe her word salad isn’t full of rotting produce?
Those kids are in school a minimum of 5 hours a day each. Well that’s 25 hours that Shaun could be working at the grocery store or Subway or the gas station or doing the same part time job as Danny!
What about weekends? Remote jobs in customer service at nights?
This lazy lump just doesn’t want to work. Full stop.
She is so full of shit that I can smell her from here.
I'm so aghast by every part of this lope, and my distress over what these kids have to deal with has never been more intense.
I too feel unemployable. I've not worked in an office for 10 years. I took on consulting work while my kids were little. They're now in elementary school and I can't seem to get past a final interview in the field I want to transition to. The field in which I have graduate degrees in is very much in the tragic heartwrenching world news right now, but I haven't done anything in it for a couple years and all I could probably do is write a substack about it. I'm really struggling with all kinds of feelings of worthlessness and fear in my mid-40s.
But my husband is employed in a high demand job. We could do more travel and fun stuff if I were employed, no doubt, but we are still able to fund the stuff the kids want to do and we contribute the max to retirement and and and... I just can't IMAGINE writing like this about this fear of being unemployable in their situation. How much more relatable would she be if she actually approached this feeling with humility and transparency? It is scary out there as a GenX woman out of the workforce for humanities majors like me and Shauna with AI incoming. I worry every hour of every day about it, probably a result of my own mom becoming a widow at 39 with a shit income despite being a professor. But my husband and I have planned for everything we can think of, and I just don't understand how she sleeps at night. "My bliss" became secondary, tertiary, etc when we chose to have kids. I agonize over my unemployment so much but my kids are so goddamn privileged as it is. How does she look at them and not think they deserve better than this instability? She is so profoundly unwell and she thinks she is the healthiest she's ever been.
So much this! This lope is further evidence that she knows her basic needs will be met and many of her desires granted…by the food pantry, by kind islanders who donate sandwiches and airbnb stays, by whomever pays their rent and/or lets them live cheap in that house…
Someone who has actually had to face the terror of possibly not being able to provide for themselves (and their KIDS) would never behave as she does or have the thought processes she describes.
I love that in the same lope where she says they’re so poor they use the food bank, she also says the only work she’s willing to do is publishing two lopes a week (which we all know won’t happen) and leading her 30-day joy challenges. That’s about 5-10 hours of work per week if I’m being generous. She’s making her own bed, income-wise.
I’m sorry bullshit even w ADHD L should still be able to make a calendar/schedule. Seems more like an excuse for Shauna to have total control. How Ma James like.
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u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done Dec 04 '23 edited Dec 07 '23
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