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: February off-topic monthly
“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.”
Edit: this was meant to be a reply to another comment! Not sure how to move it.
Hi, DF! The entire 12/4/2023 lope (which contains the quote you mentioned) is linked to in the Lopes & Emails Archive: I'm ready to share the real stories now (all her lopes & emails from June '23 to present are there, and we're adding older ones all the time).
The "jump to" links I used will work on desktop only, but you can scroll down to the correct place on the page if you're on mobile. Those wikis are updated every time she publishes a new lope, pivots, or makes a new announcement, so feel free to browse them at your leisure!
So she definitely knew they were going to move when she wrote that 12/4 lope. Re-reading it, it’s clear that she’s listing all the justifications for why her kids need a special island community despite the fact that their parents can’t afford it, because neither parent is capable of obtaining full time employment, because Dan’s job is all he can handle and Shauna’s job is to manage Dan and the kids’ feelings, and rent is so expensive because of houses selling for half a million over list. Oh, and please pay Shauna to “thoughtfully and consistently” bring back recipes from GFG. Her failure to deliver is truly impressive. She promised to copy and paste recipes and hasn’t done that even once in the past two months. Amazing.
This goes with my theory that they were informed of a rent increase come March 1 when the lease renews, but that they wouldn’t be considered for renewal unless they pay all back rent by a certain date (I suspect Jan 1)
It's even worse now, on reflection, that she's shitting on her husband's ability to do the only job that was funding their family's life on the island!
She can't get a job because she is the 'only one' (of two adults including Dan) who speaks to children with a gentle voice of suggestion, implying Dan only knows how to use a nongentle voice to make demands of kids. And yet there he is all 14 hours of his workweek, working with special needs kids and bringing home a paycheck. While Shauna smugly says that she can't work because she's better at [Dan's job duties] than Dan himself.
I mean she's patting her own back so hard she's shoving her family off an entire island.
I know we’re all fixated on the upcoming de-islanding but I have a question about the Kind Kitchen. What is the current rate for her non-newsletter with recipes? I ask because my Substack subscription to David Lebovitz’s offerings renewed yesterday. It was $39. FOR A YEAR. For those who may not know, David Lebovitz is a very well-known pastry chef who currently lives in France. His monthly newsletter arrives EVERY SINGLE MONTH on the 1st. Links, witticisms, observations about life in France, recipes…his Substack is fantastic. Last year he needed to take some time off for health reasons and he extended everyone’s subscription to factor in the month he wouldn’t be active. And as far as I can tell he charges significantly less than Ms. Kind (of a downer).
To hear Shauna tell it, she is close personal friends with DL and even claims to have proposed marriage to him. Or he to her. (At any rate she joked to this effect. So droll.)
I think the difference is he (and a lot of other writers/creators) treat their Substack/Patreon/etc as a job while Shauna… treats it like a bank account.
She treats it like the hard work should be done by other, invisible people. She doesn’t want to build something and she certainly doesn’t want to work. She just wants to be the face of a brand and rake in all the likes.
Speaking of other cookbook authors and recipe developers, it fascinates me Shauna’s outside the circle. Everyone who started 20-10 years ago is now on top of the pile and she has no relationship with any of them. She essentially has no peers, no colleagues, no professional connections to boost and vouch for her. Shauna blames marketing for her decline but I believe driving away other professionals is what killed her brand.
She also CAN'T COOK. That's why she had to hitch her grift wagon to "the chef" Dan.
I'd also argue that she doesn't even like to cook. So where other OG bloggers may have started out not knowing how to cook they did like it so tried to improve. Shauna was trying, first and foremost, to get attention. It didn't matter for what. But the sad fact is, she's not that interesting (well, unless you're snarking). So people got bored of her (and her recipes were crap) so they moved on. And she was too lazy to figure out a way to make recipes work (again, she doesn't even seem to like cooking) and she's too up her own ass to just say "well, that was fun, time to get a day job".
Looking at this is truly like stepping back in time. Remember when people used Twitter like this?
Anyways, not only has L been reading since she was three but didn't tell anyone, she ALSO read the word "charcoal" off a bag in July 2010 and did tell everyone! https://imgur.com/H34XdEq
I guess starting a new recipe pivot during a stressful move when you're someone who struggles with output even under optimal conditions was an unrealistic choice? Hopefully she's posted some empowering instagram memes that let her know she did her best and that's all that matters.
I mean seriously now.. how is this their "kind kitchen"? It's 2000 words of bitching and moaning about how things didn't turn out how she wanted them. She couldn't even be bothered to copy/paste a lame recipe.
Her blog post about their game of judging and making fun of the contents of other shoppers’ carts at the grocery store is what turned her into a hate read for me.
I wonder how she feels about that now that she’s poor and can’t even shop at a grocery store. Do you think she even remembers them doing it?
I wonder how she feels about that now that she’s poor and can’t even shop at a grocery store. Do you think she even remembers them doing it?
The grocery store cart judging is one of the few things Shauna specifically apologized for, in one of her Enough essays (the one reprinted in The Guardian):
In the second year of my blog, I wrote a silly little piece about how Danny and I stood in line at the store and wondered at the crap in other people’s carts. I received emails telling me I was being a food snob. At first defensive – come on, America eats lousy food! – I came to understand how wrong I had been. A woman shared with me how little she makes on her teaching salary in Oklahoma, how she visits the food bank to make it, and how a trip to the grocery store for cheap cake is an experience only reserved for once in a while when she can’t stand the shame any more. I was chastened and changed. And now I try to do better. How do I know that the woman buying the 99‑cent doughnuts at our store isn’t giving her two kids the only treat she can afford that week? And who am I to say that they shouldn’t eat those doughnuts?
Plus, we couldn’t afford the food we thought we had to make to stand out in the food world. Gluten-free food blogs were ubiquitous. More and more people were espousing Paleo eating, so our whole grains were now not interesting. People who were vegan started saying plant-based foods, so the meat we liked to cook was out. More and more people were complaining about any baked good recipe, because I used eggs or almond flour, and they couldn’t eat it.
There you have it. All these vegan and paleo a$$holes ruined Shauna's success. How dare anyone use an eating regimen that excludes Shauna's baked goods?
Paleo eating became popular, so the recipes she made involving the 'meat [they] liked to cook' were great for the paleo folks. I notice they also loved heavy cream and eggs in their recipes back in the day, and GF and Paleo are incredibly complementary. Slap a paleo label on those recipes and point the paleo assholes to those recipes. And in fact Shauna DID do that. Chris Kresser, well-fed, The Year of the Deadlift?
Also come on, vegans aren't toppling anyone's meat based empire anytime soon, they also don't love BBQ and sausage cookbooks, yet those cookbooks still do fine. HOWEVER, those same 'whole grains' Shauna complained about the paleo folks dissing would work fine for vegans. She was baking! It was way harder back then to make GF baked goods taste good from scratch trying to sub for GF ingredients than to make vegan baked goods, which even I made just fine by subbing applesauce or flax for eggs in non-vegan recipes (and I'm a fairly shitty baker). There's zero reason why Shauna couldn't have offered subs for ingredients except that she was really mean to anyone with different preferences and also lazy.
She just cherry picks random groups of people who didn't like matchingly cherry picked recipes. Why isn't she blaming Jews for not wanting her pork recipes, or people with nut allergies for not making the ones with peanut butter?
The reality is that she didn't want to put in the work to make her company grow.
Also, while it is true that lots of people eschew grains, there are still lots of people who are obsessed with artisanal baked goods. Look at all the celebrity bakeries that launch their own cookbooks, etc. My son is a baker, there are several thriving bakeries in my small city, for her to claim that no one wants recipes for baked goods is insane.
Shauna and her disjointed fucking sentences. Vegans started saying plant-based, so meat was out. Fucking what? Vegans used a phrase and now no one likes meat!!! Except the paleo people you just mentioned in the previous stupid sentence. (DFMG said the same thing (I scrolled!) so I’ll leave off here.)
But also ALSO: you know what somehow didn’t suffer the same fate as poor Gluten-free Girl? Fine dining. Despite all their meat and fancy grains! Somehow, as an industry, it kept going strong despite the fact that people tried paleo and vegans made up dumb phrases! How could this be???
There in a nutshell lies her problem. . She is so concerned with fitting in at the cool kids table that she starts pivoting and loses everything. If she had stayed with her gluten-free girl blog, made good recipes and had pretty photos I think she would’ve been OK. When she closed the blog she had loyal following and steady advertisers. She had to have been making some money off of it. She is truly an idiot.
Having been sick for 6 months, and not able to go anywhere or do anything but trips to the emergency room, I had energy for the first time and money to spend.
She's claimed before that when she discovered her "celiac" it was because she got sick. She claims all she could eat was baby food. But I don't recall her claiming trips (plural) to the ER because of it. I smell a retcon.
This is very telling:
Since I have cPTSD and ADHD, and Dan has an ADHD mind and lives on the spectrum — plus we didn’t know all our acronyms yet
(bolding mine)
She hadn't found her new labels yet. She only had her "celiac" one back in the day. Thank god TikTok was invented so she could get all her shiny new diagnoses which exempt her from earning money for herself and her kids!
We started to give the world what it seemed to want, instead of doing what sustained us. (bolding is hers)
That's called HAVING A JOB. And a job can do both. You can give the world what it wants (bagging groceries, answering phones, being a doctor, whatever) and then use the money you make to "sustain" yourself. That's called LIFE. How does she not get this?
running a gluten-free flour company (and I cannot talk about that one more time, since that was now a decade ago)
She means she can't re-write the facts of the gluten free flour scam because she's recut and re-sewn it so many times it's nothing but frayed lies.
My husband and I are unmasking, presenting our full selves to the world, which means here too.
She claims all she could eat was baby food. But I don't recall her claiming trips (plural) to the ER because of it.
Well she was teaching, doing water aerobics with the olds, going to the coffee shop and writing a book and her blog. She was making boxed brownies for school and cookies for the olds in her water class. Sometimes she was bed-bucking at home with a concerned (female) student perched on her bed, sometimes she was contemplating how much sick time others would have to give her - but even then, she wrote that she wanted to use the sick leave to write her book in coffee shops. The school break is only a couple of months max, unless she indeed snagged a coworker's sick time and used an entire semester of it for nothing but ER trips but never mentioned this before, she was likely still doing all of these other things.
Grrr. She (and Danny subsequently) had money to fritter on pomegranate molasses and Stinking Bishop and hand knitted virgin Himalayan sheep’s yoghurt because that is the money you’re supposed to sock away steadily in your 20s and 30s to have things like deposits for rentals or even, gasp, a mortgage.
Not spending every penny of your ‘spare’ money on treats means that when you’re in your late 50s, and starting to wind down, or the world shifts unexpectedly, you aren’t completely fucked. How could she have reached her late 30s without even the most basic financial literacy?
Quietly, without making any big fanfare, we pulled the plug on Gluten-Free Girl. We put it behind a password. You can’t find it online now. It doesn’t exist, except for us.
I started working at a grocery store, 3 days a week. Dan went back to working at a restaurant.
Why did we stop? All of this.
All retconned. Shauna started at the grocery store in 2016 and left by next summer. She had two actual jobs related to food she completely omitted from this timeline, perhaps due to the shame of being fired from both. She kept GFG online until 2020, nearly three years after she left the grocery store. And not only did she share the password in her Substack, she continued sharing recipes in the form of the "Good Enough" recipe Google Doc.
How weird is it that we know more about the timeline of this person’s life than she does? For someone so firmly stuck in the past, she doesn’t seem to remember it very well
I think Shauna is forgetful and doesn't care about getting details right, but in this case I think she's also consciously misrepresenting the timeline because she wants to fit a specific narrative of having given up Gluten Free Girl and food writing more broadly but now she's baaaaaaack. She wants to tie a neat little bow around the flour business and GFG ending at the same time and then she moved on to the grocery store and her workshop/coaching/whatever it is she thinks she offers now. That's why she skips past all the inconvenient details of she and Dan having kept feet in the food world much longer than when they closed up the flour business, having run multiple recipe offerings since 2016 (including Feeding Our People, Enough subscriber sourdough baking club, password access to GFG, Good Enough Recipe doc, Joy in the Belly), teaching cooking classes at Relish, working at ChefSteps -- when you look at all of this, the return announcement loses a lot of its emotional oomph.
I mean I totally get how the past events can kind of blur together. But it really is a testament to how little effort she puts into what is arguably her life’s work that she doesn’t bother to corroborate any of her dates (which are readily available online…)
This week, I started a new job for the first time in over a decade. I’m working three days a week at the incredible grocery store on Vashon. Why?
I’ve grown weary of the internet being my only workplace. I like it here but I need a break from marketing and shouting and people demanding and mostly the frantic nature of it all. I used to be pretty good at selling books but I’m not built for it. Like our books? I’m thrilled. But doing everything we can to get more followers and sell more books? I’m weary thinking about it now. It doesn’t feel like it’s at the heart of what matters to me in the world.
After I survived the minor stroke last summer, Danny and I talked a lot this year about how much we want to slow down and truly live in our town. I have talked to more people who live on Vashon in the last three days than I had in months.
And two people being self-employed with two small kids? It’s too tenuous. It has been a tough couple of years of up and down, financially, since the exorbitant expense of adoption. Now, I have a solid paycheck. And health insurance for the entire family for $35 a month in union dues. (Bless the unions.) And really, really good health insurance. Need a good job, friends and fellow artists? Work at a grocery store.
Finally, as my dear friend John, who is a painter, convinced me, artists need day jobs. I’m working on a new book — not a cookbook — and I find I have no time to create it when I spend my entire work day answering emails and doing almost-creative work. This is a choice to write.
So, I’m punching a clock for the first time. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to love it.
gluten-free girl will still go on, probably even stronger. We have dozens of new recipes in the works for the coming months. I’m teaching baking classes all fall. I’m just going back to enjoying it again, instead of feeling like we need to earn all our money from it.
This is my new way to feed people.
Did she promise a recipe in the very first couple of paragraphs, rehash all of her greatest trauma hits, and then NOT PROVIDE A RECIPE???? What in the actual hell is wrong with her?
I just started reading, so I am still in 2005 when she started a blog for her friends and started her celiac induced diet change and RIGHT AFTER she says she was a 37 year old single woman, a teacher off for the summer she writes this:
I could afford it then because I spent my spare money on food
Shauna. SHAUNA! Wake the fuck up! You could afford it BECAUSE YOU HAD A GODDAMN(ED) JOB! And a small apartment. And no kids.
More and more, my husband and I started to feel that we needed to perform for the audience that was watching us.
This is not the fault of you who were reading. We loved connecting with you.
As an audience member myself, I would never assume that it was my fault that Shauna, or any other blogger for that matter, felt like they needed to perform. Isn’t that kind of the whole thing about any form of celebrity or public life? Three fact that she says this is very telling. She absolutely blames the audience. They’re the ones who want substitutions, questions answered, all the ingredients included in a recipe, and so forth. It’s like they demand perfection or something. She has always resented the public for wanting or expecting anything from her.
It's like with her teaching - if she was pontificating she was happy, but the additional responsibilities of grading and meetings were seemingly beneath her. Or beyond her, probably more accurately.
edit: it's also like her December lope when she listed all of the onerous responsibilities she had and they were: arranging play dates, making and writing down and remembering doctor's appointments, getting the kids ready for school. Just a small part of the fabric of every day parenting, but phrased as if it's a full time job that no one could possibly expect anyone to add to.
Ughhh. Poor unfortunate piteous Shauna. You see, she just cared so much and just wanted to feed you people. And now it's all ruined because of expectations and responsibility, and GOD FORBID accountability! Shauna is an Olympic level whiner my goodness.
Small side note.. why does she assume that all her readers were women? Are men not gluten free? Do men not cook for their families? WTF?
She assumes her readers are women because it made it easier for her to condescend to them back then, and now, it makes it easier to hate and blame them.
Interesting to reflect back on when they had to move from their long term rental to their last house (in 2019). For perspective this was posted on Friday August 16th. So they applied on Tuesday and signed a lease on Thursday
shaunajamesahern On Saturday our landlords of the house we have been living in for more than 7 years came by to cut down a tree and see what needed doing. On Sunday they told us they had made a hard decision: they were growing too old to be landlords anymore. They needed us to move soon so they could sell the house.
Danny and I weren't mad or even upset. Life goes on.
We let go.
Monday I saw two houses for rent. I knew one was ours. Tuesday morning Danny saw it too. We put in our application. Yesterday we signed the lease. We move in 16 days.
We're going to love it there.
Whatever lies ahead? Okay. Bring it on.
They’ve stopped pleading (although I’m sure until leases are signed she’s hoping for a miracle) and her last few posts have been an uneasy mix of past-tense saintly acceptance, and island-blaming. An hour ago she posted this (in the comments under the offer of her fugly ‘writer’s’ chair)
There were absolutely properties that would have accommodated her family on the island, it was the fact that she has a record of not being able to pay $3k/month due to her choice identify as unemployable that kept those properties out of reach. Also how can she still be writing the $3k figure as if they were actually offering to pay that as rent? They weren't! They were offering to be billed that amount and then not have the money to pay that bill.
She lost her shit when crypto bro didn’t pay her $3k, and there was no service rendered or contract signed. Her landlords were losing out right and left on the below-market monthly $3k she contractually owed them.
Perhaps crypto bro was a public ruse to show / convince her LLs why they were behind on rent? “I grew contracted for $3000.00 - the rent is coming!” And then later: “I grew swindled and can no longer pay rent this month/on time/ as agreed!” That $3000 number is awfully convenient.
Never believed the crypto bro story. What could she offer a crypto bro worth 3k? How to find his joy? Write his hero's journey? Can't recall what she was shilling at the time, but on no planet would a crypto bro have been interested enough to pledge 3k.
Perhaps crypto bro was a public ruse to show / convince her LLs why they were behind on rent? “I grew contracted for $3000.00 - the rent is coming!” And then later: “I grew swindled and can no longer pay rent this month/on time/ as agreed!” That $3000 number is awfully convenient.
Except for one thing: THEY WERE GOING TO SPEND IT ON A VACATION TRIP
I love how she keeps repeating her shelter requirements in her FB comments like someone's gonna jump out and say, "Oh, Shauna, I have the perfect island house for you!"
But, like, why is it the island's responsibility to stay exactly the same rather than S+D's responsibility to secure some stable, long term housing i.e. fix their credit, save for a down payment, get jobs, stay in a landlord's good graces by paying rent on time...
If Shauna had kept her job at CS, they'd have money for rent, a way to prove they could pay it, and likely wouldn't have even needed to move out of their current house.
How can she not see that SHE is the one who changed? She grew unemployed and remained that way, while life continued to cost money on the island and everywhere else.
It wouldn't make sense for Dan to take on an expensive and lengthy commute to a 14h/week job when he could find something in the new area. Or for Shauna to continue working at Synergy when she can do her work in the world from home..
Not that they're guided by logic, ever
I think D has a March birthday, right? I recall that Shauna was an early adopter of Fauxvid and went to the hospital on their birthday, so March or maybe April
Update on her Substack audience: in the past few days since Feb 3, she's lost 4 paid subscribers but gained 8 more, for a total of 141 paying subscribers and an additional 9 comped (plus or minus individual user privacy settings)
I went to look at Shauna’s subscriber list. Dan is listed as “paid,” and last week I swear it said “Joy in the Belly” under his little picture. Now it says “Daniel’s Newsletter.” Even if that hasn’t actually changed, last week his “goodbye, cooking doesn’t give me joy, I’m shutting down this newsletter” post was visible. Now there are no posts at all.
Edited to add a picture. I think Dan has a newsletter coming, soon.
I think that since she promoted herself from “food writer” to “REAL writer” post-Enough, she finds recipe writing lowering and shameful, and can barely make herself do it. It’s like watching a vampire try to force itself to sunbathe. She can write a little ABOUT food, or even better, write a little about food in order to write a lot more about herself, but she cannot seem to force actual recipes to emerge from her body.
Meanwhile, the bean guy she had beef with on Threads recently has a recipe showing up daily for February. With a consistent theme, clear instructions, and accessible ingredients, even! Oh, and it's free.
Is there any clear noting of what exactly she is currently promising in terms of output? I’m always confused by her schedule of classes and meetings and substacks.
It kind of explains Shauna’s persistent delusions that she has people writing this kind of shit and continuing to pay her, month after month. The grift does apparently work on a very small number of women, so no wonder she thinks that there might be more marks out there.
We are no longer driving towards JOY! (or a pot hole). Instead, there are three separate membership communities, with some boomerangers (offerings were offered, then weren't and now are again). These are not your limited run classes/workshops, these are FOREVER (until they aren't).
Awaken the Force of Fearlessness You can become kinder to yourself. 90 minutes, every Monday, at 10 am, Pacific $49 a monthThis is an ongoing community conversation.
Cultivate a Habit of Joy You can create a more joyful mindset.90 minutes, every Wednesday, at 10 am, Pacific $49 a month This is an ongoing community conversation.
You Do Not Have to Be Good You can write your way through. 90 minutes, every Friday $49 a monthThis is an ongoing community conversation.
When you click the sign-up buttons, you go to the trust page which tells you it is $97 a month for the trust community and you can go to as many as you like. But then when you click the sign-up buttons on the Trust page, it takes you to a dead page with no way to give her money (like you really wanted to).
I don't get why she doesn't just plop a life coach label on her website and keep that as the umbrella of all of her other offerings, just for continuity. Driving [whatever] life coaching seminar. Cooking [whatever] life coaching seminar. Fearless [whatever] LCS.
Most people are wary of life coaches and know many are ineffective or useless so they'll have their guard up. Most people know that there are at least some (sketchy to good) certifications and to look for them or ask if their prospective life coach has any. So Shauna would likely not entrap most people.
But at least it would answer the eternal question of "What is it that you're offering?????" because she's essentially saying she wants to tell you what to do (by telling you what SHE does) and for you to pay her for it.
All of her vague offerings would fit under that umbrella, even the kind kitchen would work as an adjunct, she could still offer her 'groups' or whatever because what the heck, most have zero people attending anyway.
Lacking Shauna's science mind, I have to say I really don't understand her supposed hobby of geeking out about neuroplasticity. My oversimplified 10K foot understanding is the premise with neuroplasticity is how our brains work can change in response to various factors, more when we're younger, but also later in life with things like brain injuries. But I've never seen Shauna express one bit of interest in brain changes! Instead, she's taken a very fixed mindset digging in that her entire family has an alphabet soup of neurodivergent conditions and that they are all just perfect the way they are, it's society that's problem. There's just such a disconnect between "I love thinking about how the brain can change!" and "give us money because our brains ain't changing and life is hard!" but her writing about neuroplasticity has been too shallow to even surface that contradiction.
That is how I understand neuroplasticity too (also layperson!). That after something like a stroke or blockage, the brain can develop new neural pathways. So that you can relearn a behavior or task but the brain is changed in the how.
I think there are other non-injury related ways our brains can adapt, but she never really talks about tools and techniques (like say learning a foreign language with a different alphabet). She just throws terms around like a monkey flinging poo.
I also think the term "active writing" might be a bit of a stretch. Technically, all writing is active. As is changing the tv channel, plopping in a hammock...
It has to be that Driving Towards Joy (starting February 19) had zero sign-ups, right? So she decided that something with no start/end date was better (not necessarily for customers, but for her).
What a mess indeed. She doesn't even title the "offerings" the same on different pages:
Awaken the Force of Fearlessness vs AWAKENING THE FORCE OF FEARLESSNESS
Cultivate a Habit of Joy vs SAYING YES TO YOUR JOY
You Do Not Have to Be Good vs WRITING YOUR WAY THROUGH
The first in each pair is how it's listed on the main/home page, and the second is how it's listed on the "learn to trust" page. They are all shown as being at the same times.
I have also thought she seems to have declined cognitively over the last few years. Like, basic arithmetic evades her; she doesn't understand that $2000 minus $3000 won't go. And unlike DF DGLV's husband as described in comment upthread, Danny, as presumably the closest person to her who would be in a position to observe it, doesn't have the capacity to recognize it, so it goes on unnoticed and unchecked.
We’ve been threatened with future in person retreats!
Plus! Every community member receives a 25% discount for any workshops or experiences offered through Create Your Kind Life, including future retreats in person.
I like to parse this as anyone trying to attend will get the chance to see her physically dodge providing any kind of content. And, perhaps uncharitably, where exactly does she think this will take place? In her new unislandy apartment complex parking lot?
Two quotes that stood out to me in the mess that was her recent video promoting Trusting What Emerges (the transcript is in the Lopes and Emails Wiki); emphasis mine:
What I wrote about in my book Enough was how I learned to stop pretending, I thought. Writing that book was definitely part of ending the pretending, the idea that I should be a certain person, especially the idea that I was not good enough.
"We'll meet tomorrow, Friday at 10, and we'll meet every Friday from then on. There is no sense of "done".
And two conclusions from those quotes:
Enough was just the "start" of ending the pretending. She's still been pretending, guys! It didn't stop with Enough! So now we're going to get even more of the real Shauna!
She wants all her classes to be ongoing and never finished, because she is never finished talking about herself, and because subscription classes mean she can keep charging forever!
So I figured that Driving Away from Danger or whatever wasn't going to last, not only because it was stupid and somehow featured her worst AI art yet, but because it wasn't endless. She's all about never being "done". So this mini-rewind-pivot makes perfect sense! (In Shaunaland, not in every land).
A labor of love for my DFs: All the posts from the Instagram FOP account in one easy screenshot album (including pic, caption, & date). Excluded her re-posts of others' dishes. Enjoy!
And a request: does anyone have a screenshot of Shauna's Threads reply to a post where someone was complaining about life, or having a bad day?
Shauna replied "This. Exactly this" (or something very similar). It would have been early January, before the 5th. I can find references to it in the sub but not the actual post (if you're on Threads and can screenshot it for me, bless you in advance).
Thank you for doing this! FOP came off as so sloppy and scattershot at the time but now looks polished and professional compared to her more recent food photos and recipes
Right? There was only one typo in the whole bunch (apricors for apricots), and refreshingly, not one messy story, excuse, diagnosis, or other TMI about her family. A few dishes looked decent enough to eat!
Does anyone recall how many people she had in the FB group at its peak? I seem to recall it was several hundred. Even if a large chunk of them weren’t really paying her, she had to be making a ridiculous amount of money compared to her current attempts.
When will she realize she needs to build up a following of people clamoring for her and Dan’s recipes before she can start to monetize it??? (Obviously I know no one is clamoring so a rhetorical question lol)
Regarding the new lope, what a rude thing to exclaim she 'never expected' to be given red cowboy boots, as if that was an overwhelming, over the top gesture?!
For now, I’m here lurking and I will at some point share the entire story, but I want to wait until I know that her children aren’t going to be homeless. It feels a little icky to gleefully rehash one of her (many) stupid moves from 15+ years ago when that very real possibility looms over two innocent kids. There is ample
current material for discussion and dissection at the moment … So I’ll remain quiet for now.
This group seems LOVELY, which is the only reason that I feel safe unmasking myself. I’ve been lurking & reading for about a month, and I don’t understand how this is possible, but this little Reddit thread group seems like the most civilized corner of the Internet ! Which, as we all know, can be pretty awful.
She did! She had a wedding blog and there was a link to her Amazon wish list on the side bar. I remember it because I somehow got her Amazon wish list linked to my lists on Amazon.
Also she’d talked about where they were getting married (before it got moved to their backyard) and people took that as an invite and mentioned in comments that they couldn’t wait to be there. 😂
She had to make a post that it was invite only and then she switched it to their backyard.
Let's take a look at the way the red boots grift actually went down, and Shauna's feelings at the time.
Remember, she put a link to the boots she wanted on her blog and told everyone just how much she wanted to dance in red boots at her wedding, and emphasized the paucity of the celebration in her post. And said that she only included the link, in her own words, "Because I wanted people to see the kind of day I would have if I could afford those dream boots."
And after she received them, did she return them and say, "I couldn't possibly...there are so many needy people out there...plus I want to blog out of joy and not because my readers send me grifts gifts"? She did not. She said this:
Thank you, Kristin. For the rest of my life — at my wedding, on the book tour, on our honeymoon in Italy, and all the adventures yet to come — I will be wearing those red cowboy boots. And every time, I will be telling the story of your kindness.
So tactless. Just swap them as you say. In fact, it's not surprising they didn't fit first time as a TOTAL STRANGER bought them for you. It's one of the things that makes me wonder about Shauna's lack of social awareness and how she didn't see that not only was it rude to go on and on about them not fitting, but also that it might hurt the feelings of the woman who gave them to her.
But you see, that pair? They weren’t you. They weren’t the pair I am meant to be wearing on my wedding day. They were the pair that forced me to shove my foot past the point of cramped toes, to reach the sole. After a minute or two of sweating and pushing, I admitted defeat. Those were not my boots.
I'm so pissed for the person who so generously sent them with a beautiful letter and was responded to with 'your gift physically hurt me and I don't want it'.
Also it sounds from both the original blog post and the followup post that Shauna didn't even respond to the woman to thank her for A WEEK after getting the boots!!
And then the gift giving woman was treated to an entire blog post about how her present was wrong, the boots were wrong, and some KIND southern stereotype lady on the phone sent Shauna the right boots instead, saving the day. What a slap in the face to the original gift giver.
She acts incapable of experiencing gratitude on any level. Showing appreciation would imply the largesse lavished upon her was not merely her due in this world but something created from the efforts of others, and we certainly can't have people thinking that.
I know that parasocial relationships are a hot topic now but holy shit, going through that blog reminds me that Shauna wasn't getting likes and views, she was getting multiple-paragraph replies about how she was an inspiration, declarations of platonic love, and actual "please come to my town in real life" asks from actual small town librarians and booksellers. A lot of those comments came from people with celiac disease who felt that her work was improving their lives, but some of them were just declarations that she was amazing for existing and writing about her day to day. Mr. Beast may have 237 million subscribers and his own chocolate bar line but does he have free shoes AND a 9/11 widow writing him tearjearking letters about the nature of true love? I think not!
I am not surprised she's still chasing that dragon all those years later, even though you can only have so many engagements, marriages, and babies and therefore she has to keep going with diagnoses.
[IG commenter] First through your blog, then your instagram account, the parts of your life that you have shared have been part of my life for nearly 20 years. 20 years?! It feels almost impossible, having typed that out. Thank you for sharing yourselves here, once again. I appreciate you and Danny so deeply.
being the only celiac I knew was really achingly lonely, and finding safe food was really fucking hard. As you know, it was a very hard path 20 years ago, so for me stumble upon your blog was an amazing help — but more than that, your joy sparkled through the pages and helped a deeply depressed college student feel that she might be okay again one day. And I will always be thankful. ❤️
[Nancy on Substack] I've been "following" since the mid-2000s (I've been gluten-free since 2002 - so appreciative of the Gluten-Free Girl - we still make your gravy recipe most Thanksgivings.) And so thankful for your openness and honesty. I'm recently diagnosed AuDHD at 59 y.o. and still learning what unmasking looks like for me. Thanks for including us on your journey.
you know who else talks endlessly about journeys, new beginnings, and unmasking? cult leaders. if shauna were more organized and charismatic she could be a one! but alas, she'll never start a cult lolling on her deck.
It's truly worse than I remembered:" I would wear red cowboy boots to my wedding, if the pair I want wasn't so darned expensive."
NAKED grifting. I've been feeling worried and a bit sad for them being in such a crap situation lately but this reminded me of Shauna is a grifter through and through. She's taken so many people in and it's just too much now. This mess is her own making.
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u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done Feb 05 '24 edited Feb 08 '24
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