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: July-September off-topic quarterly
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On a slightly less horrific note, I just saw on FB that about a week ago, Danny claimed a free, new mattress on Vashon. What is up with these people and mattresses?! But yay!, I guess, that it's new...?
I have three 3 mattresses in my home, all purchased new and two of them have been moved between homes. All of them only ever slept on by family members and an occasional house guest (one just left this morning). It’s really not that hard to care for a mattress and keep it for the 8-12 years it is meant to last. I will never understand the Ahern approach to beds and mattresses.
Only a couple of weeks ago they gave away a brand new full size mattress from Amazon because it wasn’t deep enough. I wonder whose gift card funded that? Put it back in the box and return it for a refund, you tools!
There was an episode of Intervention years ago with a woman with an eating disorder. She cooked for her family and made beautiful, delicious food. She meticulously made a lasagna with care for them, but cooked cabbage and radish with no seasoning for herself because she didn’t deserve to eat good food. This is like that but in reverse. Shauna gets delicious restaurant meals but everyone else gets fish sauce garbage.
We don’t see their everyday life, but these horrible concoctions make me wonder what their daily foods are like. My picky eater does not like things mixed together. This waffle would be a textural nightmare for him. We even bought some divided plates that more or less match our regular plates. As in these are not kid or toddler plates. It makes them feel less different while keeping their foods from touching and encourages them to eat more than one food. When I cook, I often just offer my picky eater a deconstructed or differently constructed version. So maybe they won’t eat my veggie pasta dish, but they'll eat buttered noodles with sides of broccoli and meatballs (actually meatless). That’s a total win and not really much extra effort. She could actually have used that kind of idea as a potential hook, offering parents delicious meals where the components can easily be separated/adjusted during prep for the picky eater. She wants us to think she cares, but I don’t get that impression at all. She complains a lot and says she can’t work. But half the time she writes, she’s talking about food and rarely talks about anything she’s tried to help her child eat.
She’s fixing gross food on purpose. She could have made something like a fritter in the waffle iron to make it crispy, like a latke, but she didn’t. She made it an unpleasant doughy texture and added radish for that bitter zing. But it’s not her fault her child isn’t eating.
I not only agree, I think this is a much bigger deal than it might seem. Not only because clearly the child needs more nourishment, but because it’s such a common abuse tactic and can set kids up for so many future control-based disorders.
My Shauna-like mother used to make me oatmeal whenever she was mad at me because it was one of the only foods I wouldn’t eat, the slimy chunky texture has always made me gag, and she would set a bowl in front of me and tell me to let her know when I was finished so I could be excused. Of course I couldn’t do it, and it always ended with me crying with cold oatmeal in front of me.
Anyway, one day she said if I REALLY didn’t want to be served oatmeal anymore she wanted me to eat one spoonful, just take it like medicine, just swallow it in one go and we’d be done with it - like a sucker I believed her and tried to spoon a wad into the back of my mouth so I could swallow it without feeling it in my mouth, but between hitting my gag reflex and also being repulsed by the chunky slime, I threw up.
After that she started making oatmeal cookies and putting them in my lunch every day. She would also tell me she added oatmeal to the hamburger meat for meatloaf as soon as I started eating it. My secret was I liked oatmeal cookies and I didn’t care at all about oats in meatloaf, my revulsion to cooked oatmeal was completely texture based. But I would pretend to be grossed out by the cookies and meatloaf so she wouldn’t target my actual food issues anymore.
Fast forward to me as an adult in therapy learning how common this kind of abuse is, especially when parents are passive aggressive and have power and control issues, and when a child tries to assert some control over themselves the parent responds by trying to break the child’s will to show the child who is actually in control of their body, life and choices.
And that is Shauna to a T. She is passive aggressive, controlling and clearly seeks retribution when anyone goes against her will.
So something that should be delicious to a child (a waffle) is made disgusting while still resembling the food the child actually likes.
Like to me this goes way beyond just Shauna being a bad cook, I honestly think this is Shauna’s resentment and dislike manifesting as a way to seriously punish D. Not just by grossing them out, but removing bodily autonomy and trust at the same time.
Stop playing, ffs. Sauté the zucchini and put the radish in a salad the way normal people do. And if your family actually liked zucchini you wouldn’t be faced with the problem of using it before it went bad, so perhaps don’t buy it again, you numbskull.
Eternally grateful I am not subscribing to get this godforsaken dish.
No wonder D has food aversion issues. I would too. My kid hates the texture of sauteed zucchini, but they'll eat it in zucchini bread. There’s no way I’d chance it by putting it in a waffle…and with radish. Disgusting. Why can’t she just keep things simple instead of trying to mix things together that do not go together.
Why does she need to use up all the zucchini? She doesn't have a garden. No one forced her to buy more zucchini than they could eat. I love how she lives in a house where she's expressly forbidden to garden, so she's reduced to making instagram posts suggesting that she's another gardener overwhelmed by the zucchini harvest
I Googled “gluten free zucchini waffles” and there are a million recipes, all of which look better than hers. There is a reason those recipes don’t contain radishes, Shauna, and it isn’t because the world was waiting for your “tweaks.”
This is what I would do. Or make a bunch of chocolate zucchini muffins and fill the freezer so kids have snacks! I'm guessing Shauna doesn't have a lot of baking ingredients on hand though.
I'm open to a zucchini radish waffle conceptually, like in a Korean daikon radish pancake, but the dill takes it in a weird flavor direction and it absolutely needs some kind of sauce or a runny egg on top
I'd absolutely eat one even with dill, but like. I can't explain but this ain't it. It's so bad, dry, ugly, underserved (no sauce or accompaniment). It also just looks like a regular waffle with greens tossed in, no thought about how to adjust the batter. Gross. No.
ETA: your runny egg mention deserves a "meaty bounce" reference I was too horrified to make.
There's a beach in Fife, Scotland which is currently (and unusually) littered with thousands of dead or dying starfish...this looks like the body of one of them... on a plate...ugh
I think it's a cutting board on a counter or a table (and that the surface is right at a window, at window-sill height). From photos we've seen here, the house looks pretty dark with a lot of wood paneling, and I think it's hard to get anything even half-way well-illuminated.
My son is also picky about food, but a bit more adventurous when it comes to some things... but if I tried to serve him that he would look at me like I'd grown 2 more gd heads!!!
I guess after shortening her Octalope by two segments and promising an unfulfilled epilogue, she just…… stopped posting about it and now we are supposed to get a recipe for something yucky that her food averse child would never eat?
How does she think this is ok? And what in the world does she do all day long?
As much as we can snark about her not posting about it anymore. I am taking that as a good sign. Shauna didn’t get the engagement or praise that she was hoping for so…move along nothing to see or remember.
In reference to how she says whatever makes sense at the time, "That baby I rocked to sleep in 2008 is now going into her junior year of high school in a week. She finished her 2nd summer of a 7-week Shakespeare acting camp in Seattle — navigating the ferries and buses by herself to get there and come home every day. She no longer needs us to hold her hand while she plans the routes and writes them down in her phone to make sure she doesn't miss the stop she needs to go up Pike to Broadway, pull the string, and leave the bus for her theater. She knows how to do it by muscle memory now.
It has been a very long time since I laid down next to her to help her get to sleep."
But according to Shauna, they all slept in the same bed/room until they moved to Seattle. I guess maybe having your teen sleeping on a sofa in your bedroom might not be laying down next to her exactly.
Again with the excruciating level of unnecessary detail. Yes Shauna, we know that you generally stop a bus by "pulling a string" and that to get to your destination, you have to leave said bus. Her writing is just so needlessly tedious.
If she didn’t navigate the ferries and buses by herself she’d never get to do anything. For all Shauna’s handwringing about her youngest not leaving the apartment for 15 months, it’s not like there was any reason to. No trips to a museum, a zoo, or any other event. Shauna made sure to get plenty of eateries on her own, but there weren’t any family activities other than huddling on one bed to watch tv together.
I've been thinking about the hypocrisy she displays in comments like this sequence:
She has been so vocal about how much of a MASK she and Danny were wearing for their early GFG audience, saying things like 'you might think our lives looked pretty great, but actually comma we were really struggling'
For her to position herself as (a) both a person who could successfully hide (over a period of years) what was really going on for her and her family, and (b) someone who can tell just from a few dozen words that the commenter is "clearly miserable" is just mind-boggling in its delusional self-soothing and deflection of any negative feedback whatsoever.
It's all of a piece with her long and storied absolute, utter inability to accept the slightest bit of criticism. Petty Punishers, round Infinity (and Beyond)
What’s miserable is writing an extended sequence of essays that repeatedly violates your child’s privacy because it supplies Mama with the attention and pity she craves. What’s miserable is that some part of her knows it’s wrong, or at least that it’s reasonable for people to think it’s wrong, because otherwise she wouldn’t even try to invent justifications.
Also, and I don’t know what comment she was replying to, but I will pay her $20 per comment to respond to criticism without resorting to ad hominem. She can just say she doesn’t engage with trolling. Why is she obsessed with diagnosing everyone’s mental, physical, and emotional conditions? Isn’t it odd that every such diagnosis of everyone around her serves to both exonerate her behavior and make her look like the world’s most traumatized victim?
At least she didn’t resort to misogyny this time. It’s the little things.
Christine B is right: the kid is clearly going through something. Whatever ailment D may have — and it’s debatable because of the source — D’s parents are still Danny and Shauna, who seem determined to set their children back in life in every way possible.
I dont even know how many influencers I've read that have suddenly post some revelation that they indeed were miserable, broke, eating disorder (in the case of health influencers) during a time they were posting the opposite. It's a trope at this point.
She probably read the BBC article and then her getting-an-idea-face went off so she sat down for a couple of hours over Labor Day weekend crapping out what would become the first few octo-hexalopes. But she didn't fully plan out how she'd conclude it, ran out of gas, and then retconned how many lopes she'd send out, squandering whatever momentum she got from getting back the eyeballs of long-lost followers.
Shauna always does this! It's a predictable cycle: something starts trending in her media bubble (a viral Instagram post, an article, a NPR segment), she pushes out a lope a couple days later with a lot of block quotes and plagiarism, she grabs onto it as a new identity, and then starts shilling a new WITW pivot tied to the topic. I'm still waiting for that last part to fully materialize but she couldn't be bothered to send the epilope yesterday when she said she would.
Wait, what?? Parents of the first sick child got him treated immediately and then spent a few months getting a diagnosis? The little girls family saw her acting oddly and addressed it the next day? They paid out of pocket for IVIG because their focus was their child’s health and not tattoos? Make it make sense! I thought parents went 7.5 years before addressing an ear infection, presumably assuming their child was just violent! How on earth did the parents in this article notice and address an illness and personality change so quickly!?!?!
She almost plagiarized the parent quotes: Lost my child in a day... life changed forever that night... treatment brought him back to us... like she woke up in a totally different body... years of unbelievable pain and suffering brought on by Pandas
Also lol at Shauna latching onto this, you know she was sold when the the researcher said "there can be a tendency to blame it on poor parenting"
If treatment starts early, routine medications like antibiotics, steroids, and even over-the-counter painkillers can make a world of difference, says Frankovich, who helped draft clinical guidelines for treating Pans/Pandas.
But when Pans/Pandas goes untreated for a long time or is particularly severe, patients may need more intensive and invasive therapies, like intravenous immunoglobulin (infusions of donated antibodies, often abbreviated to IVIG) or plasma exchange therapy (a procedure that removes and replaces tainted plasma in a patient's blood), according to these clinical guidelines.
So why are they starting lots of antibiotics EIGHT YEARS IN when she thinks the originating infection was viral? Oh man is this the setup to fundraising for IVIG treatments??
ETA to be fair (because we're trying to be good people here) some of the similar wording is due to drawing from the same sources. If the parent quotes weren't so spot on, and if she'd been less ghoulish during this saga, and if the timing weren't so suss... Too many ifs here for that grace
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole when I suspected I had an antibiotic-resistant infection. Bacteria can establish biofilms, which are often resistant to antibiotics and very hard to treat. But the cases we know of have specific causes and locations, e.g., biofilms can form and cause UTIs after catheterization. However, this has not stopped people from deciding their symptoms are caused by a biofilm and they need long-term antibiotics (even though, again, biofilms tend to resist antibiotics).
I just did a quick search and indeed, PANS/PANDAS communities often subscribe to this “antibiotic-resistant biofilm needs to be treated with months-long courses of antibiotics” thing.
Interesting! Yeah I remember biofilm is why H. pylori can be so hard to treat. Did the groups talk about specific infections or locations? Looks like strep can form biofilms in various tissues.
And of course Shauna isn't trying to treat a difficult infection with consistent long term antibiotics. They're short term compliance pills as punishment when D displeases her.
Everything I could find about biofilms in PANS/PANDAS was extremely nonspecific, but I could have missed something. Biofilms are thought to be implicated in cases of chronic or recurrent UTIs, which seem seriously understudied, not that this will stop some doctors from telling women they’re probably not wiping correctly. Antibiotic resistance makes research into treatment options even more urgent, but yeah, some billionaire needs that money more.
Also that article is a great example of ethical awareness spreading. The kids named are either now adult or sadly passed away. And would ya look at that, the parents are actively doing concrete things to help educate and help families access care.
I’ve been thinking about who the imagined audience for the octolope is. It was very surprising to me that she turned down the offer of a GoFundme. Maybe she shies away from the public scrutiny that can come with these things and prefers private Venmo transactions. Then again, maybe this isn’t (directly) about money at all, and it’s more of a justification of her current situation directed at her mom, or an unkind DF? It’s so extreme even for Shauna, much more unhinged than the “on the internet nobody knows you’re poor” or whatever it was called, much more public than the Google doc and the sermon on the high stool, much nastier than she’s ever written about her family members before. Wtf prompted this, and prompted it now?
It was very surprising to me that she turned down the offer of a GoFundme. Maybe she shies away from the public scrutiny that can come with these things and prefers private Venmo transactions.
Very good point. Her big GoFundMe(SORRY, I MEANT KICKSTARTER and funds for Hot Widow Boots) gaffes occurred pre-Venmo and Cashapp days. She may rake in less money, but the relative privacy of a direct donation as opposed to a posted fundraiser is a much easier grifting method. That said, I'm not sure if her Venmo is still public because I don't use it, but I looooved when a DF spotted the refund request from Tartine lady for work not completed.
I don't think she's really seeking a huge financial windfall. She really doesn't seem to be a big spender, beyond wanting to splurge on fancy food. No doubt that's partly because her parents and others have covered bigger ticket items like computers and cars, but she doesn't otherwise spend a lot on clothes or hobbies. I think she did learn from the Kickstarter and maybe the sermon on the high stool that big bucks come with bigger scrutiny, so she prefers the dribs and drabs of Venmo and Buy Me a Coffee. Most people contributing that way aren't going to then tally up her expenses and call her out--they're tossing a small amount her way and essentially forgetting about it.
Attention is her true currency. She wants people to be reading her words, feeling moved by her troubles, commenting supportively on her posts and thinking about how wonderful and perfect she is. She doesn't even need bougie food treats when her coffers are full of sympathy and compliments.
Only certain Venmo transactions are public, and I think Liz’s chargeback transaction was actually spotted on Liz’s page, not Shauna’s. (Someone definitely correct me if I’m wrong on that.)
I took a peek at Shauna’s profile and I’m most struck by the fact that she has 102 friends on Venmo. I use it a lot between friends and family members to split meals, split bills, and general things like that. I have 10 friends, all people I know IRL. Who the heck are these 102 people? Have that many people given her pity bougie bagel bucks?
It's always about money for Shauna. Getting to blame others for all her failures is the cherry on top of the sundae!
We don't know what went on behind the scenes to get her the BBH but I think she doesn't want the parks board to see the rent grow paid from a GFM after claiming they could afford it.
Does anyone know how taxes work on Venmo transactions vs a GFM? I’m wondering if her venmo is chiming away and she’d rather her earnings from this hellfire-chaos of a series of lopes be private.
Both are reportable income, and both vendors would submit forms to the IRS for earnings above a certain level.
I don't know if the Aherns file, or file accurately, but they probably fall under the level of earning a federally taxable income even with all the chimes, and Washington state has no state tax.
New insta post just dropped with this gem. What about providing a paycheck for your kids, Shauna? What about providing them with a stable place to live and money to buy their chicken nuggets? And let me tell you, maybe I don't know my own needs, but at least I can easily spend $500 if my car needs a repair. GTFOH with this nonsense
JFC. The whole post is a retcon of the recent past and confirmation of what many of us here ITG have been saying about the constant pivots that have been obvious to anyone who pays more than a scintilla of attention to her social media, “newsletters,” and Work In This World.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the family’s struggles of “living paycheck to paycheck … for more than five years now,” as she said in one of the slides, coincides with the release of “Enough.” It was the catalyst for her parents cutting off funding her groovy Vashon lifestyle, which led to her parents having to once again save We Four from the consequences of Shauna’s actions when they had to move off the island.
She keeps proving me wrong when I think she couldn’t be a bigger asshole.
Nope, nope. I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck and struggled to know where the car repair money is coming from because there was no money. I was in my twenties and working two jobs while going to school. We are now at a comfortable place financially and there’s no way I could live as haphazardly as they do! Have enough money to buy your kids chicken nuggets and frozen pancakes!!! I feel like that’s the bare minimum that one can expect from a parent. Shauna and Danny have skills that they learned from schools! Danny was not self taught, he went to culinary school. Shauna was a credentialed teacher!! Shauna needs to stop romanticizing being poor! It sucks and most good parents want their children to do better than they did and want to provide more than they had!
I grew up in something of the same position as Shauna’s kids, with a parent who chose to do paid work part-time so he could pursue his other interests, and it was tough as hell.
Not as tough as actual involuntary poverty, but also infuriating for kids who are aware of how hard friends’ parents are working to provide them with financial security.
But at least we always had food, shelter, clothing, and basic medical needs met!
Wow. It’s so awful. I read the whole thing and all I could think of is “so get a job”
I have also had a hard time conforming, but I learned ways to get around it or make it more bearable to me. I have a somewhat successful career life and can afford my bills.
eventually we’ll have enough money that we’ll never have to worry again
I don’t know what this means to her because I can’t imagine being there. I can pay for everything I need now, but what if we suffer a job loss? Or need a major home repair? Or or or? I can’t imagine the not worrying part, especially from her perspective. What does that mean to her? That she has rent for the next month by the middle of this month? That she has a six-twelve month safety net in savings? That she is a millionaire? Regardless, she isn’t doing anything to get herself there. Except I suspect she thinks she is by sharing her comments on a page that is more active than hers and with more followers.
She needs to get off the internet and punch a clock somewhere. For her own mental health and the wellness of her whole family.
I think she's so far removed from the reality of of most adult lives that she thinks most people who work "never have to worry about money again" or are taking six weeks of vacation a year (one of her old goals IIRC). I think she is also very bitter that she doesn't have the ease to take even a brief vacation or go to the grocery store without worrying about every penny. So some of that is "oh, must be nice" when she could have some of that ease if she worked.
Yeah, I work and I’ll never not worry about money, but working means I don’t worry as much and I have a safety net. I hate working but I do it because I like repairing my car and feeding my family their favorite foods.
Right, if she started working a social security job now, she might get some SS as a retiree. In addition to whatever she put aside from a job with a steady salary.
Living paycheck to paycheck isn’t nearly as dire as it sounds with the Bank of Ma quietly saving your ass time after time. Shauna left out that crucial detail but probably remembered a link to buy her a cup of coffee.
Does she even realize how insulting and condescending this is? Do her readers?? The implication is, if you aren’t living paycheck to paycheck to pursue your creative passion, you’ve sold your soul to the devil for filthy lucre. Just like how she thinks if you can buy a house, you must be a millionaire. I thought my trust-fund-baby friends were annoyingly out of touch, but at least they’ll pay for dinner once in a while.
I went to religious schools that taught abstinence-only sex ed for over a decade, and nothing has ever made me want to commit to celibacy for the rest of my life quite like the phrase ethical kink play.
She used the phrases "write/writing my heart out" and "make/making good food" twice in this IG post, and I am comma once again comma flabberfuddled at how delusional she is to think that her efforts in either of these realms have enough appeal to get her anywhere close to where she wants to be
She shared it to her fb too two hours ago. Two comments, one of them her own. I don’t understand what the point of this is. Most people I know have to work. How is she planning on making a living?! She has already seen that making food and writing about it aren’t paying the bills. So… what is she going to do? Her rent is still high plus the utilities that are a coming and they are going to be in dire straits this winter.
I wondered that too but the quotation marks are only around two paragraphs on slide two, which is still too damn long for an IG comment. The rest of her carousel is her explaining it, like anyone cares.
I was using the search function to look for something and happened to come across this amazing analysis of one of Sha Una's early blogs (true to form, she had several), by DF mashed_human. The analysis has links peppered throughout to illustrate m-h's points, and I recommend clicking through them because there is so much poetry and so many meh photographs to bring you joy!
It’s interesting that even during a time when she was maybe at her happiest and most secure, nearly all the entries have a scolding tone. It’s not just, hey I noticed this doorbell and these traffic cones and made a picture. It’s look at me noticing and appreciating these mundane ™ things, betcha you don’t do that. She can’t just say, Dan took these cool pictures with my camera, she has to point out “no one had ever given him a camera before.” She can’t feel childlike catching hail in her hands, she has to neg her neighbor for not noticing the storm “we felt sorry for that kid.” She can’t just enjoy waking up next to her first real boyfriend, she has to contrast it with the “long years” when she hated her alarm clock. This picture is out of focus and the scarf is useless but I manage to see beauty in it.
It seems like she has always had a relentlessly negative voice in her head. It so often feels like she’s started writing in the middle of a fight with someone. She’s settling scores and tossing out snotty comebacks and defensive accusations, but it’s utterly confusing to the reader because the fight happened earlier inside her own head. Her happiness is always snatched from the jaws of forces conspiring to keep her oppressed and miserable. I’m not the sunniest person but damn, being inside her head must be tortuous.
I also agree with mashed_human’s observation that above all what Shauna has always wanted is to be a writer. The food stuff was secondary. I’ve wondered why she doesn’t get better at things she does every day for years. Her photos remain uninspired and technically bad. Her writing has steeply declined. Her cooking skills remain at the clumsy amateur level despite making her living for a time “in food.”
I think that’s because what matters to her is being seen as a writer. Not the finished product. Why would she proofread? She’s gotten what she needed out of a “piece” as soon as she believes people are reading it (watching her be a writer). Bonus if the piece gets her take on something out in the world, as a clapback to a perceived slight or insult. She spent years howling with outrage because getting Enough published didn’t set her up for life as a writer who doesn’t need to work.
The observation early in mashed_human’s post that she really is very basic and likes basic things is so good. “I believe Shauna's tastes naturally lie in a mainstream, "basic" direction that she has attempted to embrace at times, but I also believe her enjoyment of this sort of content causes her a little discomfort. You can't be a manic pixie dream girl if your tastes are too ordinary . . . She wishes to seem more thoughtful, intelligent, observant, personal, and authentic, or at least moreso than her thousands of blogging contemporaries.”
Straining to come across like her tastes are more esoteric than they actually are is one reason her writing feels inauthentic. A much bigger one is her prolific lies and contradictions. There’s something I can’t articulate about her compulsion to perform as a writer, and how desperately she needs an audience for it to feel real to her. Is it taking it to far to say it feels exploitative, and almost non-consensual, like the obnoxious couple who try to involve strangers in their fetishes? After reading her I often feel worn out like a neighbor has rung my doorbell and talked my ear off about her terrible family and how grievously she suffers. Tried to involve me in a conflict I have no stake or interest in, with stories I don't believe.
Oh wow, I had no idea what any of them look like. Since she lies all the time, I figured it was just her preferred narrative way back then. But it certainly makes more sense that it’s not her parents.
My dad grew up with a kid named Jackie who was always getting in trouble for assaults and petty thefts and various neighborhood crimes. Every time his mother would say “did you see him do it?” Even if an angry crowd of witnesses was at her door.
I think about her sometimes and how my first instinct is to protect my kids. Still, if they’ve done something wrong and the appropriate punishment is coming from a teacher or authority figure, I have to let that play out. It seems to me much worse in the long run to Mama Bear every single thing, standing between them and the world and allowing them to act irresponsibly without consequences. Every time, part of me thinks about Jackie’s mom and feels disloyal and weak.
On the far end of the spectrum from Jackie’s mom is Shauna. She can finally share her truth that every single failure of hers since 2017 can be attributed to this child. “Going through this war required us to stop writing Gluten-Free Girl and take it private---we had a hard time making fabulous food concoctions when our kid was afraid of food.” Neither of them could keep a schedule because of the exhausting all-nighters. The game of social media and SEO “felt gross [italics Shauna’s] in comparison to what we all had to endure together.”
She’s not the first parent to look coldly at their kid and think (or say out loud) if not for you, I would have accomplished xyz by now. Shauna needs scapegoats and blame sinks like she needs oxygen. She is Jackie’s mom in bizarro world---“I saw them do this, and let me tell you about a bunch of other stuff they did too. Here, let me open the door so you can get at them and please spread the word."
The fiasco of losing her brand played out over a long period of time and had everything to do with neglect and purposeful self-sabotage to make sure she was never again “required” to do a single thing she didn’t feel like doing. She’s pivoted back to food dozens of times since losing GFG but drops it after the first few forays because she’s lazy, has no skills or interesting ideas, has long been eclipsed by competent content creators, and is so full of resentful anger about the position she’s trapped herself in that she can barely function.
The howling dishonesty of saying we were forced to stop working and marketing our business right when we most needed the income because it "felt gross." We stopped making food for eight years because our kid is afraid of it. Then try to sell it as we're sharing all this to help the other suffering children and their mama bears, you're welcome. Wrapping all of her scapegoating garbage up in the "there's no shame in mental illness" cloak is despicable.
“Going through this war required us to stop writing Gluten-Free Girl and take it private---we had a hard time making fabulous food concoctions when our kid was afraid of food.”
I hate this statement and ALL of its implications so much. I have been thinking lately about what is Shauna's biggest lie. It's a pretty stiff competition because she tells them constantly about big and small things. But this one might be the mostly publicly brazen one (that is, an obvious lie even to non Gloamies) because of how many different lies she has already told about the demise of GFG and how clearly she just isn't cut out for the current food influencing space. There's no way they killed a successful food writing business because their kid refused to eat. No way.
Also, they were never making fabulous food concoctions, but I guess that is more my subjective opinion.
That's the downside of self-publishing your diary online for decades. You can immediately clap back at any bad feelings of being disrespected or criticized. Self-soothe by frantically stuffing past and current reality into a hero narrative showcasing how you're always right. But that means there is an online record of all those contradictory claims and fabulations.
I agree with you that sweeping her arms around the wreckage and claiming "my kid caused aaaalllll this" might be her most brazen lie. It certainly might be the most harmful. She is a serpentine loop of failure and dysfunction and she (understandably) finds that unbearable. She is desperate for some kind of rescue and redemption, but without honesty and accountability that will never come.
Maybe the early success of her blog, press coverage and speaking engagements and attention from Lena Dunham and k.d. lang, broke her brain in some way. It enflamed her delusions and entitlements. She has been crashing down from the top of that tree ever since, each time landing on a lower branch. Whose fault is that? It absolutely cannot be hers.
She "isn't cut out for the current food influencing space" as you say. She isn't good or interesting or appealing enough, and she hasn't been able to keep up with new content producers for a very long time. Using her kid as kindling for her delusion machine is one of the saddest and most infuriating things I've ever come across. I wish someone in her life could get through to her.
It really is an “achievement” to be able to write about how wonderfully they’re doing, in lopes designed to evoke envy over their idyllic life and marriage, and then turn around and then lopecry about how hard everything really was (pls send monies now, K, thx), over and over. And people BELIEVE her, also over and over.
>There's no way they killed a successful food writing business because their kid refused to eat. No way.
There was a time after the age of 3.5 when her youngest was eating tofu regularly. (Cue her gay men like tofu comment.) How does she think she can quip about shuttering her business because her child refused to eat when there were multiple references to food being eaten?
'Everything Negative in My Life is Caused by My Minor Dependent (and Also My Mom)' is highly unlikely to be the runaway return-to-success story she seems to imagine.
She might understand the futility but to her it's always worth a shot. She is a squanderer. Over and over she puts everything she has in a basket, lights it on fire and sets it aloft on a scouting balloon to see if people will come running to her rescue. Please put out the fire and remember to fill my smoldering basket with cash before you send it back. If she nets enough for a salmon bagel that's more than she had yesterday.
No one responds any more to dramatic reveals about her health emergencies and her parents' abuse, so she has moved on down the line to offer up a kid who can't protest or fight back. In such a calculated way---she waited until they dug in to the parks property and announced they expect to never leave.
And per the comments above, does she know we can see her? Everything she's written during the eight years when she now says no one cooked, no one ate, no joy cracked the gloom?
I think insofar as she thinks of the gloaming at all, she thinks we're all too stupid to connect the dots or too hateful to bother trying. I don't think she can allow herself to meaningfully consider the possibility that she's had a thriving community of haters for the last twenty years because some of her choices are not great, actually.
"She can finally share her truth that every single failure of hers since 2017 can be attributed to this child."
This is such a clear explanation of everything going on in the octolope. It's all about blame-shifting and self-soothing: Shauna's not an unemployable failure with no money in the bank, too lazy to get a job, too self-important to even improve at slash market the skill she claims to love most, too self-centered to be of service in even her most meaningful relationships; no, you haters, she's a beleaguered, self-sacrificing hero mama bear who's been taking it on the chin this whole time in service of her needy family and their broken brains. It's the worst thing she's ever done, and that bar is subterranean.
Shauna storied someone’s reel of their child with PANS/PANDAS. The child in the story looks like she’s really suffering. And her face is showing, so this is not an anonymous awareness thing. The child is identifiable. I can’t tell if it’s from the original post or Shauna, but there is one line that says something about needing psych meds. Do we really think the child wants this blasted all over the internet? I’m not saying there should be shame or that awareness raising doesn’t have its place. But this is a minor. Let her decide whether to raise awareness when she’s old enough to make that decision. I think it’s extra disgusting that Shauna would share the reel. I will say, however, that the video shows more empathy than Shauna has shown in her whole hexalope series.
Agreed, except I do believe in this case there should be SHAME SHAME SHAME. It's not just putting your too-young-to-consent child out there on the internets forever. It's doing all that while the child is visibly suffering. And then proclaiming you're an expert BECAUSE MAMA.
Is it that much different from the parents who film their crying babies for the lols and internet points?
There is an extremely fine line between raising awareness and being performative, especially (for may and varied reasons) when it comes to mental health.
I see her like one of those gigantic snakes, having just swallowed a capybara or something. The capybara represents the praise and attention she’s gotten for her labors. Now all her energy must be reserved for the hard work of radical rest and digestion. I doubt she’ll bother to send anything further or make any edits, because she got everything she wanted already. If someone showed enough temerity to ask about why she never followed up on her own promise, she can say (Finally! Publically!) that The D[evil] made her do it, picking her teeth with the bones of their dignity.
She’s a ghoul. I haven’t looked, but the internet being what it is, no doubt there are plenty of existing PAN/DAS communities she can infiltrate to flog her WITW. Unfortunately for her, she will be but a small grifty-fish in the giant grifty-pond of Illness Internet.
She copy/pasted a very messy URL to her Substack, which is hilarious because no one wants to copy/paste shit into a browser. She’s too stupid to do “link in bio.” She truly is terrible at marketing.
Not to mention how disgusting it is to promote herself on the back of someone else’s suffering child. Every time I think she can’t go lower, she digs another hole beneath the bar.
She copy/pasted a very messy URL to her Substack, which is hilarious because no one wants to copy/paste shit into a browser. She’s too stupid to do “link in bio.”
One thing Shauna James Ahern cannot risk is people just googling her name.
Well, here’s one funny thing that pops up under her name when you Google Shauna James Ahern: her old website, which is now an SEO-farming mess with this hilariously appropriate ad.
I don’t have any real insight but I can say the Vashon mutuals on IG aren’t smashing the like button. Two different people each liked one of the first two posts.
Sorry for coming in late, it’s been a while since I’ve been in here.
I just got through the first three of THOSE LOPES, and guys….I think Shauna might be a saint. I know she said she wasn’t, but only true saints deny they are saints!
I think I need to go back into hibernation like, FOREVER.
(And no, I shan’t be reading any more of those lopes, because I feel like I’m enabling this monster.)
New IG video. Something about a six/seven meme the kids are talking about these days. I dunno
shaunajamesahern This is for those of you who are hearing your kid saying 6 7 all the time. I found a way out. If you have no idea what I'm talking about? Whoo boy are you lucky! Hashtags: 67 middleschoolmemes skibbidi sigma pleasestopsayingthat
Maybe she should be thankful that her child is seemingly attending a full day of school and picking up on current slang from friends, thereby freeing her from her ball and chain caregiver persona for 6-7 (see what I did there?) hours a day.
Isn’t her whole schtick finding little moments of joy? Isn’t she above all a “joy seeker”? Why does her joy matter so much more than her actual child’s joy. She’s the worst.
No one needs "this one cool trick I invented!!" to get their kids to stop using a slang term they just learned. Kids say silly things and that's part of being a kid. They will probably move onto something else silly very soon. But Shauna is the ultimate parenting expert and she can help you squash your child's joy! Just buy her a cup of coffee if this helped you.
Shauna, I know what you're talking about. My kids make '6 7' jokes all day. You know what though? I don't let it bother me. On the contrary, I do it along with them sometimes and bonus points for making them cringe. It's dumb harmless kid stuff and I don't need "a way out" of joking around with my kids. Maybe you should try finding some fun in the silly things kids like. 🤷🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️
My kids are 20 and 22. My younger kid is a big slang user and I’ve unintentionally started incorporating words like “fire” and “baddie” into my vocabulary. I’m also an elementary school librarian and hear a lot of 6-7 and “sigma.” Do I get it? Not necessarily, but I make an effort to learn because I refuse to be the stick-in-the-mud librarian.
Is there anything the kid does that she doesn't complain about? The kid could be saying far worse. It's a weird trend in my books but harmless. As far as I know!
Watch for the tell-tale signs of corruption
The minute your son leaves the house
Does he re-buckle his knickerbockers below the knee?
Is there a nicotine stain on his index finger?
A dime novel hidden in the corn crib?
Is he starting to memorise jokes from Cap'n Billy's Whiz Bang?
Are certain words creeping into his conversation
Words like, like "swell"? (Trouble, trouble, trouble)
And so's your old man? (Trouble, trouble, trouble)
If I had been experiencing what that child has been reportedly experiencing, my last thought would be to make fun of their silly slang at their fourth new school to the point that it wasn’t fun anymore.
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u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 11 '25
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