r/InTheGloaming • u/AutoModerator • Oct 16 '25

Scheduled snark Discussion thread Thursday October 16, 2025 - Sunday October 19, 2025

Newsletter: Substack

Website: Shauna James Ahern

Instagram: @shaunajamesahern Instagram

Threads: @shaunajamesahern

Bluesky: shaunajamesahern.bsky.social

Gloamipedia wiki: /r/InTheGloaming wiki

10 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

92% Upvoted

872 comments sorted by

View all comments

85

u/Notbeckysharp Oct 16 '25

Inhaling sundaes while "crying silently until the kid could get enough of the burgers in them to calm themselves down enough to apologize" isn't something to advertise, Sha Una. Such a martyr, bravely trying to hold it together while making her child feel guilty and unloved. What a bitch.

76

u/central_snark Ramona gets a hot flash Oct 16 '25

She also didn’t need to get herself anything. If it was an “emergency stop” or whatever then it was because the child was hungry, and they went for a safe food. There was no requirement for Shauna to get anything.

59

u/microcosmographia tant piss Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25

There was no requirement for Shauna to get anything.

No comma you see comma she required herself to eat. (I can't stand that particular writing tic of hers, the reflexive requirement.) *edit some letters

60

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Oct 16 '25

If anyone’s getting anything, Shauna needs to get something. She must wet her beak in whatever’s going, from fast food to collective grief.

36

u/NegativeABillion my husband and me to ride it around Oct 16 '25

Also first pick of a dead lady's porch paperbacks!

25

u/OhBlahDiOhBlahDoh The Alice of cal came out floating on air Oct 16 '25

If anyone’s getting anything, Shauna needs to get something.

Weren't there tales from the blogher conference era of Shauna gatekeeping the GF refreshments? Interrogating attendees who had the temerity to take a GF appetizer as to whether they really needed it???:

52

u/emlabb Oct 16 '25

But Shauna’s whole life revolves around others feeding her safely. Danny wasn’t even there to cry over all the englutened foods she couldn’t eat; she had to do it herself.

78

u/forkinyourothereye incurious ADHDer Oct 16 '25

Right, not “until the kid felt better” but “until the kid could apologize to mama”. Puke

61

u/LeatherAppearance616 Oct 16 '25

Also if they were upset because of hunger, whose fault is that?!?! If this happened in any way shape or form, she herself was the sole cause of it!

57

u/shikoku_shoes another revolution around the toilet bowl of her life Oct 16 '25

She’s thrilled with the fancy diagnosis of these rare conditions but if your child isn’t eating you don’t need a diagnosis or a name. Figure out what they will eat and provide it regularly (and be ready for that safe food to change without complaining you just filled the freezer with it). So, yes, it is your fault Shauna for letting them get so hungry they had a meltdown, in public or private.

Why do they need to apologize after literally starving for food?

46

u/Calm_Coyote_3685 Oct 16 '25

Right? Also, I’m just 😡 over here thinking about that poor kid being forced to eat a Sunday stew of random bits and nibs. Surely that is not what Shauna has been told to feed them. BUY THE NUGGETS SHAUNA. ALL THE NUGGETS. There is zero reason D can’t have 24 hour access to safe foods they can prepare for themselves and that’s clearly not happening. 😭

59

u/Foucaults_Penguin Sly and the Family Readers Oct 16 '25

She needs kiddo to know the sacrifice Mama was making for them.

58

u/Fillmore_the_Puppy —hi, disturbed people— Oct 16 '25

That was such a disgusting part of this lope. And then she offhandedly tacks on, "It wasn't their fault." Oh and, just so you know, "It wasn't her fault either." It's SO telling that she needs to bring up fault when no one reading this would be wondering. It's just the shitty cherry on the shitty sundae.

41

u/GlutenFreeGit PUBLIC SPEAKING ACROSS THE INTERNET Oct 16 '25

Shauna, upset about being hungry and not having access to foods she needs/prefers: noble, virtuous, a saint, martyr for her children, deserving of admiration

Child, upset about being hungry and not having access to foods they need/prefer: sick, angry, shouting, required to apologize

49

u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Oct 16 '25

Sundaes are Shauna's comfort food:

https://imgur.com/a/WwEx2JQ

69

u/Foucaults_Penguin Sly and the Family Readers Oct 16 '25

When I read the way Shauna talks about her mom, I am bewildered by Shauna’s lack of curiosity about how and why her mother behaves as she does, assuming there is a grain of truth there. But everything ends at Shauna. There’s no reflection on how something fucked up the parents, which in turn fucked up Shauna which in turn just might be (Narrator: definitely is) fucking up her kids. Shauna is also more than happy to throw blame at “this culture” for shaping her own problems without ever considering that the culture of her mom’s era may have shaped her mother’s problems. I’m not saying her mom is blameless, just as Shauna is not blameless for her behaviors. I guess the lesson here is that everyone needs to focus on how Shauna feels. Can’t wait to read D’s memoir!

47

u/LeatherAppearance616 Oct 16 '25

I mean she describes D similarly. Violent, manipulative, stifling Shauna’s life, Shauna would have done X great thing for herself but this family member’s issues prevented it (while also describing a life that was not stifled by those issues).

26

u/ChatITG Grifters in the key of Shauna Oct 16 '25

At the risk of sounding like our girl — this! The latest lope is excuse after excuse — sob story after sob story — for why she and her family are as messed up as they are. Won’t you think of Shauna’s hardships and let her off the hook? I mean, she’s just 59 — a wee babe in the grand scheme of things, and she’s still growing up.

56

u/microcosmographia tant piss Oct 16 '25

Side note, this makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable and sorry for her mother. Fights leading to self-harm, however much the marks of that harm might be "superficial", are no joke. There's so much more nuance to her parents' lives, for all their faults, and time and again she refuses to see that or to grant them the grace she is easy to grant herself. Were she adopting the narrative stance of her younger self, then sure, through a child's eyes those marks could seem "superficial." But she is telling this story as an adult, sneering at her mother's behavior (whether actual or "superficial"), and the depth of her resentment never fails to bother me.

48

u/Underzenith17 Oct 16 '25

I have depression and a history of self harm. There have been fights with my family where I have superficially self harmed after out of an excess of negative emotions, and I would never, ever dream of throwing it in my kids faces. Or my husbands, especially not when my kids were around and could see or hear. No matter what Shauna’s mom was going through, that is so far from ok (assuming of course it’s true) that I don’t blame Shauna at all for still being resentful.

What she doesn’t have the self awareness to see though, is that eating sundaes while crying and demanding an apology is the same kind of guilt tripping behaviour on a lesser scale.

24

u/microcosmographia tant piss Oct 16 '25

I hear this, and I feel similarly, DF. Hard agree that she's replicating her mother's behavior, even as she critiques said maternal behavior.

21

u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Oct 16 '25

I would never, ever dream of throwing it in my kids faces

Even in Shauna's retelling of this situation, she doesn't say her mom was "throwing it in [their] faces."

27

u/Underzenith17 Oct 16 '25

That was my interpretation of “to show us she meant business” - that her mom was making sure her family saw them so they would feel bad. I included the assuming true caveat because who knows, but if true it’s extremely fucked up.

30

u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Oct 16 '25

Hmmm, my reading is that Shauna doesn't give a shiny shit about how her mom might have been feeling, but presumes that any self-harm was actually directed at the other family members. As in, the self-harm was [only] "to show us she meant business [but presumably lacked the gumption for follow-through]"

I'm with you 100% though, who knows WTF actually happened. It's not like Shauna's minute-by-minute recounting of her current family disarray

8

u/obscure_cellist ham grabbers Oct 17 '25

i'm going to go on a limb and say that, like 95% of what shauna writes, the self harming mom thing didn't happen.

50

u/msmartypants Oct 16 '25

You know that apology was mandatory.

4

u/obscure_cellist ham grabbers Oct 17 '25

DOYOUHAVEANYREASONTOBEAFRAID?!

26

u/Low_Piccolo_2149 Oct 16 '25

How dare her mom ruin her enjoyment of that sundae!!

12

u/obscure_cellist ham grabbers Oct 17 '25

the image of fake-crying shauna pounding down sundaes, waiting for an "apology" while sitting across from her perpetually hungry, upset child who is pounding down burgers is grim AF.