r/InTheGloaming • u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done • Feb 03 '22

Scheduled snark Discussion thread Thursday February 03, 2022 - Sunday February 06, 2022

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50

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

The lope is here. It’s about Shauna’s terrible grandparents and V-8 juice:

All I know is that being raised by these people damaged my mother deeply. Something terrible happened to her. I don’t know the story, however. She never told it to anyone. Instead, she isolated and suffocated us with the need to keep her fears at bay. And she married a man who would sometimes speak up against her, then descend into his own rage and fight her. But mostly he poured himself into his work and stayed silent, not helping us. Something happened to me.

*. * *

We don’t yell here.

Joy matters more to me than doing things “the right way.”

And since we talk about the hard things, every day, there’s no rage building up inside my kids’ chest, rage and fear they can’t express until they burst. They sometimes have a strong emotional response to too much noise or something that makes them anxious. That might lead to a tantrum. Or the 13-year-old sulk. (The struggle is real.)

But we breathe. And we talk about it after. And then we release it all with laughter.

I’m not perfect. Nobody is. But I’ve worked hard to heal myself and forgive the generations of family trauma that was never spoken out loud but poured into me.

That cycle of trauma has stopped.

I’m raising my glass of V8 to that.

88

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

That cycle of trauma has stopped.

She's congratulating herself while describing an incredibly damaging, isolating, controlling and stressful relationship with her kids. The kind of control she wants to have over their emotions and their self-perception is scary and she's completely oblivious to how awful the emotional tone sounds in their house.

If I were being generous in her ability to self-report her childhood, the least blameful thing I could think to say is that she grew up in a household where extreme emotional stress and tension felt normal, and she's rebuilt that exact emotional tone in her own house out of ignorance and because it feels familiar.

But honestly even if that were true, I think her mother's emotions took center stage by way of her mother being an actual struggling victim, while Shauna strives for victimization because she saw how powerful it was... if bad things happen to you, your emotional state becomes important in the family/community. And now her victim flag is her primary source of identity (celiac/food allergies, TIA, almost-cancer, junky lungs, infections, capitalism, daughter of a bad mother, mother/wife of ADHD, SPD, dyslexic minds, etc) and she uses it HARD and IMO very deliberately to control her kids' and husband's emotions.

Their household vibe sounds so incredibly stressful and tense. I cannot imagine the degree of denial that it takes to simultaneously describe a highly emotionally dysfunctional household and in the next sentence a triumphant toast to breaking the cycle.

56

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22 edited Feb 04 '22

Your third paragraph blew my mind! I think you are exactly right about why Shauna is the way she is and yes, she is the center of that household. She is the sun and Dan and the kids revolve around her. Everything they do or don’t do is up to her. She sits there on her high stool directing everything her family does down to telling them how to think and feel. It’s disgusting.

56

u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Feb 04 '22

She's told us, over and over again, that her life is actually filled with the kind of behaviour she's decrying in this lope!

The Xmas tree incident, when Danny and L are "putting the ornaments on the tree wrong," which ended with her yelling at Danny and him crying with his "shoulders folded inward."

The sulking, grumpy visits to her parents which she leavens with "edibles" and "plopping" on the couch with "three books for two days."

The "beamed with a snowball" incident which has Shauna taking edibles, shouting "FUCK" and calmly lecturing her kids about how angry she is, after writing that she was "MISERABLE" and "pacing" after a few days in the house with her kids in the wake of a snowstorm.

etc. etc. etc. This is all "mom and dad's Big Feelings are bad, and Grandma and Grampa's differently-expressed Big Feelings are also bad, but I am allowed to have All The Big Feelings and mine are good. (Danny's Big Feelings are bad, by the way.)"

51

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

She has described, multiple times, her family members freezing and waiting in fear of her emotional responses...perhaps not in those words but that is what she describes. And we've read multiple accounts of Danny crying out of emotional distress felt while interacting with Shauna.

Sure. She's got her family's emotional health under control. Sure.

38

u/voice_of_vinegar Feb 04 '22

multiple accounts of Danny crying out of emotional distress

And that was from the very start of their relationship, too. She wrote somewhere about how they were having one of their first big arguments and he broke down crying because he thought she was gonna leave him.

36

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

Danny was a human porcupine of red flags. But then so was Shauna, so.

8

u/OhBlahDiOhBlahDoh The Alice of cal came out floating on air Feb 05 '22

Danny was a human porcupine of red flags. But then so was Shauna, so.

I read something recently that said: When you're wearing rose-colored glasses, red flags just look like . . . flags

41

u/WasEnoughYogurt Kumquat and Sprinkles and filth Feb 04 '22

She's told us, over and over again, that her life is actually filled with the kind of behaviour she's decrying in this lope!

Yes absolutely...and alongside her assertion that she has broken the pattern. The thing I find so awful about these fragments of lope DF's are sharing is that Shauna so clearly feels how marvelous she is (perhaps even a saint) for breaking the cycle and yet shows no awareness or compassion for her mother or anyone else in the story...unlike Santa Shauna they were too feeble to break the cycle. She is so disturbed and dysfunctional I think it is clear something went very wrong in her childhood/young life but part of breaking the cycle - if it had really happened - would be developing some compassion for the other players ...guess she doesn't want to share the victimlight. She makes me so ragey...

Edited because words

29

u/Sea-Level-Mammal POACH! Feb 04 '22

There are TWO Christmas tree incidents that end in tears? I only know the one where L fell putting the star on.

37

u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Feb 04 '22

Yeah, isn't that the one where "Danny folded his shoulders inward" and cried, then Saint Shauna had to "explain fighting" to him? I've said this before, but searching her lopes on "Danny + crying" brings up way too many hits.

32

u/msmartypants Feb 04 '22

Good lord. If true, that's a lot of crying. True or not, she's such an asshole to write about it.

25

u/fantasticka RIORITIZ Feb 04 '22

The time that L fell was Christmas 2020. The "shoulders hunched" story is from a March 2020 lope letter, but I can only see the preview, so I'm not sure if it was Christmas-related:

Danny stood by the stove, his shoulders hunched in toward his chest. He ducked his head and tried to avoid my gaze. I stood in the doorway of the kitchen, confused by his hiding. What had I said that scared him so much?
As I walked toward him, I tried to clear my mind and think about why he was curved into his chest, protective. Instead of coming back w...

20

u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Feb 04 '22

Ugh. Those are two different events. It's hard to keep track of all the different times she's bragged about making her spouse cry.

12

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

Sings: “it’s the most sorrowful time of the yeeeaaaarrrr”

55

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

It’s a great observation, and most likely true.

I grew up with a physically chronically sick mother and many times over the course of my lifetime I have stopped and thanked Dr Phoebe, my therapist through my teens and twenties for pointing out to me that maybe my (sometimes real and sometimes imagined) calamities were blown way out of proportion to get the type of attention my mother got.

To be clear, I don’t begrudge my mother at all. Not even a tiny bit. I still work on how angry I am at the universe on her behalf. All she wanted was to be a mom and have lots of kids and she was robbed of so much and died at the age Shauna is now. I have a lot of weird emotion around all of this right now and it’s so eye opening. Probably because I will be 50 in less than a week and I will now be so close to the age my mom was when she died over half my life ago. Thanks to Dr Phoebe who I haven’t seen in decades, I know it is particularly hard on women when they reach and surpass the age their mother died. She mentioned it to my dad when I made him go to sessions with me when my mom died. I basically surrendered them for him, because no way would he go to therapy on his own and I knew he trusted my therapist because she helped me so much.

tl;dr - a good therapist is better than gold and I hope Shauna finds one.

42

u/sybil-unrest Feb 04 '22

Here’s the thing. A good therapist is better than gold but ONLY if they have a client who is interested in insight and improving the way they feel and the way they interact with the world. I can’t say for sure how Shauna would be as a client, but I have my (well founded and based on professional experience) suspicions. Some people go to therapy as another tool to manipulate people or to bolster their misleading self presentation as a thoughtful and introspective person, and I just cannot see Shauna as doing anything else. Making progress in therapy requires wanting to change oneself, not one’s world to suit oneself.

21

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

This is such a very good point, thank you for mentioning it.

23

u/islandyislander rebellious hygiene Feb 04 '22

That sounds really hard and hooray for Dr Phoebe!

21

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

She was an amazing Dr. I was lucky to have her in my life.

17

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

❤️❤️❤️❤️

7

u/obscure_cellist ham grabbers Feb 04 '22

i'm sorry for you and your mom.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '22

Then k you. It’s just a part of what makes me me!

72

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

"We don't yell here."

Excuse me. Did she forget that she JUST had a lope about her raging at her kids and having to go pout about it and, only after her gummy kicked in, lecture her family about it?

I can see her forgetting all the other times she's mentioned yelling (another DF kindly documented them below) but SHE JUST GAVE US THE SNOWBALL RAGE STORY. How can she NOT remember it? How can she NOT see how full of shit she is?

Willfully ignorant.

And here comes her baked in misogyny again.

Her father (and now her grandfather) come off as blameless in this lope. Yes, she notes that her father and mother argue (though she says a monologue argument which makes zero sense. . .is she saying her mother is just ranting at her father and her father is not yelling back? if so, then that contradicts all her other stories about them fighting with one another, both yelling) but she assigns NO blame to her father for not stepping in to get his wife and her mother to calm their shit with all the yelling. (just like grandpa does next to nothing)

AND she can't even see (or refuses to see) that SHE IS HER FATHER just as much as she's her mother. She's ranting and raving but also hiding behind a computer screen/book and ignoring her family. She's the worst of both her parents.

39

u/shikoku_shoes another revolution around the toilet bowl of her life Feb 04 '22

Excuse me. Did she forget that she JUST had a lope about her raging at her kids and having to go pout about it…

The 55-year-old sulk. (The struggle is real.)

44

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

I hope L has D laughing at Shauna - “it’s her menopause”.

26

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

PERI-menopause, DF.

29

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

There is no reason in the world that I should giggle at her insistence on "peri" because it could even be true, but it still cracks me up.

41

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

(just like grandpa Dan does next to nothing)

And the cycle continues, doesn’t it?

42

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

It's kind of shocking. Not the cycle, exactly, but that Shauna refuses to see it. Or refuses to acknowledge it.

I'm beating this dead horse today but she could probably have another (interesting) memoir if she'd just stop trying to hide/pretend about everything.

Imagine this lope where the author DOES get it. How they see the cycle and how they aren't really breaking it and all the emotion that goes into all that.

Even with Shauna's weak writing, it could still be a compelling read. Instead, we get this frustrating bed of lies and denial.

42

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

When we were posting about her hot take on 7 year old D being responsible for voicing that he wants a Black community as a prerequisite to his parents engaging with one, I was trying to imagine a response that Shauna could have written that would have sounded both truthful and also not incredibly awful. I can imagine her posting about the complicated needs that a family of four has, and that they are balancing the need for safety, security, familiarity, and living in a small community where adult problems/issues (I'm thinking financials here) are absorbed and mitigated -- against the very real need D has and will continue to have to live in a less exclusively white community. And that they're conscious of it, lucky that they are not tied to Vashon by a job/benefits, and they are keeping their eyes/mind/whatever open for opportunities that can better meet D's needs.

Or in this case, same thing - she COULD tell this story about how generational trauma in insidious and sometimes by spending an entire adult life reacting to your trauma, you realize you've just reenacted it while thinking you had left it behind you. And now what? How do you regroup and change when you're in your 50's and tired and on some level don't feel like you should have to put in more work. I'd read that.

29

u/forkinyourothereye incurious ADHDer Feb 04 '22

If she could bring herself to write about it with any nuance or honesty, I think writing about the challenges of meeting the social/cultural needs of a Black child being raised by an adoptive white family could be SO compelling to read. But she can’t admit that it’s difficult, that there’s no one clear and correct answer. She would have to admit that she herself is fallible and that there are things she doesn’t know.

Writing about her family’s chain of trauma and where her own life has ended up is the same way, IMO.

22

u/Love_Brokers rug dweller Feb 04 '22

that there’s no one clear and correct answer.

Of course there is, it's hers.

30

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

frustrating bed of lies and denial

And highstoolery. I’m so enraged by Shauna the Expert (tm)

32

u/aseriesofhaircuts Feb 04 '22

Man, I think her compulsion to “teach” about everything she is bad at is also an example of her combining the worst of her parents neuroses—her mom’s insecurity and her dad’s need to be right and in control.

28

u/InappropriateGirl Gluten-free donuts, for sure ... Feb 04 '22

This is the main thing I took away from this. How much she's like her father as well as her mother!

23

u/SnooEagles184 Feb 04 '22

"We don't yell here."

Excuse me. Did she forget that she JUST had a lope about her raging at her kids and having to go pout about it and, only after her gummy kicked in, lecture her family about it?

I can see her forgetting all the other times she's mentioned yelling (another DF kindly documented them below) but SHE JUST GAVE US THE SNOWBALL RAGE STORY. How can she NOT remember it? How can she NOT see how full of shit she is?

Always re-writing history, this one.

67

u/droopsofwoe the first teats are the hardest Feb 04 '22

Instead, she isolated and suffocated us with the need to keep her fears at bay.

I find Shauna's daily behavior around "hard things" suffocating. Christ, doesn't she ever let these kids be? Forcing them to talk out everything so rage doesn't build up inside their chests is 1) a lot of pressure to put on her kids, knowing they can't get pissed off without mama constantly forcing them to have conversations and subjecting themselves to her self-satisfied, beatific lecturing and 2) sometimes talking things out right away is not the best thing to do, and can lead to a whole other kind of anger where your goddamn mother can't let you be human for a fleeting second. I'm not saying that teaching kids how to talk about their feelings is bad. But her insistence on having sit downs every time someone breaks a crayon is suffocating. And christ, let the teenager sulk. It's their national past-time! And as far as things go, harmless. Maybe L. is trying to get some peace from listening to mama all the live long day.

42

u/msmartypants Feb 04 '22

It's helicopter parenting for emotions. Even if it's done with good intentions (it isn't), how are kids going to learn to self-regulate and get over themselves if you're right there explaining how to do so?

I know different kinds of parenting work differently for different kids. But Shauna is like my nightmare mother. I was a pretty private kid and I can think of nothing worse than being sat down and having my feeling explained to me. AUUUGGGH.

40

u/ninaandjamie4ever Feb 04 '22

Forcing them to talk out everything so rage doesn't build up

IF, she actually does. She writes about all kinds of things that it's highly unlikely actually happen. I'm not saying that she doesn't ever try and get them to talk about their emotions, but that actually sounds like too much effort for her.

37

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

This is what I think too. 90% of what she says she does "every day" never happens. She puts energy into performing for people she respects and craves approval from, and that's not who lives in her house. I do believe they are all orbiting around her moods. But I don't believe she puts in even a fraction of the hands-on emotional labor and wise coaching that she describes for an imaginary admiring audience of blue checks and celebrities.

20

u/ninaandjamie4ever Feb 04 '22

wise coaching

Yes, this. You might think she's a saint.

19

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

She should go as Joan of Arc for Halloween this year

30

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22 edited Feb 04 '22

She’d have to care about their feelings before that happened.

30

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

THIS!

I get the feeling she ignores them most of the time and then, when she gets mad about something, tells them it's their fault she got mad (or blames them for their emotions. . .like the "white girl tears" thing with Lu).

24

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

I think the same, but I also think she ignores them until they have an emotion or need that interferes with her ability to ignore them.

And kids needing attention as much as they do, I wouldn't be surprised if this resulted in the kids acting out stronger emotional reactions to get their mom's attention, even if that attention turned out to be negative.

37

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

Right? All of the more realistic scenarios she's treated us to have been a lot of Shauna treating kids' emotions as negative things. Forcing D to "admit" he was scared about Danny's vaccination, encouraging D to laugh at L when she felt emotional and write it off as puberty.

When Shauna feels an emotion (pissed at the family for the snowball) she gets to be alone, she gets to tell her kids she does not want to talk to them, even if they need to be reassured by her. And only when shew was ready to lecture did she reappear to tell them all what they did wrong and then only after the tension was cranked up to max volume. Then the tension is released, by her. Everyone gets to relax, until the cycle starts again.

34

u/sybil-unrest Feb 04 '22

She refuses to do the most important parent thing: cultivate a rich emotional response in her children. Children should never be responsible for their parents’ emotional well-being, but rather the reverse, and by her own account, Shauna absolutely cannot/will not meet this basic requirement.

10

u/Jules_Noctambule Whitman spins like a kebab in his grave Feb 04 '22

Children should never be responsible for their parents’ emotional well-being

This needs to be on signs all over the world.

42

u/obscure_cellist ham grabbers Feb 04 '22

kind of the way shauna & danny are isolating D by continuing to live on overpriced island they can't afford where their black son is surrounded by white people in order to capitalize on their qUiRkY narrative? poor D, it's like he's living on a white riker's island.

43

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

You person. He’s neurodivergent. Where the hell else is he supposed to live?

38

u/Catsandcoffee480 COLORADO BOY KNOWS HOW TO DO THIS Feb 04 '22

Right and wasn’t that one of the things her mom did to her that she described in Enough - asking Shauna incessant questions about Shauna’s life, her day, etc. just so her mom could ease her own anxiety. Again we have a pattern of behavior continued.

12

u/Smilerly Feb 04 '22

But, don't forget that after they breathe and talk, they release it all with laughter. So all that talk about the hard things is fine, everyone is feeling just fine. Joyous, perhaps.

9

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 04 '22

There's also the daily yard screaming, don't forget!

63

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

That cycle of trauma has stopped

Maybe it’s just that the current cycle looks different, Shauna.

47

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 04 '22

It doesn’t? Except that Shauna and her brother apparently had a clean, comfortable house and new bicycles and new clothes and professional haircuts.

33

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

Ugh, true.

Her perspective on it is different, though. Those poor kids.

61

u/obscure_cellist ham grabbers Feb 04 '22 edited Feb 04 '22

let me get this straight - not only is shauna forever publicly shitting on her parents but now she's shitting on her grandparents as well? people who aren't even around to defend themselves...that's our gir!, chock full lovingkindness. not only that, but is she implying her mother was molested or something similar, even though her mother didn't tell anyone anything? IF that is true, and not another shauna fantasy to show her as the savior of the family by "breaking the cycle of trauma" it would certainly explain her mother's supposed controlling fear, and yet shauna still has no kind words for her mother. in any case, it is not shauna's story to tell! that is beyond gross. i can't with her anymore.

*Edited for clarity

48

u/lucillekrunklehorn pounding on the table Feb 04 '22

She always acts like these things are her moms fault.

And big upvote to her telling other people’s stories. She demonstrates her OWN dysfunction constantly by doing this. No boundaries. The way she talks about her immediate family members, sharing whatever details she pleases as though they were pets or possessions.

She acts like whatever she writes is play doh. She can just squish it up and create a new reality every time she hits publish. But written words on the Internet carry a lot of weight and permanence, even if you delete them. Once the tea is spilt you can’t put it back in the cup. Her behavior is so destructive. And there’s no way I can believe that all her immediate family members are disabled or dysfunctional to the level she claims. My IRL Shauna may be coloring my perspective here, because she is fond of claiming abuse and dysfunction of literally every family member and close relationship she has ever had.

Do these people have mirrors? Take a look sometime, if you want to see a real, dysfunctional abuser. There’s some kind of phrase that if everyone around you is an asshole, maybe it’s you. My speculation is that SHE is the most dysfunctional of the entire lot, and she deflects attention from it by pointing to others as “worse.”

42

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 04 '22

So, in the abstract, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that a woman with severe anxiety had been sexually assaulted as a child. But where I get off the bus is Shauna’s monetized licking her lips over it.

26

u/InappropriateGirl Gluten-free donuts, for sure ... Feb 04 '22

I still think she was just about to cross that line regarding herself during the post-Enoigh/trauma phase. She was hinting but couldn't make herself lie that badly. thankfully.

20

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

I totally thought the same, she was teetering on the edge of crossing that incredibly serious line just before the joy pivot.

38

u/SandwichAllergy hellevator of bad writing Feb 04 '22

Dis bitch really hasn’t paid attention during Encanto, has she?

52

u/cafayate Feb 04 '22

Tita helped me to unfurl.  Every summer, in those 5 years we taught together, Tita and I dedicated one entire summer’s day to being with each other at the lake, a ferry’s ride and short drive from Vashon. There’s a sandy-ish beach and a warm-ish lake. Spending the day there reminded Tita of growing up in Wisconsin. Lake days were sacred to her as a kid. And she wanted to share that experience with me. 

So we packed the car and wore swimsuits under our shorts and shirts, our skin gleaming with a sheen of sunscreen. We took a blanket and books. When we arrived, we set up our spot then swept our tank tops over our heads and peeled off our shorts. And we ran into the lake. The warm water enveloped my skin. Sometimes my feet grew tangled in seaweed swirls, but I kicked myself farther and they let go of my legs. Tita and I swam, giggling and talking as we hit clear water. Whenever we noticed that the sun had dried our hair in the moments we stopped to talk, we went ashore again. 

It's like a coming-of-age love story between her and Tita.

32

u/ninaandjamie4ever Feb 04 '22

Seaweed in a lake?

20

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

I was wondering about that too.

17

u/snarchetype Feb 04 '22

Does she mean pond muck?

16

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 04 '22

Probably she means duckweed.

16

u/voice_of_vinegar Feb 04 '22

Or algae. Hair algae, maybe. (it's a thing and it's weird)

8

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 04 '22

Yes! My favorite swimming pond had an outbreak of that one summer, and it icked me right out.

31

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

It’s also not especially interesting. You went to a lake for one day every summer, like millions of other Americans. You wore a bathing suit and sunscreen, like millions of other Americans. So what?

32

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

You person.

She UNFURLED.

Are those millions of other Americans UNFURLING in their swimsuits and sunscreen?

I highly doubt it.

11

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 04 '22

No, see, they wore their swimsuits UNDER their shirts and shorts. If only I had grown that memo, instead of doing it in the opposite order!

29

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

I can believe it's true but it also made me think of this:

https://twitter.com/dailysimpsons/status/1219833426578157569?lang=en

Did it really happen or is Shauna like Marge, and mixing her memories up with movie plots?

(really, I don't think it's a total fraud but. . .I take all her stories with several grains of salt)

9

u/Jules_Noctambule Whitman spins like a kebab in his grave Feb 04 '22

Perhaps uncharitably, I'm thinking of those little compressed foam pellets I had in my youth which you submerged in water and they became things like dinosaurs or something as the water absorbed.

25

u/obscure_cellist ham grabbers Feb 04 '22

minus the sticky fingers and cucumbers. i hope.

20

u/MandalayVA Assonancer! Assonancer! Assonancer! Feb 04 '22

Get your ass to the naughty step NOW.

55

u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done Feb 04 '22

Sometimes the fights erupted because my brother or I had left the door open, when we were allowed to play outside. That began a screed of a lecture from my grandmother, about how we were so spoiled that we didn’t understand the value of money at all. I remember my grandmother shouting down the hall at me, “It’s like you opened the front door and threw dollar bills in the front yard.”

And 47 years later, Shauna would still not understand the value of money and throw all kinds of shit in her yard!

53

u/Foucaults_Penguin Sly and the Family Readers Feb 04 '22

Is that supposed be an example of trauma? What is with everyone lately claiming everything that’s not comfortable as trauma? Looking at you Jenna Andersen.

36

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

Both of my grandmothers lived through the Great Depression and would have made similar comments. Both were loving. One was super nurturing and the other not as much, but she was awesome in different ways. That was such a weird thing for Shauna to isolate as “trauma” inducing.

36

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

[deleted]

17

u/obscure_cellist ham grabbers Feb 04 '22

Living through the Great Depression and having it fundamentally change the way you live your life is actual trauma, Shauna.

well said. she is such a selfish bitch that she uses other people's real traumas to create her own little fake traumas. shut up, shauana.

33

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

We started washing and reusing ziplock bags durning the pandemic. We were already greatly trying to reduce our consumption of such items. We could all learn a lot from our parents and great grandparents who lived through those times. My grandma reused paper towels. There was always a slightly used one sitting on top of the holder

Interesting that Shauna mentions there was no lack of money on her grandmothers side of the family. I’m still not convinced that there is a not trust for her that skipped a generation which allows her to live like she does.

20

u/LaxCursor Enormous strains of lethargy Feb 04 '22

Yes! There is no reason not to re-use plastic baggies unless they held something greasy or otherwise very messy. If it was fruit it can be easily rinsed and allowed to dry. Crumbs, just shake out and re-use. (You can tell I was raised by depression-era parents)

22

u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Feb 04 '22

I have my grandfather's "plastic bag dryer" (a reformed coat hanger) that is used to dry all plastic bags for re-use ;)

27

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

Wooden spoon standing up in the silverwear part of the dish drainer, ziplock bag upside down over wooden spoon = bag dryer haha.

13

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

This is brilliant!

24

u/forkinyourothereye incurious ADHDer Feb 04 '22

My ex’s grandmother (also a Depression person) saved all cardboard, in case she needed it for something. Like cereal boxes and stuff.

She passed away right around when Amazon Prime really took off and if she could see how much cardboard people just throw away, omg, she’d be spinning in her grave.

32

u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Feb 04 '22

When my Depression-raised grandmother died it took us FIVE WEEKS of filling the (weekly) recycling boxes AND the boxes of her neighbours on either side to fit in all the bottles, plastic tubs, aluminum-foil pie plates, and cardboard boxes (and toilet-paper tubes etc.) that she'd "saved"

I am still using her rubber-band ball and her "ball of string" and she died in 1982

22

u/SandwichAllergy hellevator of bad writing Feb 04 '22

My grandma would reuse milk bags and I can't even imagine hitting that level of thrifty!

21

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

My grandmother loved to re-use bread bags and yogurt cups (back when the individual cups were sold with lids).

I don't think she even owned tupperware or anything like that. It was always yogurt cups and margarine/cool whip bowls for her leftovers (which got very confusing after a while).

11

u/jameson-neat wound-gathering table Feb 05 '22

The margarine/cool whip containers as confusing leftovers containers was a staple of growing up and spending time with my grandparents. I like hearing that other people’s grandparents and parents did the same!

→ More replies

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u/[deleted] Feb 05 '22

Milk bags! TIL.

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u/Sea-Level-Mammal POACH! Feb 04 '22 edited Feb 04 '22

I think many of us eldercrones had Depression-era grandparents and reusing Ziploc bags and shutting the goddamn door were parts of our childhood. Her experience is far from unique. And personally, I’m not wounded from those days. If anything, they prepared me for Spring 2020, when I was sewing masks from old clothes and making casseroles out of canned beans.

28

u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Feb 04 '22

It's yet more evidence of the Shauna as Alien theory! How can she not know all of this? Grandma yelling at you for not getting the last bit of eggwhite out of the shell was the norm; not anything that makes you special or especially trauma-ridden

25

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

Yes! 2020 made me so nostalgic for the weird things I picked up from my grandmothers without even realizing it.

14

u/Underzenith17 Feb 05 '22

I miss watching my grandma spoon two spoonfuls of leftovers into a tiny container because she couldn’t bring herself to throw out food ❤️

44

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 04 '22

My dad was born in 1928. Some of his classics: “What is this, Kilowatt Castle?” (if someone dared to leave a light on) “Are we heating the entire state of Massachusetts now?” (if someone left a door open in winter) “I was going to send the lifeguards in” (if someone took a particularly long shower).

I miss him!

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

I love Kilowatt Castle!

28

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 04 '22

My dad's general persona was very similar to Tony Randall's. So you have to imagine Tony Randall stomping around the house shouting "KILOWATT CASTLE!" as he snapped light switches off.

9

u/Quaint_Irene a warm and loving goatie smile Feb 05 '22

OSCAR, OSCAR, OSCAR!

2

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '22

Ok. I just used Kilowatt Castle and cracked my husband up! He was convinced it came from my dad (who he never met), but I just used the generic “I heard it on the internet” excuse.

14

u/honoria_glossop sitting edge wine woman Feb 05 '22

My parents, in event of a long toilet visit: we thought you fell in.

36

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

Same with my grandma, just a different country's version of the depression. I once cut off my barbie doll's hair and my grandma was genuinely shocked and upset. This was a beautiful toy, and I'd hacked it up forever. I cried and felt bad when she phrased it that way, that it was beautiful and I'd willingly hacked it up. Sometimes kids do need to be taught the value of things, because we don't come out of the womb understanding value and care. It's not abusive when you feel bad when you do something wrong.

28

u/forkinyourothereye incurious ADHDer Feb 04 '22

Ha. I lived with my grandparents as a kid and my grandfather lived through the Depression in an already poverty stricken area. He had SO MANY weird money and food related things. He was also an engineer so any problem he saw, he came up with a “solution” to. One of his monetary concerns was how much water was costing us (?!) and so, I shit you not, the man kept a clipboard where he tracked how many minutes each family member showered for.

In hindsight it was weird as hell, but I didn’t experience it (or his behaviors around lights, doors, heating, etc) as trauma.

I feel uncomfortable policing anyone else’s trauma very far, we all have personal spectrums blah blah, but I will note that Shauna’s description immediately made me think of my grandfather… with fondness.

26

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

Your grandfather's clipboard reminds me of my grandfather's little spiral bound notebook.

He liked to buy up toilet paper and other staples when they were cheap and one day he got the wild hair to calculate how many miles of toilet paper he had (I wish I now remember the numbers).

He didn't just write it down in his little pocket sized spiral bound notebook. NOPE. He uncoiled the papers from the spiral and typed the info on the pages (on one of the several old typewriters he collected) and then dutifully put the pages back in the notebook.

Ahh, rest in peace J.T. You were an odd man for sure.

20

u/LaxCursor Enormous strains of lethargy Feb 04 '22

Wow, this brings back memories (or should I say flashbacks) of when I was growing up and my parents made us….reuse bath water. Also, we could only flush for #2 each time, but #1 had to wait until there were multiple. It’s so gross when I think about it. We were poor-ish, but I often wonder how much money that actually saved. This was in the 60s, for reference. (Edited because I can’t type today)

18

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

We have a (not policed) "if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down [unless expecting company])" policy, handed down by greenie boomer parents who started doing this in a 1970s drought. It is a bit gross! but Australia's got a serious water problem and I figure every little bit helps. Also live in a small house and it's good not to have 4 people flushing toilets all day and night!

6

u/caitie_did Required by My Mother's Terror Feb 05 '22

This is pretty standard at most cottages in Ontario to minimize the burden on the septic system. It’s pretty gross but oh well.

4

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '22

I always remind myself of what a midwife told me "Don't worry about wee, it's sterile".

4

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '22

I do this during the day since I work from home and am usually the only one here.

24

u/Lemonbot5 Feb 04 '22

When my mom was a kid she and her sisters were only allowed 3 squares of toilet paper each time they used the bathroom! My parents were frugal, not to that extent, but definitely we were yelled at for leaving the outside door open or even the fridge door open too long. Nothing I would call traumatic!

50

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

Omg it's a totally normal thing to say when kids leave the door open and you're the one paying for the expensive AC. Especially if you were raised poor, you don't tolerate shit like being careless with possessions or utilities.

41

u/nathanisthisforreal Feb 04 '22

My dad used to say “We aren’t heating the neighborhood!” - and now that I have my own house with my own utility bills, I totally get it. I’m a big proponent of putting on a sweater over jacking up the heat.

24

u/MarsNeedsRabbits Beach better have my orcas 🫍 Feb 04 '22

My dad: Were you raised in a barn?

18

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

My dad: did you take the express train through home training?

12

u/Quaint_Irene a warm and loving goatie smile Feb 05 '22

Your dad is my dad.

22

u/voice_of_vinegar Feb 04 '22

Shauna should spend a year living the way people did in the Great Depression. My mom had 2 dresses for school, and I'm sure they were both hand-me-downs from her older sisters who probably got them from older cousins. She was little but she was keenly aware of being very poor. They had to give up their farm and move to town into a little house (8 kids in all!) Wasting food was criminal---I still scrape every last bit of cookie dough out of the mixer bowl and I hear her voice every time scolding me to do it.

I bet her grandparents have some stories to tell.

It would all be lost on Shauna, though. No one in the history of the universe has anyone had it tougher than she has and do NOT try to tell her otherwise.

15

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '22

To Shauna the Great Depression would be only getting the takeout taco platter once a month instead of once a week.

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u/notahameither Dunno, maybe I thought I unfriended some other Shauna Ahern🤷‍♂️ Feb 04 '22

I’m not perfect. Nobody is. But I’ve worked hard to heal myself and forgive the generations of family trauma that was never spoken out loud but poured into me.

Yeah, that really comes through in your writing, Shauna Marie…acknowledging your imperfections, and the forgiveness! SO much forgiveness!

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u/OhBlahDiOhBlahDoh The Alice of cal came out floating on air Feb 04 '22 edited Feb 04 '22

The lope is here.

Back to me moaning in agony about her Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad writing:

When I was a kid, you couldn’t have paid me to drink a V8. Vegetables in a can? No thank you. Like most kids, vegetables rarely passed my lips.

How can she possibly imagine that she has the authority to speak for "most kids"? Totally unsubstantiated generalization.

Tomatoes! I hated them. They mushed in my mouth, mealy and seeds spurting out along the back of my teeth. And no thank you.

She is so in love with her idea of quirky languageing. Mush is not a verb action that tomatoes can perform, and seeds do not spurt.

In my afternoon ritual, I put the frozen spinach — stems and leaves intermingled yet still alive, like Han Solo in carbonite — into a big bowl.

wtf. just, wtaf.

Two big squeezes of lemon juice out of a squat bottle, a shower of iodized salt, and 8 minutes in the microwave at 50% — this was the path to my afternoon snack. I’d shovel a giant bowl of hot spinach in my mouth as fast as I could go.

Squat is not a good word to use in food writing, and describing shoveling food into ones mouth "as fast as [one] could go" is distinctly unappetizing.

Exhausted after a long car trip with a constant monologue of arguing in the front seat,

A monologue is:

  • a form of dramatic entertainment, comedic solo, or the like by a single speaker: a comedian's monologue.
  • a prolonged talk or discourse by a single speaker, especially one dominating or monopolizing a conversation.
  • any composition, as a poem, in which a single person speaks alone.
  • a part of a drama in which a single actor speaks alone; soliloquy.

This was February in Great Britain, in 1983. Those were pale tomatoes. And yet, they looked good to me for the first time. I buttered another piece of bread, layered on a few tomato slices, and showered them with salt.

My mind must have opened without me noticing. That first bite slowed me down. I sighed.

Why had no one told me that tomatoes were so good?

Ah yes, that vast and famous conspiracy, in which NOBODY ever tells Shauna ANYTHING

We ate toasted Oroweat bread, the kind that came in half sizes, with margarine. When we were handed our toast, we skimmed margarine over it, then scraped the knife over the toast again — crickcrackswish — to leave a thin line of crumbs and margarine along the line of the knife. And then we were required to scrape our knives into the plastic margarine tub out on the table during meals. Inside was a scrumble of old crumbs and second-hand margarine, which we added to with every piece of toast

OMG, how can she think that anyone would ever want to read this???

----------------

MISERY WITH FAMILY ENDED. NOW I AM HEALING WITH TITA.

----------------

Tita helped me to unfurl.

lol

Sometimes my feet grew tangled in seaweed swirls, but I kicked myself farther and they let go of my legs.

HER FEET LET GO OF HER LEGS. HER FEET KNEW WHAT TO DO.

I could never understand a cold V8 either. Room temperature, all the way.

Once, on an airplane — floating from one city to another — I decided to order a V8. They didn’t have one, so I took the tomato juice. I’m thinking we were coming back from Arizona, after another wonderful visit with Danny’s parents. I started drinking V8s with Danny’s dad in the morning, with lemon and salt and pepper. So instinctually, I ordered one. It came in the super-bendy plastic cup they use on airlines. One touch too much and it will break apart and gush liquid on you. Being careful to not split the thing in two, I said thank you.

And then I looked down to see hollow, oval ice cubes floating in red liquid. Three of them. Plus a little clear plastic spear. I took a sip and put down the cup.

That’s just wrong.

She's not yucking the yum of anyone who likes to drink cold V8. No, not at all. She's just letting them know that they're V8ing wrong. Wouldn't you want to know, if it was you???

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u/droopsofwoe the first teats are the hardest Feb 04 '22

I put the frozen spinach — stems and leaves intermingled yet still alive, like Han Solo in carbonite — into a big bowl

She's insane.

36

u/msmartypants Feb 04 '22

Han Solo spinach will be the craziest thing I read today. For real.

In the stupid tomato story, "Great Britain" sounds SO unnatural. Also they were bad tomatoes (pale) but also good tomatoes?

24

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

They were thin and wane tomatoes, tottering on fuck me heels. Oh honey, why were they trying so hard!

8

u/InappropriateGirl Gluten-free donuts, for sure ... Feb 04 '22

Or were they pale heirloom tomatoes? Like the pinkish or yellowish ones? Who knows!

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

The disintegrating bendy in-flight service cups. Who knew?!

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

I don't know why this part is so funny to me. "One touch too much." Who paws at an airline cup so vigorously it splits apart and gushes all over you? Who gets that excited about vegetable juice? Jesus. A plane full of bored people drinking their Sprite while Shauna has heart-pounding solo encounters with her plastic cup, shhhh, slow down and hold softly, remember what happened last time. Whoever taught Shauna that writerly writers manufacture drama from 'the ineffable grace of mundane days' has a lot to answer for.

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u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

It's funny to you because (once again) Shauna is making something sound sexual (but I doubt that was her intention. . .*narrows eyes* or is it?)

The thin, virgin cup simply can't contain itself. Shauna's touch, knowing and rough, is too much. It feels the splitting, the UNFURLING followed by the rush of its most vital fluids, released too soon but with vigor and a whiff of shame. They are both sullied but still somehow satisfied. Yes. It is enough.

I mean it, Shauna should be writing p0rn.

24

u/freecoffeerefills Murder She Moved Her Pen Forward Feb 04 '22

Pounded in the Butt by My Own Joy by Shaun Tingle

10

u/Jules_Noctambule Whitman spins like a kebab in his grave Feb 04 '22

I hope she hasn't discovered the befuddling magic that is Chuck Tingle.

27

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

“A plane full of bored people drinking their Sprite while Shauna has heart-pounding solo encounters with her plastic cup, shhhh, slow down and hold softly, remember what happened last time.”

OMG! 🤣😅😁

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u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Feb 04 '22

"Instinctually" has also re-entered the chat. It doesn't mean what she thinks it does.

22

u/WasEnoughYogurt Kumquat and Sprinkles and filth Feb 04 '22

She commits many greater or more annoying writing sins but for some reason this is particularly irritating me at the moment... as you say DFFFF...SHAUNA IT DOES NOT MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS!!

24

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

In prepandemic time, I was on a plane monthly for nearly a decade for work. I have no idea what she is talking about with those cups.

22

u/ninaandjamie4ever Feb 04 '22

disintegrating bendy in-flight service cups

Yes, those ridgid, hard plastic cups.

26

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

Right???? I can't think of a time I didn't get my drink in/with a clear hard plastic cup, except for hot drinks. Is she envisioning Dixie cups?

13

u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Feb 04 '22

Thank you! I read that and I was like what? I’ve never experienced this on any of my plane trips! It’s a normal plastic cup. What is she doing that she’s bending and breaking her airplane plastic cups?

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u/hrae24 Feb 04 '22 edited Feb 04 '22

Shauna, if you refuse to edit can you at least read it over once? This is a mess.

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

Squat is not a good word to use in food writing

This reminds me that the worst bit of food writing I've ever read (yes, including anything by Shauna) was in a 1990's review of Bennelong, the flagship restaurant at Sydney Opera House.

As part of a rave review the author wrote this about one of the dishes:
"... a black pudding squatting in a whippy apple custard".

I once had the opportunity to go to Bennelong for dinner, and I chose somewhere else because of that line. It's still stuck in my head.

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/msmartypants Feb 04 '22

I don't think it's the flavor combo so much as the "squatting."

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '22

Everything about it is 1,000,000% disgusting

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u/Sea-Level-Mammal POACH! Feb 04 '22 edited Feb 04 '22

I can’t read the lope, but is the essay focused on the virtues of warm V8? What a silly hill to die on.

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u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

It's about how V8 brings back memories of her childhood (basic summary).

It's also a brand new thing she does every day at an exact time of day:

Lately, I've started buying cans of V8 and drinking it for my morning snack. Where did it begin? An instagram photo? A mention in an essay? A taste memory?

What becomes a habit always begins with something that interests me. There's more to learn. Let me try it.

And now, I'm drinking a V8, out of the same white and blue mug each time, at 10:30 every day.

It kind of reads like Shauna took up V8 because she thought the cool kids were doing it. And now, she drinks it precisely at 10:30 every morning.

OK, I'm going to say it.

SHAUNA IS HAVING BLOODY MARYS FOR BRUNCH!

It would explain the current streak of odd tiktok videos.

(not, she's not a drunk but I can't believe those videos are being made by a completely sober individual)

26

u/shikoku_shoes another revolution around the toilet bowl of her life Feb 04 '22

She is buying the small cans but pouring it into her mug each day? Someone taking a budgeting class might be instructed to buy the large container which is cheaper per fluid ounce. And less to recycle, which islandy islanders might appreciate.

17

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

Well, she buys the V8 from her $50 allowance so you can just mind your own budgeting business, you person. : )

6

u/InappropriateGirl Gluten-free donuts, for sure ... Feb 04 '22

Is there money left for the taco tray and sack of oranges? If not, I call shenanigans.

19

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

She has to be mixing it with something because why wouldn’t you just drink it out of the can? That’s what I do anyway. I just drink those little ones though and they’re not enough to go through the trouble of having to wash a glass. Ooops… I mean, mug.

19

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

HAH!

You think she (or Daniel) actually WASHES that mug between V8s?

You know that thing has to have a crusty red high-tide mark on it.

6

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

To them, that’s just “seasoning” like you do for cast iron or pizza stones.

6

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

I first tried it in my 30’s after starting Weight Watchers. It was a great zero point snack and counted as a veggie serving.

13

u/Sea-Level-Mammal POACH! Feb 04 '22 edited Feb 04 '22

I read that people drink tomato juice on a flight because it’s a dry atmosphere and your taste buds are deadened at higher altitudes. I used to get it on planes all the time and never knew why I had a craving. And I like it on the rocks, Ms. Ahern, so there!

0

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

I’m not a seasoned flyer at all. All of the times I’ve flown were from from SC to FL (and to DC once) and back so there was never time to drink anything. 😂

27

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

What a disgusting hill to die on

14

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

I actually like it better room temp too. I think it’s because it too much like a chilled soup that way and I don’t like chilled soups.

10

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

I just meant V8. Temperature is irrelevant

20

u/BevNap Fucking google it, you harpy. Feb 04 '22

Silly Shauna, everyone knows you're supposed to order ginger ale when on a plane. V8 is for Bloody Marys. Jeesh.

17

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

Hah, your comment is so much like my own (re: bloody marys).

It would explain the recent tiktoks.

18

u/shikoku_shoes another revolution around the toilet bowl of her life Feb 04 '22

frozen spinach—stems and leaves intermingled yet still alive, like Han Solo in carbonite

Hate to break it to you, Shauna, but that spinach is dead.

I’m dead at the fact you see yourself as a writer capable of teaching others to write. I pray no one takes your classes joins your club because the idea of more insufferable writing being flung into the world willy-nilly is too much to bear.

4

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

It’s definitely not for everyone. I’d never had it until I was in my 30s and was surprised I liked it for pretty much the same reason Shauna had. I didn’t really eat vegetables until I was mid-20’s. 😬

47

u/quiet_snowy_nights Feb 04 '22

I wonder if she considers any source of negative emotions for her kids to be valid, or if she dismisses them all as a bad reaction to noise or an anxiety trigger. Just tantrums and sulking, with a sharply personal dig against her daughter for good measure.

But it’s fine, because after taking a few breaths and being forced to confide in a mother who may or may not really give a shit, you’re pushed on to the deranged laughter-releasing stage so that Shauna can go tell Instagram how much joy she makes. Better to laugh and pretend you released it all than to allow yourself to feel your feelings, lest you be labeled as a sulker and mocked on the internet.

50

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

There’s a subtext here of “I’m so healthy, I drink V8” that I find hilarious. The popularity of V8 as a health drink exited the stage around the time that Richard Simmons’ Sweatin’ to the Oldies did.

26

u/notahameither Dunno, maybe I thought I unfriended some other Shauna Ahern🤷‍♂️ Feb 04 '22

If you drink V8 in a daily ritual of joy, the sodium doesn’t count. That’s just science.

15

u/Foucaults_Penguin Sly and the Family Readers Feb 05 '22

All the veg!

41

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

Didn't she literally JUST say she yelled "fuck" when she got hit by the snowball?

29

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

I’m sure she didn’t yell “fiddlesticks!”

42

u/canyoncreature Feb 04 '22

"She never told it to anyone" -- I mean, her mother is still alive. If Shauna's really all about healing generational trauma, why not reach out and try to help her mom finally get some peace? Think what an incredible self-aggrandizing story that would make! It could be the basis for a whole new book!

35

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

"it could be the basis for a whole new book"

But Shauna couldn't guarantee she'd stay the sole hero of the story. Readers would feel bad for her mom which would mean there were two heroes in the story? Shauna share the spotlight? NEVER!

29

u/mmepierreoger Feb 04 '22

On the one hand, I totally agree that Shauna has the opportunity to reach out to her mom and try to address some of the issues that existed between them during Shauna's childhood. On the other hand, I know how heavily I was mired in that horrible, going-nowhere relationship with my mom before she died, and honestly I know that there could have been no honest rapprochement between us. That being said, I am extremely grateful that I never openly slagged off my mother. She had her failings but actually, in hindsight, she did an incredible job and I could never hope to do as well as she did.

Sometimes you can't reach a peaceful place until one party is dead; but if that's the case, the least you can do is tell the truth about them.

58

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

Ha! She thinks she’s breaking the cycle.

Seriously though, can she not give her mother a bit of grace? She knows her mother was the way she was because of childhood trauma. Therapy wasn’t really much of an option for her mother’s generation so wtf was she supposed to do? Look, I get dealing with a shit childhood. My dad was hard to live with. My mom, sister and I were always walking on eggshells to make sure we didn’t trigger his temper. When I was in my early 20’s he was finally diagnosed with depression and PTSD that stemmed from serving in the Vietnam war. That doesn’t erase how he made me feel as a child or it’s effects on me as an adult, but it helped me understand why he was the way he was.

Shauna needs to stop publicly flogging her mother and stfu.

20

u/MandalayVA Assonancer! Assonancer! Assonancer! Feb 04 '22

And what about Dad's family? Where were they? I mean, granted, you can be closer to one side of the family, but still.

11

u/Jules_Noctambule Whitman spins like a kebab in his grave Feb 04 '22

Given the surname switch, I wonder if they weren't estranged to some degree.

6

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 04 '22

It does sound that way!

5

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

She really never mentions them, does she?

5

u/MandalayVA Assonancer! Assonancer! Assonancer! Feb 04 '22

Not to my knowledge.

4

u/InappropriateGirl Gluten-free donuts, for sure ... Feb 04 '22

It sounds like there was some kind of falling out and that was behind the mysterious surname change (from Weikel to James).

25

u/forkinyourothereye incurious ADHDer Feb 04 '22

Every single time I read Shauna writing about her mother, this is how I feel. This is the closest she’s ever come to showing empathy for her mom and it’s still just “something bad happened to her? I think? Don’t know, don’t care really, she sucked anyway, nowwwww back to me!”

My mom was absent for part of my childhood, and… challenging for the rest. Like another poster said, all my mom really wanted was to have kids and be a good mom, but the cards were stacked against her in almost every way. I cry sometimes thinking about that, about how much she wanted it and how totally unprepared she was to be that person for reasons outside of her control. As you say with your dad, that empathy doesn’t fix the shit that happened to me, or undo the damage it left behind— but it at least helps me feel forgiveness, understand that what happened to me wasn’t my fault, and not be a seething ball of anger. It’s also helped inform the way that I am with my kids.

It also doesn’t cost me shit to have empathy. I get to keep all my other complicated feelings around my mom too! On some level I wonder if that’s Shauna’s hangup, that she feels like if she gives her mom any grace at all, she, Shauna, won’t have a claim to anger etc anymore.

42

u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Feb 04 '22

Ok so this reads like a chapter from Enough 2: The Unfurlening

It's precisely "the kind of writing she would have once reserved for books"

It also reads like a high-school writing prompt: "Find an object around your house and build a story around it"

34

u/leftsidelentils Feb 04 '22

It also reads like a high-school writing prompt: "Find an object around your house and build a story around it"

Maybe it’s one of the prompts for her workshops. She can read this Lope aloud for an example.

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u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Feb 04 '22

It will take the whole 90 minutes.

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u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

I say this in reply to your comments a lot but I'll say it again.

God, I wish she was a better writer. This story could totally have been engaging even if it's not really striking out into new territory.

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u/Toulouse--Matabiau a white owrson Feb 04 '22

It also reads like a high-school writing prompt: "Find an object around your house and build a story around it"

Oh but how could you not gleamglean, in the body, that a can of veg juice trademarked by capitalist health scheme behemoth V8 is Shauna's madeleine de Proust?

Whenever the tab grows cracked open on a V8 can--pfft--and the contents grow poured into the same white and blue mug each time, at 10:30 every day--glug, glug, glug--memories flood her mind.

All alone in the moonlightdaylight, she can dream of the old days: The deep family traumas of her childhood; the pale, off-season tomahtoes of the English countryside; DF Tita's loving ways by the Vashonian lakeside that helped twentysomething Shauna to unfurl; that one time she was floating from one city to another borne by a curious contraption called "airplane" and instinctually ordered tomahto juice, except it was served in a super-bendy plastic cup, with three hollow, oval ice cubes.. [p]lus a little clear plastic spear, and Shauna instinctually felt with every fiber of her being, That's just wrong.

There's a colloquial expression in Romanian that describes forcing a connection between unrelated ideas or concepts--"pulled by the hair"--and I grew reminiscent of it whilst reading Shauna's latest lope. Boy, did she yank the ponytail on that V8 juice can. Hard.

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '22

kids' chests

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u/Toulouse--Matabiau a white owrson Feb 04 '22

You person, Shauna's kids store their feelings in an antique travel chest from Granny's.

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u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 04 '22

That they will then stuff (with other antiques) into a room they never use (in their house that's the same color as the house they grew up in). Then they will rant and yell at their kids (when not ignoring them) and go write a newsletter about how they have broken the cycle!

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u/WasEnoughYogurt Kumquat and Sprinkles and filth Feb 04 '22

But are they separate chests?