Substack Writer Exposed, Transing Her Child & Using Him to Generate Income After Crisis Lands Him in the E.R. (2024)

[Disclaimer: This post was originally made to be sent out to all 488 subscribers of mine but as a paid article. My goal with this investigation was to entice some of you that haven’t bought a paid subscription to buy one in order to support my work. Unfortunately, Substack only sent this article out to 13 people (all paid subs, though I actually have 15 paid subs) I have contacted support to alleviate this problem, but I believe this is just another attempt from Substack to limit my reach. So in order to circumvent their attempts to censor me, I will be releasing this article for free in the future so everyone can see it in hopes that some of you will buy a subscription. I will be investigating this further in hopes that I can turn their misdeeds into our gain. No matter the pressure or the resistance to my work, I will prevail.]

For those of you that are new, my name is Samara and I am an investigative journalist that specializes in exposing deviancy and corruption (of the immoral and the illegal kind).

, or formerly known as Gluten Free Girl, is not your average Substack writer. Shauna is just one of many Liberal mothers that decided to trans her adopted black child (Charlize Theron wannabe?). But more on that later.

Shauna James Ahern (not quite sure where she took the “M” in her Substack handle from) and her husband Dan are absolutely f*cking mental.

From the outside it looks like Shauna is a huge success and completely put together; she’s published 3 cookbooks and 2 cultural critique book; she’s a former writer for Epicurious; she has a “large and loyal fanbase” (not evident from her Substack); and yet there are some dark things going on in the Ahern household.

If she hadn’t made a Substack, I would probably have never found out who she was. How unfortunate of her to have decided to piss in my sandbox and how unfortunate that it was my playground. I have spent over a week with little sleep, food, or socializing to bring to you, the largest investigation that I have done yet. With over an hour’s worth of content, archived links, photographic evidence and hard work, this is hands down the single greatest piece of work I have produced yet.

This post will be for paid subscribers only, so I do hope you spend the measly $5/month to help fund my work. With your contribution you can fund a dedicated warrior of God and expert in exposing all of those that would do harm to children.

Now let’s have some fun.

Speedrunning 4 Years

Alright, so we’re going to speed run this because there’s almost 20 years of info and I actually want you guys to read this entire article, so here we go.

Shauna was was “diagnosed” with Coeliac (or Celiac), a disease which causes a gluten allergy, in 2005 and this became her identity. From there she began identifying herself as the preeminent arbiter of truth when it came to all things gluten free. Soon after she made her brand, Gluten Free Girl.

Shauna also began writing for the Seattle Met from July of 2005 to March of 2006. Unfortunately those posts aren’t available any longer.

In 2006, Shauna met her future husband Dan off of a dating site but told everyone that they met through her blog to romanticize their relationship. 6 weeks later Dan would propose to her, but it wouldn’t be until October where she agreed. It was a match made in heaven, he had a John Lennon tattoo and she had a “Yes” tattoo which parallels how John met Yoko. John and Yoko were also known to neglect their kids. Funny how things work out like that.

2006 was a big year for Shauna, she was engaged to discount John Lennon and she had just secured a book deal from Wiley & Sons publishing. By January of 2007 she had completed the manuscript and it was set to be published. Her book, Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back...And How You Can Too, was well received.

2007 was also the first year that Shauna realized that she could grift to get something from her audience. In a blog she wrote on her website, she mentioned that she wanted red cowboy boots and provided a link. And wouldn’t you know it? One of her readers bought her the pair of $40 boots ($62 adjusting for inflation).

For their wedding Shauna had Dan make a gluten free cake which looks as appetizing as a millstone drizzled with icing.

Also for her wedding, Shauna and Dan had planned a trip to Italy for their honeymoon but they had no way of paying for it, so Shauna took her new found lesson and applied it to this as well. They asked their guests to help fund their planned ten day trip using Honeyfund.com in this blog post. Also in this blog post, Shauna starts the weird trend of referring to herself in third person.

During their trip in Italy, Shauna and Dan didn’t have a credit card to pay for a rental car, so she tried her luck at mooching off the old couples on vacation and it worked. Are you starting to see a pattern?

In March of 2008, Shauna announces to her readers that she is 4 1/2 months pregnant, at the age of 41. Which is biologically insane. This is also the year that she announced that she has signed a 2 book deal with Wiley & Sons. And in this post she tells her readers that she would protect her child’s privacy, which later you will see, she does not.

In July of 2008, she shares the news that her daughter, Lucy, is born in this post and nearly dies because her mother was way too old to give birth to a child. In September, Dan quits drinking. Originally Shauna told her readers that he had been struggling to stay sober and still did not have a driver’s license while working at the Impromptu Wine Bar for seven weeks after Lucy was born. However, previously Shauna had said that Dan didn’t drive because he was having seizures. Which leads me to believe he was having alcohol induced tremors. By October of 2008, Dan had quit his job and was unemployed.

In March of 2009, Shauna and Dan moved to Vashon Island, a beautifully scenic and pleasant place across from the bustling streets of Seattle. It wasn’t until a year later that Dan was employed again.

Now that I have laid the groundwork to show that Shauna has learned that grifting can pay her bills and that Dan has problems keeping down a job, I can really go into detail more about the really egregious things that they have done.

The Beginning of Shauna’s Neurodivergency

Shauna was able to capitalize on the growing trend of people becoming allergic to the poor excuse for grain we have in the United States and the self diagnosed gluten free people that are absolutely insufferable. You know, the type of person that goes to an authentic Italian restaurante and berates the waiter for the restaurante’s entire culture being based on their love for gluten.

Shauna was so disliked by people that were actually gluten free that she came under intense fire for defining herself as gluten free. So ingrained in her was this new found religion that someone who actually suffered from Coeliac, Elissa Washuta, called her out for being a gluten free identitarian.

In a blog post chastising Shauna for her ideology, Elissa stated:

“If gluten controls my social life, makes me speak its name every time I enter into a food-based give-and-take with another person, I am not in control, and I become defined by gluten.”

And this is really important because it shows you exactly what Shauna’s problem is. She’s a hardcore ideologue with a god complex. The funniest part about this is that Elissa is super progressive and a former Salon writer, yet even she thinks that Shauna is going overboard.

The Glutenist Manifesto and Freeing the Serfs of Choice

Glutenism (from English gluten, 'wheat-less, universal') is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the diet movement, whose goal is the creation of a gluten-free society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates gluten free products to everyone in the society based on whether they need gluten free products or not. A glutenist society would entail the absence of choice to eat bread and social classes (besides the ones based on how much gluten free products you eat), and ultimately money and the Italian state (or Italian culture).

Alright now that I’m done with my little bit of satire, lets talk about her warped sense of reality.

Shauna wrote an article for Epicurious called Gluten-Free Italian, and in that article she said some of most incorrect things I have ever heard:

“You see, at least 10% percent of Italians (those still on the Continent) have been diagnosed with celiac sprue. Children must be tested for it before they can enter kindergarten. Those with diagnosed celiac are given two paid work days a month to go food shopping, since gluten-free baked goods can be more difficult to find. And in farmacias in small towns, there are shelves of gluten-free packaged pasta, croissants, and rolls. That's at the pharmacy. Celiac is a medical condition.”

It was so incorrect that Dr. Alessio Fasano, the head of the University of Maryland Center for Celiac Research, refuted this information. Dr. Fasano, who is Italian, says this of Ahern’s post about Italy:

“It is almost ALL WRONG. It is not true that the prevalence in Italy is 10%, it is not true that kids must be screened before entering kindergarten, and it is not true that diagnosed celiac have 2 paid work days to go shopping. It is true that GF products are in farmacias (pharmacy), since the Italian government subside the cost of GF products in the order of ~100 euro/person/month. They have a ticket to claim their products at the pharmacy and that is the reason why pharmacies carry large number of GF products.”

This exemplifies that Shauna wants to live in a utopia of her own design. Italy is the least gluten-free populated society in the world. That’s not to say that people with Coeliac aren’t treated well in Italy. Gluten free products are seen as medicine prescriptions for people because it is so uncommon and children with gluten free intolerances are given a stipend so their families can afford the gluten free products. However, it’s less than 1% of the population that suffers from Coeliac and that’s most likely not even ethnic Italians.

After Shauna got roasted by the Italian doctor who is a specialist in Coeliac, Epicurious decided to change the article from saying “at least 10% of Italians” to “at least 1% percent of Italians.”

If there was 10% of Italians living with Coeliac in Europe, well the culture would collapse. Mostly because either they started to use genetically modified food which causes Coeliac or there was a massive flux of invaders which were toppling Italy’s civilization.

*SHAMELESS PLUG*

If you want to learn more about the subject of mass migration toppling Western civilization, watch Enoch Powell’s prediction from 1968 available here on Substack by click the link below. If you want to watch it on YouTube click this link or you want to watch it on Rumble click this link. Now back to your regularly scheduled programing.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Shauna and The Guardian posted an article in 2011 on her child and in it she wrote:

“For the first 16 months of her life, Lucy was gluten-free too. Coeliac is hereditary and there was no way to tell if she was predisposed to it without a genetic test. We don't have gluten in our house – there's too much danger of cross-contamination – but there is no deprivation. We eat roasted chicken with braised fennel and a warm coriander vinaigrette. A salad of red cabbage, black kale, red lentils and feta. Grilled pineapple buckle. She eats it all, with us. When she grew old enough to reach for the food on her father's plate when we were out to lunch, we let her eat his sandwich to see if she reacted to gluten. Luckily, so far, she seems to be fine with it.”

That is a wild thing to say when it comes to fulfilling your kids nutritional needs. I understand if someone has an allergy to gluten and they have to take precaution, but the problem is Shauna’s depriving her child because of her own condition. Shauna hadn’t even had her child tested at the time and she’s dictating a gluten-free diet in the home.

There’s nothing wrong with her child, who shares her father’s gluten loving genetics as well as her weak genetics. She should be a responsible parent and suck it up, a parent’s kids come before their comfort. How is there possibly less cross-contamination control in her own home than at a restaurant?

*SIDE NOTE*

Let me be clear, my mother has Coeliac and she never once tried to control what her kids ate in the house because of her condition. My mother realized that she couldn’t have gluten and thus didn’t have it. She didn’t force my sister and me, who love gluten to stop eating it so she could feel more comfortable. Also thank God my father is Italian, I love pasta.

Romance and Recipes

Earlier I mentioned that Shauna has released 3 cookbooks, but they’re not just cook books. They also have a lot of romance, if romance was telling patrons about your sexual feelings for your spouse in uncomfortable details.

In Shauna and Dan’s 2010 cookbook, “Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: A Love Story with 100 Tempting Recipes,” Shauna gets into some personal details about her sex life that left readers that were looking for a nice love story based around food, with a feeling of having read an erotic novel.

Her books description says:

“The author of Gluten-Free Girl joins forces with a chef to provide 100 gluten-free recipes, heartwarming stories and a day-in-a-life peak into what a professional chef does to put food on the Gluten-Free Girl and the Ahern, Shauna James.”

Firstly, Dan’s barely a chef and secondly what does any of that even mean? I feel like I just a had stroke reading that:

“a day-in-a-life peak into what a professional chef does to put food on the Gluten-Free Girl and the Ahern, Shauna James.”

Is putting food on her part of a fetish or did someone have a stroke while typing that?

Double Fisting and Pork

In August 2011, Shauna was invited to be part of a panel at the BlogHer Conference in San Diego. She co-led a session on self-acceptance, and was seen as a celebrity in the food world by some of her fans. This only fueled her ego and furthered her delusion of accepting her sins instead of working to stop sinning. If you want to see a full transcript of that for some reason, please click this link.

In the years 2009-2011, Shauna was sponsored by the National Pork Board (NPB) to run a blog called “pork, knife & spoon” but her deal wasn’t renewed, instead the NPB decided to find better qualified candidates for the job. This included the likes of Kristina Vanni, the creator of the $5,000 Winning Recipe at the 2009 Food Network Wine and Food Festival “America's Next Pork Personality Contest!”.

Plain and simple, Shauna was quickly being revealed as less than desirable as a promoter because she wasn’t actually that talented. People in the actual cooking industry were starting to see that, but it wouldn’t be for a few more years until the audience saw that. However, that’s not the worst thing that happened in 2011.

The Jennie Fund Controversy

Yeah, 2011 wasn’t a great year for ole Shauna. In August a blogger by the name of Jennie Perillo lost her husband to a heart attack. Shauna wanting to put herself in the middle of the horrible situation and be the center of attention wrote this blog post, mostly about her BlogHer conference, mind you, but then spoke about her new friend Jennie and her now deceased husband, Mikey. And this kickstarted something pretty bad.

Seeing it as an opportunity to be the hero of the story, Shauna decided to make a fundraiser for Jennie without Jennie’s consent. And she fibbed a little to make Jennie’s financial situation seem a little more bleak.

Using a new project, Bloggers without Borders, that was made by some of her friends, Shauna spearheaded a campaign that raised $76K. Shauna’s friend Maggie wrote in a blog from October:

As I said in our last ‘A Fund for Jennie’ post, we could never have predicted how much money we would raise. The final total raised was $76,430.50. We hoped for $10,000 and as the campaign started to pick up momentum our highest hope was that we would raise $25,000. You more than tripled that! The money just kept pouring in from across the United States and even around the world. I’ve said it time and again, but your generosity blew us (and onlookers) away.

Because the assistance from friends has helped address immediate concerns, 100% of the funds raised by Bloggers without Borders during ‘A Fund for Jennie’ is being split equally to be transferred into 529 accounts for Jennie’s daughters, Isabella (8) and Virginia (3). A 529 account is an education savings plan opened by parents to save money for their children’s education.

That same month Casual Kitchen wrote a scathing article outlining what was actually going on with that fundraiser.

Shauna had lied about Jennie’s financial situation, making it seem like Jennie was going to be destitute, but that far from the case. In fact, Jennie was extremely well off and she wasn’t actually part of the fundraiser. It was all Shauna’s idea and Shauna even lied to the girls from Blogger’s without Borders.

Shauna used this as an opportunity to gain more pageviews and publicity, essentially using this horrible moment in Jennie’s life as clickbait.

This revelation came from an anonymous user going by the username Petunia, who commented on a blog called “Blogging Angels,” which was featuring Jennie, and they had this to say:

“Current circ*mstances have led me to believe that this Jennifer’s financial situation was been grossly and deliberately misrepresented by the BWOB project. The original fund drive was run ostensibly to prevent Jennifer and her daughters from being in am emergency situation- homeless and without health insurance, and apparently they were not really in need of any of those things. It was not to provide a college fund (not to mention dinner out every night, new furniture, new clothing, and monthly trips).
I am disappointed to learn the truth.”

And after Petunia commented that, dozens of people started agreeing with them. And the truth came out, Shauna lied.

Jennie wrote in a blog post about the truth and stated the following:

I had hoped to not have to disclose any of the personal dealings I've had with Bloggers without Borders over the last 72 hours. The coordinators no doubt had sincere intentions when launching the Fund for Jennie campaign, but you should be aware that I had no involvement in how the project was presented to the general public.

As you might imagine having lost my husband I was a little busy grieving and caring for our daughters. If you hadn't noticed I still am grieving, yet choosing to share my experiences in hopes it helps others. To make an accusation against me without asking is a bit unfair, don't you think?

That said, I am sure this is a question others may be wondering. It is for that reason that I will share with you my own disappointment in the misrepresentation of my financial situation. When the idea of a fundraiser was first mentioned to me, I said repeatedly that I was in no immediate financial need. I said there were many other people suffering far beyond myself.

Still, I was told people wanted to do something, to help me directly in some way, so I said if it made people feel like they could help, donations could be made towards my daughters' college education. I do not know why the initial post didn't reflect the reality, but you need to understand that I was not involved and cannot bear any responsibility. Would it have made a difference in the amount raised had the post been written to accurately reflect the fundraiser—that is something I can’t answer. I do know, and agree with you, that people had the right to be better informed.

Unfortunately, none of this came to my attention until after the fact. I asked BwoB to donate a portion of the funds to a foundation that helps widows and widowers in true financial need. As of this past week, I even implored them to please donate all the funds to that charity. My request was denied. I was told by their Board of Directors that by law they were legally bound to distribute the funds as the donors had directed. If you contributed, or anyone else who reads this comment donated, you should contact BwoB regarding a refund. I do not know if this possible.

And this reality put all the blame on Shauna, who then tried to put the blame back on a grieving widow. Shauna implicated Jennie in the whole ordeal but then she also claimed it was because “internet bullies” had been harassing her for years. Those “internet bullies” were from Get Off My Internets, a discussion community that is known for going after internet personalities, especially the crooked ones.

They had been monitoring the whole fundraiser and noticed that Jennie was actually quite well off by looking at her tweets. Why would a grieving widow in need of money be shopping for expensive boots, eating out every night, or making a college fund for her kids, when the implication was that she was going to be destitute without that $76K? She wouldn’t.

Those “internet bullies” of Shauna’s had been aware of the truth the whole time and instead of letting Shauna get away with this, they stepped in to stop it. Presumably using the Petunia account to do it. And this what ruined Shauna’s reputation in the blogging community.

Going Viral, Becoming YouTubers

In the height of Shauna’s food journalist influence in March of 2012, having been published by Epicurious, the Guardian, and having her own brand, Gluten Free Girl, Shauna and Dan decided to post videos on YouTube.

This video from 2012 garnered almost 250k views. And with this Shauna was able to bring in new viewers that weren’t familiar with her brand, Gluten-Free Girl. Shauna would use this new audience and capitalize on the viral video to influence future projects with some powerful players, but more on that later.

The Thanksgiving Ordeal

In Autumn of 2012, Shauna and Dan were trying to capitalize on the growing app market and hired an app developer with the pretentious name of Pableaux (¿Por qué Pablo se escribe Pableaux?) to develop a Thanksgiving app for the iPad. This app would contain gluten-free recipes for Thanksgiving classics. Which seems like an innovative idea, but there were a couple of issues.

The app utterly failed, as Shauna didn’t do any market research with her own audience. The majority of the people couldn’t afford or didn’t have an iPad. She was essentially not just trying to sell an app, she was trying to sell iPads as well.

Her readers ended up relaying this information as well as information that concerned the differences in the recipes from her blog and that of her new app in this blog post’s comment section.

Shauna took to her blog the day after Thanksgiving to complain about her readers and how hard it was because they were complaining too much:

“With that, we’re done for a bit. To tell you the truth, this has been exhausting. We’ve been posting nearly every day, in spite of the stomach flu, cancelled preschool days, finishing the last edits of our cookbook, taking up new gigs, and dealing with family matters. We’ve been answering questions left and right, trying to calm those of you were pissed at us that we did an iPad app instead of an Android app or an eBook, and working hard to keep up with everything else. We need a break.”

Shove it Wiley, Jovial is Paying for Italy

Wiley had offered Shauna 2 more book deals after her first book found success. Having asked her to complete her new book by 2011, Shauna found a way to keep extending her publish date.

Shauna was also believed to have been given a book advance for this book. Instead of taking the time to make the book, Shauna was too busy doing the BlogHer conference, trying to make a Thanksgiving app, and being wrapped up in a scandal with “A Fund for Jennie.”

However, this wasn’t the worst part for Wiley. Shauna could explain that by doing the BlogHer conference, she was actually drawing up publicity for the release. Shauna could also put the blame on Jennie for the fundraiser scandal. And the app was simply a way to introduce her readers to a new format to read her books in the future. Not to mention with the success of her new online cooking series, Shauna could offer them a new market of buyers.

What Shauna couldn’t explain away was the fact that she took money from a company called Jovial, which offered to sponsor her blog and provide for her to do cooking events in Italy. Shauna essentially took money from Jovial and pushed back the publish date so she could have a vacation in Italy while being centered around the guise of teaching people how to cook.

In June of 2012, Shauna posted her first blog on this and she continued this for a year, visiting Italy 3 times in 16 months. And as you could imagine, Wiley was not particularly pleased.

Shauna eventually finished the cookbook after Wiley’s insistence, however, they were still butting heads. Shauna originally wanted to title the book Feeding Us, however, Wiley stepped in and forced Shauna to change the title, because she was dropping her brand, Gluten-Free Girl, and the book would get lost in the market. Shauna wasn’t a draw, her brand was, and Wiley knew that no one besides her fans would buy the book if they didn’t change the title. It would essentially ruin the only positive thing that Shauna had going for her, brand recognition in a growing trend.

Shauna announced the release of Gluten-Free Girl Every Day in 2013 with this blog post, confirming that Wiley stepped in and “insisted” that she actually market her brand and not her, because she was actually unmarketable:

“This cookbook, Gluten-Free Girl Every Day, truly is an everyday book. Our last cookbook, Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: A Love Story with 100 Tempting Recipes was meant to be a love story, between me and Danny, but also with food. It’s filled with recipes for people who have hours to cook and want to create restaurant-quality meals in their home. I still love that cookbook. But Gluten-Free Girl Every Day? We’re still cooking from it here, nearly a year after finishing the first draft. This book is how we cook now.”

“I wanted to call this book Feeding [L]. (The publishers, probably pretty wisely, insisted that Gluten-Free Girl be in the title so you could find it.) It’s a cookbook about how we choose to feed our daughter: lots of seasonal vegetables, good whole grains, spices from around the world, and plenty of variety so we never grow bored. There’s nothing like having a child to make time in the kitchen more meaningful.”

This would be the last book deal that Shauna was offered from Wiley and they parted ways. Shauna was becoming a liability to work with in the publishing sector as well, despite the fact that she had found a new avenue to bring in money. Wiley was smart to back away from working with her in the future.

So far she had made enemies in the blogging community, her audience was turning against her, patrons of her cookbooks were questioning her cooking skills, and sponsors were looking to replace her outside of her niche with award winning chefs. Shauna’s lack of talent for writing. cooking, and horrible character were being exposed with every passing year.

American Classics, Reinvented & Kickstarter Ended

Without the advances from Wiley, Shauna had to look elsewhere for funding to cover her living expenses and do more projects. So, she turned to Kickstarter in May of 2013 to ask her patrons for $15K to create a new cookbook, American Classics, Reinvented. Which was actually for a road trip across the country with her daughter and Dan while offering subpar recipes, photos, and restaurant recommendations.

The Kickstarter featured a high budget video, which if you watch is nauseating. There’s a constant overlay of moving video clips overlapping each other. When I watched it, I almost threw up it was so bad. It was completely unappealing and Shauna’s daughter was shown throughout the whole video. Which if you remember from earlier, Shauna pledged to keep her daughter’s privacy, but she lied.

The funding period was from May 10th to June 9th (30 days), but just 6 days into the campaign, Shauna and Dan canceled the Kickstarter on May 16th, after only raising $3K. Shauna and Dan had raised roughly $500/day for those 6 days, however, a fundraiser is the most successful at the start of the fundraiser and it begins to slow down towards the end date. Shauna and Dan would have to get $500/day for the next 24 days in order to fund their vacation. And it’s not even likely that they were receiving $500/day, it was more likely that their 82 backers paid the majority of the $3K they raised during the first couple of days.

Shauna couldn’t market herself without the help of Wiley and her fans weren’t that interested in paying for a new book. So Shauna had to cancel the Kickstarter, however, that didn’t end the American Classics, Reinvented saga.

Potlucks Across America

Having not been able to fund her cookbook from her fanbase, Shauna turned to Jovial, whom she was still doing cooking classes with. Shauna in a surprisingly clever way, convinced Jovial Foods, Attune Foods, and Bakery on Main, to fund her trip across the country by leveraging her previous books and new found success on YouTube as proof that she could return the investment. Since these companies were not in the publishing sphere, they had no way of knowing that Shauna was an absolute train wreck.

Shauna received the funding and announced her trip in this blog post, Gluten-Free Potluck Road Trip Tour, in August of 2013. And at the same time she rented a test kitchen on Vashon Island to craft the recipes for the new book.

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In February of 2014, Shauna and Dan announced the last leg of their trip, but they ended up dropping the potluck theme, as they couldn’t get enough people to agree to host them. Shauna wrote in her blog post:

“As you can see, we’ll be in plenty of places. But we learned our lessons from the trip in September. We won’t be doing a potluck every day this time. Instead, we’ll be meeting with farmers, friends, chefs, bakers, and savoring the tastes of California.”

The Gluten-Free Girl and the Black Adopted Virtue Signal

In March of 2014, Shauna and Dan announced that they had just adopted a baby boy with the approval of his biological mother. In a blog post titled, “life goes on,” Shauna stated the following:

“I will say this, however. When I first heard about open adoption — the mother chooses the family by looking at family books and letters, then communication and learning to trust each other, then a child who moves from one mother to another, and in some cases, letters and meetings in the following years —I was scared. I wanted to be the mother, the only mother. I didn’t want the complexity and ambiguity of it all. But a good friend of ours told me something that changed our minds. She also didn’t want to try open adoption at first. And then she realized this: it’s all about having a story for your child. ‘Your birth mother loves you, and she realized she couldn’t take care of you the way she wanted you to be cared for. She made the hardest decision she has ever made, for your sake. And she chose us to be your family.’”

What Shauna is saying, is that if she lied to this child by making up a story that his mother was unable to take care of him, well she could convince this child that he’s better off with them. This lie will come up again later in the article and becomes a massive problem for the poor kid.

Shaun and Dan decided to adopt a black child. But why did the child have to be black? There’s far more white children in the country, especially the Seattle area, that need good homes. So why would Shauna and Dan adopt a child that would grow up isolated from black culture and as an outsider, surrounded by white liberals and affirming groomers? See how I’m planting a seed in your head for later?

Shauna and Dan decided to name the child after Desmond Tutu, the famous anti-apartheid activist, and cultural Marxist. Tutu would take a heretical viewpoint of Christianity and mix it together with African ethnic ideologies to make a new ideology.

Shauna stated:

“Desmond is in honor of Desmond Tutu, one of our favorite people in the world, for his fierce work with social justice and forgiveness.”

Isn’t it funny how white liberals isolate their adopted black kids from black culture and yet virtue signal by naming their kids after famous black activists? Amazing. You never hear white liberals naming their adopted black kids Malcolm, after Malcolm X. I wonder why?

James Beard Award Winner

You’re probably thinking, “Wow, Shauna won a James Beard Award!,” but that’s actually not as big of a deal as you would think. In fact, there’s a lot of James Beard award winners that don’t deserve it.

Well her last book with Wiley, Gluten-Free Girl Every Day, was selected as the winner in the “Focus on Health” category. Which isn’t really that amazing because Shauna had become the queen of the gluten free niche, which was still growing, despite:

• the fact that Shauna started a scandal to eliminate competition in the form of “A Fund for Jennie” and lost the support from bloggers within the food blogging community,

• lost the only publishing company that was willing to give her book advances so she could fund her preparation and testing,

• and finally was starting to lose her core audience while still being able to replace them with newcomers, but this would not last.

Gluten Free Grifter & the Wannabe Chef, Ashley Ford & Lena Dunham

In September 2014, Shauna and Dan decided to start a Kickstarter campaign that would generate funds for them to start selling gluten free flour and regular all-purpose flour.

Shauna stated this on the Kickstarter page:

“The funds in this Kickstarter campaign will pay for the costs of designing and printing packages, shipping those packages, the costs of raw ingredients, packaging the flours, legal fees, employee salary, and research and development. Danny and I will not be receiving any of these funds as personal income. Frankly, we won’t even keep enough of the money to take ourselves out to dinner to celebrate once this Kickstarter is funded. Instead, we are building a company we want to thrive for many years to come. You’ll be helping thousands of other people to make good food in their kitchens by helping to fund this Kickstarter.”

The original goal of this campaign was to raise $79K and they were aided in this campaign by Claire Moncrief, a former CBS executive, and eventual DEI advisor. Shauna had met Claire 18 months before during a book tour in NYC for her last book. Claire had reached out to Shauna and eventually gave her the idea to launch the product campaign. Claire would offer her services for a fee and took time off from CBS to help with the campaign. Shauna admitted in an interview with CreativeLive that:

“is our right-hand woman and partner in crime in our new business venture, keeps us on task and asks a hundred good questions”

Ironic that she uses the phrase “partner in crime,” because Shauna, Dan, and Claire would pocket the money.

To actually receive a box of flour, backers had to opt for the $50 tier or higher. The rewards for the lower tiers were being mentioned on a “wall of heroes” page on glutenfreegirl.com ($10) and a PDF containing 10 recipes ($25).

In October, while with Claire in NYC, Shauna was introduced to Ashley Ford, a prominent food writer and one of Shauna’s biggest fans.

In December, Shauna posted that 10,000 boxes were printed and ready to be shipped out. However, Shauna royally f*cked up. Not only were the boxes missing the correct Kosher certification that they needed to qualify to be kosher, they also f*cked up the number of serving sizes, which was drastically off. So the project was pushed back for the first time.

January of 2015 brought with it a new exciting event for Shauna, as she was asked by celebrity and Ashley’s friend, Lena Dunham, to fly out to NYC to cater Ashley’s birthday party. I have the haunting suspicion that this was a reward for Lena backing the Kickstarter campaign.

Also, it really tells you a lot about people like Shauna and Dan, Claire Moncrief, and Ashley Ford if you knowingly are friends or associate with feminazi Lena Dunham. In November of 2014, it was discovered by Kevin D. Williamson that Lena’s new book, Not That Kind of Girl, had described her molesting her sister, Cyrus. This actually caused a huge scandal, but as you can see. Liberals like Shauna and the group didn’t care.

Shauna would go on to develop an obsession with Ashley, as she saw her as a way to gain free promotion using Ashley’s fandom. I’ll elaborate on this later.

In February of 2015, Shauna posted a Kickstarter update explaining that the Grain-Free Blend, which was promised at the same time as the All-Purpose Blend, was delayed because they decided to reformulate it. Shauna and Dan screwed up again, they decided to use almond flour as a base. This was a massive problem because almond flour would make Shauna have to redo the majority of the recipes she covered. Not to mention they decided to use almond flour during one of California’s droughts, where most almonds are farmed.

In the end, the Grain-Free Blend was never produced because the Aherns ran out of money after blowing through all of it. Shauna also blamed the reformulation of the Grain-Free Blend for delaying the $25 PDF of 10 recipes that was supposed to be delivered to backers in January 2015. The PDF was finally delivered on May 18, 2015.

Shauna and Dan also screwed up when it came to choosing an online retailer to sell their flour mixes. In March of 2015, Shauna announced to her readers that they had decided to handle the logistics and sales of the product themselves. Which was absolutely retarded. She stated:

“When we imagined our gluten-free all-purpose flour (and later, our grain-free bakers’ blend)in the world, we always had it in our minds that we would carry these flours through a prominent online retailer. Why not trust the shopping, fulfillment, and shipping to an organization that does this every day? After the Kickstarter was successful, thanks to many of you reading, we returned to the logistics of shipping. When we started crunching numbers, we realized that if we soldall 7400 boxes of our gluten-free flour that way, the online retailer would take so much of our money that we would barely have enough money to do a second run of the flours.”

“So we decided to ship these flours to you ourselves.”

I have a logistics background, and let me tell you, that was one of the dumbest things that I have professionally heard. I used to be one of the guys that ran a multi-million dollar contract for FedEx. And distribution is not cheap and neither is the work it takes to set up your online marketplace, or all of the other associated costs. The fact that Shauna and Dan didn’t crunch those numbers before starting the campaign fund is insane. In a business plan you have to actually think of all the associated costs and problems before you can even start accepting money. This project was doomed to fail before it even started.

Oh by the way, Claire has hit it and quit it at this point, she’s absolutely nowhere to be found and has taken her cut of the money. How much isn’t known, but most likely a substantial fee, because Shauna and Dan can’t afford their online retailer anymore. In relation to Claire leaving, Shauna wrote:

“Meanwhile, we’ve been working with trusted friends and new colleagues, a team slowly forming to sit at that studio table and make decisions that will take our business far into the future. (We hope.) We’ve been talking to grocery brokers and people who run food shows and other folks in the food business who want to help us succeed. Those are ongoing conversations, just beginning. We hired a new accountant, a bookkeeper, someone to teach us QuickBooks, and listened to the stories of countless friends who started small businesses successfully and those who have closed theirs for various reasons. Slowly, we’re gathering a group around us, a group of people far more knowledgeable about their area of passion than we could ever be. We’re not just trying to run a successful business. We truly want to help other people do the work they love.”

Shauna had no idea how to use ecommerce applications, or how to run the books, using shipping software, building an online marketplace, she lamented about having to package the flour herself, she was absolutely clueless. And worst of all, she didn’t think carefully about picking out a shipping carrier.

None of this was adding up, or panning out for any of the backers, so imagine my surprise when I saw on March 18th, just a week after Shauna told everyone that she would be doing the retail herself, she announce the launch of her online marketplace. I mean, that’s an insane turn around for someone that doesn’t know what they’re doing and promised rewards for Kickstarter backers who pledged at the $50+ level.

Yeah, so it turns out Shauna and Dan hadn’t even fulfilled half of their promised rewards. Issues quickly arose. Flour could only be purchased in amounts of 1, 2, 4, or 12, because the Aherns were only willing to use USPS flat-rate envelopes/boxes for shipping. Single boxes were shipped in USPS Priority envelopes, which meant many arrived crushed; in some cases, the plastic bag inside the box burst and leaked flour.

*SIDE NOTE*

I’m actually surprised you can ship boxes filled with flour in envelopes, because flour is extremely flammable. If the particles were to create a cloud of dust, you could potentially get a flash explosion if the fire was introduced to a spark. And that spark could be caused by friction from the box being punctured and dropped. It sounds silly, but there are 1000s of years of granaries catching on fire. In fact, it was one of the things that intensified and prolonged the Great Fires of Rome during the time of Nero.

Oh! I also forgot to mention, they never did a second run of flour. They lied through their teeth and stole the money. Lovely, right?

In June of 2015, after blowing through their money from the flour Kickstarter and bumbling through life, Shauna announced that they would no longer be renting the studio kitchen.

Shauna tried to spin it as if they they were moving on to a better venue to continue their endeavors, however, that was simply not the case.

In fact, it was actually tied to their YouTube careers which I mentioned earlier. Shauna and Dan had started a cooking show called the “Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef,” which they thought would be able to provide the income to fund the studio. And it could have, if they weren’t so inept at finances. I’ll elaborate a little bit more on their cooking show after I talk about the book release and the scandal that ensued.

But first, in July of 2015, Shauna revealed to her readers that she had suffered a stroke:

“It has been a tough summer, in some ways. I haven’t written about it here yet. Six weeks ago, I was feeling mighty strange at a meeting with the two friends who help run our business. The left side of my face was tingling. My entire left side felt weak. I had to practice every sentence three times before I could allow myself to say it, because I knew that it would come out slurred and sideways otherwise. Finally, I asked my friend Ken, who is a volunteer firefighter on the side, if I should be concerned. He calmly said yes, did some tests, and then urged Danny to drive me to the fire station. That’s how I ended up in an ambulance, waiting at the dock for the ferry they diverted, while the medics did EKGs and noted my blood pressure rising higher and higher. On the ride to the hospital, I felt 25 feet underwater, looking at the surface, knowing I should probably go up there, but not having the strength to swim. It felt calm. Strangely present. There was no pain.”

“Turns out I had a stroke, a minor stroke called a TIA. The very expensive medical tests show that I’m healthy as a horse. (Hey, I know my cardiogram is great now. And the MRI shows my brain is strong.) TIAs follow the same mechanism as a stroke, but for whatever reason, the clot dissolves on its own. By the end of the day in the hospital, I could talk normally again. By the next morning, I could lift my left leg again. I was released.”

“I’d like to say I’m completely fine but I’m not yet. When people ask, I say, ‘I’m on the mend.’ I’m exhausted, mostly. It wallops me hard in unexpected places. Any stress seems to strike me down. As my doctor said, if the brain loses oxygen for nine hours, the work to recover will take months, not weeks. Mostly, it’s invisible. It’s not the time for me to need naps, with a new cookbook coming out and a business to run. But I listen to my body now.”

“That may be one of the gifts of this. I’m looking hard to find the rest.”

Shauna claims that she was as healthy as a horse, but then goes on to claim that she would be slowing down to focus on her health. Common sense dictates that if Shauna was actually healthy, that she would not have had a minor stroke. Shauna later used this as an excuse to break any commitments concerning the Kickstarter campaign, leading many, including myself to believe that she was actually be dishonest. Now on to Shauna’s disastrous book release.

American Classics, Plagiarized

In September of 2015, Shauna finally released her cookbook, “American Classics, Reinvented,” while having been able to convince Harvest Publishing, a subsidiary of Harper-Collins to publish her book. I haven’t been able to find any info on whether or not Shauna and Dan funneled some of the Kickstarter campaign money to pay for the publishing, or if Harvest gave them a book deal. However, it’s far more likely that they took some of the campaign money to fund the cookbook’s publishing.

The book was less than successful, despite what the reviews would have you believe. Some of the negative reviews give the greatest amount of clarity on the reality of Shauna and Dan’s life work, while also providing honest and well thought out critiques.

As one reviewer stated in 2017:

“With all due respect, I think publishers need to stop giving these two book deals. The photography is nice but, as others have stated, the recipes do not work; the sign of an untrained/ unskilled ‘chef’ (still don't get why she falls all over herself trying to elevate her husband to some glorious chef status when he's essentially an erratically employed line cook). But my biggest complaint is the consistent tone that Mrs. Ahern employs in ALL of her work; blog & cookbooks alike. I do not like her. Her tone is off putting and ridiculously ‘holier than though’ [thou] which is so weird given their modest situation... She varies between begging her audience to sympathize with her and buy her products and at other times she's almost rude and abrupt with her audience. Cooking is a personal thing for me. I have to like you to allow you to enter into my home, to spend my time making your food and to serve it to my loved ones. These two should find another line of work which will suit their personalities and abilities better.”

And that reviewer perfectly summed up everything I have said previously. Shauna and Dan have no talent. They never really pushed themselves to make something great. Their egos and inflated success by being one of the first influential players in a once growing trend didn’t help them. Not to mention, there was deceptive elements at play.

Another reviewer in 2015 stated:

“Ummm-no. Just no. I bought the first cookbook Sauna [Shauna] Ahern wrote and didn't care for it, but a few years have passed and with her blog, website and Twitter speaking so glowingly of the birth of this book, I decided to open my cupboard and my heart again when a cooking ham buddy brought this book over for a test run. And then I closed them immediately after 3 attempts at the Red Velvet Cake.

The first attempt was a train wreck-and with all the beets-I can honestly say a bloody trainwreck. I figured I got distracted, did something or read something wrong. Back to the book for another try. Just as bad. My tester took a bite, looked at me pointedly and walked out with her plate to the deck and dumped her slice. Birds and squirrels avoided it. I swept it up later that evening and put it in the compost with all the beet leavings.

The final NO was making the cake once again (third try) for a celiac friend's birthday party. Everyone was feasting on gluten free treats and dishes; cold cuts, gf hoagie rolls that shattered to the tooth from a local bakery, oozing cheeses and bountiful late summer fruits and cold sparkling beverages. We lowered the lights, lit the candles and presented the cake. The birthday wish was made. The candles were blown out. The cake was cut, servings were plated and served and silence descended. Finally the birthday girl's mother reminded us all that we still had ice cream and strawberries if there was still room. There was lots of room. No one ate more than a forkful of their cake, and at the end of the party, I was presented with cut cake and told quietly not to bring anymore desserts ‘like this’, but thanks for trying. When I arrived home, after a long ride and a lot of angry tears in my friend's car, I walked a few blocks to the library and left the book in the ‘free’ bin. The leftover cake followed its predecessors to the compost heap

.”

This reviewer brought up something pretty important concerning Shauna’s Twitter and the promotion that she received from Lena Dunham, however, there is a deceptive part that this reviewer didn’t know; Shauna had paid to inflate her Twitter following count with bots.

Now on to the real scandal that happened with the cookbook’s release and this section’s namesake, “American Classics, Plagiarized”.

It turns out that, that not every recipe that Shauna uses in her cookbooks are originals or as she claimed “reinvented”. No one recipe in particular came to light because she copied one of the best chef’s in America. A man by the name of James Kenji Lopez-Alt, who has an incredible method of making smash burgers.

Shauna didn’t plagiarize that recipe because it would have been even more obvious, but I just mentioned it because I have personally used his method to create some of the best burgers I have ever made. No, instead she decided to plagiarize another one of his recipes, which is arguably just as popular.

To give a quick rundown on James Kenji Lopez-Alt (I think it’s weird that he took his wife’s last name), he’s one of the most meticulous chefs in America. He’s a M.I.T. graduate and had already been prevalent in the food world for a good while, having been nominated for a James Beard (and actually deserving it) and working with some of the best chefs in America. Kenji had already been in the food world before Shauna even thought about starting a blog and had been working on his James Beard Award winning (and actually deserving it after getting snubbed before) cookbook, The Food Lab.

In fact Kenji had been working on The Food Lab for 5 years and many of the recipes were previously tested online for Serious Eats, where he was a managing editor. Kenji was famous for being scientific and innovative in his cooking, having applied the methods that his father, Frederick Alt, and grandfather, Koji Nakanishi, used in their respective scientific fields. The Food Lab was published just 20 days after Shauna released her cookbook, however, knowing how innovative Kenji is and how lauded he is for being so meticulous in his methods, it’s highly unlikely that he would plagiarize a subpar recipe from Shauna and Dan. If anything he would have taken it and made a YouTube video demonstrating how poorly it was created and instead would have demonstrated how to make it much better. So what recipe did Shauna steal?

Shauna decided to steal a recipe that she titled “Tater Tot Hot Pot.” Kenji’s recipe that he simply called “Homemade Tater Tots” was most likely inspired by Kenji’s wife’s Spanish background, with them actually being referred to as potato croquetas in Spain and Portugal.

The funny thing is that Kenji first created the recipe using his scientific method in 2011 and it was widely regarded in the food world. The link I provided above for his recipe “Homemade Tater Tots,” was updated in 2023 but the recipe remains the same. Let me show you the proof in the pudding, or tater tots if you would allow me to say.

In the ingredient list above, you’ll see Shauna’s recipe on the left and Kenji’s on the right. Now the only thing that’s different is that Shauna uses an extra pound of potatoes for the recipe and forgoes the added sugar that Kenji uses. However, there’s more proof.

Kenji didn’t seem to notice or care because he was far more successful than her. But I like to think that he was actually aware of what transpired. In 2020, Kenji moved to Seattle, Shauna’s stomping grounds, and became the authority of what was good to eat in the city. He essentially took what she dreamed of being and I think that is a great way to get revenge without publicly addressing. Although it would be sweeter if Kenji just happened to move there not knowing who she was and succeeding in doing what she always dreamed of.

This was pretty damning and Shauna’s reputation took a hit, but that didn’t stop her from trying to leech off her fans again.

Feed Herself

In March of 2016, Shauna announced a new project called Feeding Our People (FOP) where she promised a weekly newsletter that cost $9.95 per month. And at first, each newsletter was supposed to include three recipes: a recipe for a “big batch” dish such as braised beans or pork roast, (perhaps a Tater Tot Hot Pot?) and two recipes for using up the batch dish. However, you probably get the drill by now; she didn’t keep up her end of the bargain.

Shauna claimed that all the recipes would be free of gluten, dairy, and refined sugar. FOP also promised that each newsletter would include:

“an essay from Shauna, equal parts irreverent and earnest, full of details and suggestions about the food. And stories. Always stories.”

By the end of the project in 2017, Shauna was only posting one recipe, usually in the form of something unappetizing like oil soaked beans which looked like they used piss as an ingredient.

Oh and they tried doing this miserable project while still funneling money from their flour Kickstarter.

The End of the Flour Griftstarter

After 2 years of funneling money from backers that wanted their damn flour, Shauna and Dan had raised and spent $92K dollars. So in October of 2016, Shauna posted a long Kickstarter update explaining that they were closing the flour business and would not be delivering any of the outstanding rewards; notably the grain-free flour blend and the “wall of heroes” webpage that would have taken less than an hour to create.

Essentially what Shauna is saying is, “Thank you for giving us your money, you imbeciles.” The post was locked so that only backers could see the update, however, fortunately someone catalogued it so we could view it.

So Shauna stated:

“After my minor stroke, I did a lot of thinking. A lot of thinking. Mostly, I thought about how the life I do have is enough. And wishing for more, for an empire, for money and security and a bigger house? It’s a ruse. It’s a lie. It’s what The Great Gatsby was all about. Here we are, living an extraordinary life in ordinary days. To wish it to be more and bigger and the dream fulfilled? It’s an injury to the life we live. We have two small children, two part-time jobs (I’ve started working at our local grocery store a few days a week to get health insurance for our family and Dan is going back to cooking in a restaurant a couple of nights a week for the steady paycheck), and we have four different business ventures. I want less stress. I want more time with my kids. I want more time in nature, the chance to write, and days off. I do not want to be the head of an empire.”

And in her statement Shauna used a parallel to her life and that of “The Great Gatsby,” a fantastic novel by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. However, Shauna never even came close to living the life that Jay Gatsby lived. She lived a much closer life to that of James Gatz, the real name of Jay Gatsby before he assumed his new one. The only commonality with her and Jay is the fact that she is deceptive about her finances, which I will get into greater detail towards the end of the article.

To add insult to injury, Shauna posted a blog post in December of 2016, declaring that there was still some flour to sell. This was incredibly f*cked up, because what I left out of the earlier section about the “Griftstarter” campaign, was the fact that Shauna and Dan had been storing the original run of the flour in their garage. As you can imagine with Seattle’s moist climate, it was horrendously spoiled and most likely laden with weevil eggs. And because they only did one run of flour, they intended to ring out as much money from their backers as possible.

The worst part of the blog post was the fact that Shauna claimed that her and Dan shipped out flour without actually charging anyone, and thus stated:

“If you ordered gluten-free flour from us between October 25th and December 1st, can you email me at [glutenfreegirlflours]@gmail.com? Turns out we received your orders and sent them out but no one’s credit card was processed, thanks to a technical glitch in the commerce site we were using. As you can imagine, this was a big loss for our business.”

What business is she even referring to? She stole $92K from her backers and fumbled the ball the whole way through. She was also shipping out spoiled flour that was most likely infested with bugs.

And in a later post in the same month, Shauna revisited the topic:

“In November of 2016, already a doozy of a month, a glitch in our online store’s software meant that we sent out hundreds and hundreds of boxes of gluten-free flour, without the customers’ credit cards being charged. We sent our inventory away for free, then footed the bill for the shipping ourselves. By the time we figured this out, we were down about $4000. Since we were walking a thin tightrope on money anyway, we fell into mid-air. Despair ensued.”

Virtue Signaling for the Poors’ Sympathy

After blowing through whatever money that Shauna and Dan had, Shauna was forced to take on a part-time job at a grocery store on Vashon Island.

Shauna claims that she has:

“grown weary of the internet being my only workplace. I like it here but I need a break from marketing and shouting and people demanding and mostly the frantic nature of it all. I used to be pretty good at selling books but I’m not built for it.”

To be clear, Shauna was never good at selling books. The only smart move she made was leveraging her past of being given sweet deals by publishers looking to get into a niche she was fortunate enough to corner, to secure a new deal by Harvest Publishing. But that book didn’t sell well and she was caught stealing from James Kenji Lopez-Alt. And speaking of the word “enough,” Shauna would have to switch lanes in order to make some kind of money.

Shauna stated:

“After I survived the minor stroke last summer, Danny and I talked a lot this year about how much we want to slow down and truly live in our town.”

If that were the case, then why would Shauna possibly be writing a new book?

In February of 2017, Shauna elaborated on this in a blog post:

“Would it be weird to have won a James Beard award and then work a $15-an-hour job at a grocery store, shelving bread I couldn’t eat?”

“I am doing work mindfully that doesn’t require my intellect, which frees up my mind to write while I put muffins on the table.”

Speaking of bread she couldn’t eat, those 1,563 backers for her “Griftstarter” were sh*t out of luck as well. Can’t make bread without the flour you paid for.

By March of 2017, Shauna decided to try and give people budgeting advice, as if she knew how to budget… Shauna tried to ingratiate herself with the poor consumer by talking about how her family of four eats 25 pounds of heirloom organic oranges each week:

“I laughed. ‘Well, not quite that much. But we usually eat at least 4 oranges a day here. Usually 6, since Daddy and I both have another one before we go to sleep. If we do the math, that means we need 42 oranges a week from December through March. I weighed one of those oranges at the store. They’re about .6 of a pound. So that means — .6 x 42 oranges — we eat about 25 pounds of oranges a week. At $1,99 a pound, we spend about $50 a week on oranges.’”

Who the f*ck spends $50/week on oranges? Someone that doesn’t know how to budget. In the patriarchy, we call this girl math.

Shauna also ended up quitting her part-time job at the grocery store to pursue another project, which ultimately ended up falling through. I will relate more info on her time at the grocery store later in the article.

The Failed YouTubers

Previously I talked about how Shauna and Dan started a YouTube channel which featured with a viral video on making gluten free flour. This was one of the things that gave them the idea to launch their “Griftstarter”.

After losing the studio they had rented for two years in 2015, Shauna and Dan decided to take the show to their own home. However, they weren’t able to succeed because frankly, they sucked at cooking and they were horrible on camera.

How could someone so “popular” and “successful” turn this Midas touched idea into a crapshoot? Let me tell you.

Back in 2012, you could really get away with the dog and pony show of writing articles and preaching the gluten-free gospel to uninformed readers. And the first video that Shauna and Dan put out was quite original at the time. There weren’t a lot of gluten free flour recipes out there and the video serviced a niche that was looking to alleviate some of their daily dietary problems.

However, that doesn’t always translate into a successful video format, because YouTube in 2012 was a different animal than what we see today. You couldn’t buy bots that would inflate the subscriber count or leave positive comments. No in 2012, you actually had to rely solely on being talented and original when it came to cooking. Unless you were Cooking with Jack, but with him it was the fascination with how awful of person he was and how horrible he was at cooking. That was the main attraction because people loved to hate him.

With Shauna and Dan it was different. You could tell they didn’t actually know how to cook well and they had some really dumb video ideas. Like the one where Dan shows you a new way to peel garlic, which involves boiling water, submerging the garlic in the boiling hot water so the peels get soggy, and they basically fall apart. This not only takes longer, but also takes away the strength of the garlic, causes a mess, and it’s counterintuitive to the whole goal of peeling the garlic in the first place.

A much simpler way would be to take a knife and use the flat side to press down on one of the garlic cloves to break the peel. It’s what every professional chef and grandmother does. Everybody knows the rules, if grandma does it, so do you.

In 2017, they stopped producing videos. At the end of their YouTube careers, Shauna and Dan only gained around 3k subscribers

FOP Resurrected, Freelancing & 100 Days of sh*t

Feed Our People (FOP) was unsuccessfully resurrected in the fall of 2017 and failed on launch. With Shauna’s crumbling success in the food world, whether in her niche or outside of it, the blogging community turning on her, the numerous scandals she was part of and her utter lack of talent, Shauna was no longer the queen of gluten free.

For a while, Shauna had to freelance as she wasn’t getting enough traffic on her blog anymore and the monetization was lackluster. Though she didn’t admit this until 2019 when it become very apparent. This admission was announced on Instagram after she started freelancing full-time:

“A couple of years ago I did some contract work with them as a freelancer, but the timing wasn't right. This time, when @grantcrilly emailed me after 2 years of not hearing from him, I was ready to imagine a full-time job.”

Shauna also freelanced for allrecipes.com at this time, posting a gram that she had created a InstantPot recipe. To those that haven’t used an InstantPot, you don’t really need a recipe for the machine. You just throw ingredients into the pot with liquid and it always come out the same, worthless. It’s great for bachelors or lazy people. It’s soulless and I hate it. Which, must be the Italian in me. But I digress.

At the same time that Shauna and Dan were trying to resurrect FOP, they were also trying to start a new initiative called 100 Days of Making Food. In an October gram, Shauna posted:

“Every day, for the next 100 days, we are cooking something that intrigues us, photographing it, and sharing the recipe with you here.”

Many of the recipes were absolute bullsh*t, and some “recipes” (if you could even call them that) included peanut butter between two squares of chocolate and tarragon leaves forgotten on a plate to dry because “life called, saying something else was overflowing elsewhere”. Which must have been her neo-FOP tanking.

Adding insult to injury, Shauna commonly reused photos from her former paid subscription FOP. In total, they posted 83 days out of 100. Not exactly committing to the task…

Relish Bad Cooking

Fall was a busy time for Shauna and Dan, as the owner of The Hardware Store (THS), a well received restaurant on Vashon Island that Dan had worked at off & on for years, had just opened an event space called Relish next door to THS. By November, Shauna was contacted about setting up Relish as a cooking school; the owner even hired Shauna to run the Relist and THS Instagram accounts.

The Hardware Store (THS) is a generally well-reviewed restaurant on Vashon, formerly owned by a woman named Melinda Powers aka Relish Lady aka RL. Danny has worked at THS on and off over the years. Powers opened an event space called Relish next door to THS. In November of 2017, Powers contacted Shauna about setting Relish up as a cooking school; she also hired Shauna to run the Relish and THS Instagram accounts.

It wouldn’t be until November of 2018 that Shauna’s cooking school launched, however, Shauna was coy about her role at first. If you have made it this far, then you know that Shauna wouldn’t be for long.

Relish soft-launched in November of 2018. Shauna was coy about her role at first, but soon started talking extensively about “the cooking school I run”, never clarifying that she didn't own Relish. Many facets of the Relish project were mismanaged and ultimately led to her termination from Relish.

During this time, the Aherns launched two additional initiatives based on their access to the Relish and THS kitchens. On Mondays, Relish served a three-course lunch prepared by Danny.

On Tuesdays, the “Soup and Salad Club” allowed people to pay $25 to pick up a quart of soup and a quart of salad, also prepared by Danny. (Who the f*ck pays $25 for soup and salad?) Shauna promoted these initiatives alongside Relish classes, increasing the confusion about what was available and when.

It's hard to say how many classes actually happened during the time that Shauna worked for Relish, but the chaos of broken sign-up pages, postponed classes, and confused customers made it pretty obvious that it was a flop. In late June and early July of 2019, there were some obvious changes in Relish's marketing style, and Shauna hinted at “hard days”. Sometime in early July, Powers quietly got rid of Shauna, as evidenced by Shauna making vague comments alluding to bad news.

In July of 2019, Shauna published a paywalled newsletter on her Substack (I will be going over her starting a Substack next) titled “capacity” that was clearly about the owner of Relish:

“Capacity doesn’t sound like a sexy word, does it? However, along with enough, it is the word that plays in my mind often these days. When someone I know does something baffling — communicate, people. please. — I think of the word capacity. Does she have the capacity to apologize? To acknowledge that she is wrong? Since she never does, perhaps she was trained in childhood to make everything seem perfect. Maybe she doesn’t know how to be vulnerable in the moment, to admit that she messed up. Did she get blamed for everything as a child so she lays the blame on everyone else instead of admitting that it was her fault?”

Shauna Invades My Playground

Shauna made a very big mistake when in July of 2019, she decided to join Substack. And it is because Shauna is on Substack that she came to my attention. When searching through the depths of Substack’s crazed, I found my golden goose, and I was determined to expose her for all of the misdeeds and sins that she has committed.

Shauna has changed the name of her publication numerous times, however, her first publication was called “Enough” which would be a play on her book that was set to debut later in 2019.

The newsletter was set up for paid subscribers and initially priced at $9/month. (I can feel my inner Detective Monk being channeled, “Just make it an even number!”) Shauna originally promised three essays a week and recipes. Would you pay $9/month for essays about yeast infections from summer under-boob sweat?

Shauna even offered to start a private Facebook group just for sourdough baking. By December of 2019, Shauna would paywall the majority of her newsletters while trying to capitalize on her recent books release.

Like I mentioned earlier, the newsletter has evolved many times since it launched, with name changes, topic changes (from “Enough” to trauma to finding small delights in the darkness to joy), promised frequency changes, the splitting of recipes off into a separate newsletter allegedly written by Dan (highly unlikely and it’s now private) called “Joy in the Belly,” pricing changes from $9/month for the single newsletter to $5/month for each newsletter, and the offering of benefits such as weekly Sunday morning Zoom calls. Though the newsletter occasionally contained a long update (almost always paywalled), many posts were essentially just links to viral feel-good content that Shauna also posted on her Twitter (now deleted) or Instagram (with bots).

Shauna, Social Justice Warrior Princess & Enough Already

In a drastic change from previous installments in Shauna’s book catalogue, she decided to virtue signal to the whole world. Well, not the whole world. In fact, a miniscule amount.

Shauna released her book “Enough” in October of 2019 to less than critical acclaim. The book was published by Sasquatch Books in Seattle, a very small publishing company with an extremely limited reach, despite their ownership by Penguin Random House. Essentially they only publish 30 books per year and never in the category that Shauna was trying to jump into.

Despite Shauna trying to promote the book on local regional TV and radio stations around Washington, it seemed that no one was interested. Even with the solicited endorsem*nt from her former super fan Ashley Ford, Shaun couldn’t pull any sales.

The book had abysmal sales, with Shauna describing it as “a quiet book”. Shauna even had a close friend of hers organize a local event on Vashon Island in January of 2020, centered around “Enough,” with Shauna leading a virtue signal panel discussion in hopes that this would draw up book sales. And by 2019, it certainly didn’t help to have sexual predator Lena Dunham giving an endorsem*nt for the book on the front cover.

One of the greatest critiques of a book I have seen in a very long time came from a reviewer by the name of R. Rappaport (RR), who astutely pointed out that Shauna is a liar, or at least an exaggerator, while simultaneously calling out Shauna for bashing her mother for her mental illness and the root of all Shauna’s problems.

RR points out that Shauna often times shows her god complex by flaunting her supposed intelligence while embellishing or contradicting herself in the process of telling unbelievable stories.

RR was also cognitive of the fact that Shauna would often demonize her mother for being agoraphobic, for being afraid of leaving inside areas where you feel safe. At the same time Shauna would lie about her health, such as when she had a stroke and claimed to be healthy. Nothing a little stress relief couldn’t fix says Shauna one day, while then turning around saying that she reduced her cholesterol levels and blood pressure to recover from the stroke.

Shauna also blames her mother for every little thing that has happened to her in her life. For instance, Shauna blames her mother for the fact that she was a virgin until the age of 35, which as an Orthodox Christian myself, I don’t see a problem with. And even though Shauna’s father was an adulterer, he never gets any blame.

RR also brings up the point that I made earlier where the “Griftstarter” campaign was clearly for something other than flour. Though she attributes it to mismanagement because she didn’t have all the info that we have. Although, RR does say the following:

“She [Shauna] invested zero dollars of her own money into this and doesn’t seem to care that she wasted everyone else’s money and faith in her. It’s like it just happened to her vs being a situation that was entirely of her own design and which she ruined.”

RR also brings up the same point I made earlier about Shauna working part-time at the grocery store to virtue signal about relating to the poor people she actually thinks are beneath her. RR wrote:

“Her essay on working at a grocery store smacks of poverty tourism and ends with her saying she moved on to a better paying gig after a few months and that her husband now only works in a restaurant for "the community" and not, apparently money. It was very odd and an insult to people who actually have those jobs when she paints it as a lark.”

RR brings up a point concerning Lucy that I will discuss a little later in the article but her remarks on Dan are spot on:

“Her daughter's health issues and her husband's admission that he drinks basically 24 hrs a day every day and has for decades a few days before she gives birth seem like they would have been more of a source of stress than her childhood but she links even her husband's issues back to her parents--they didn't drink so she didn't know what was normal.”

I mentioned Dan had “quit” drinking after their daughter Lucy was born, however, that’s not the case. In Shauna’s book she actually mentions that he kept drinking throughout the years. Dan is a functioning alcoholic and it’s why he could never keep a job. Although he is functioning, the alcohol would always be an outlet for stress in stressful environments like a commercial kitchen, and the fact that he based his life around imitating a chef tells you that he actually based his life around being an addict.

On the anniversary of its publication in 2020, Shauna wrote a painfully long and bitchy paywalled newsletter complaining about the sales:

“Tina and I talked about it in my hotel room that night, after I read that review. I had let go by writing this book. I hoped that it would help others to find their stories too. So we began hatching a plan for a series of large gatherings, across the country, featuring strong women who wanted to speak out and share their stories for the sake of others. We wanted women from each town to sell their art, amplify their non-profits, and show up for each other. There would be communal singing. There would be brave and intimate conversations on stage. I would moderate them all, read a bit from Enough, have copies for sale, of course. But mostly, I wanted to be the conduit for these gatherings that would give women hope and help them to go out into the world, ready to take on big challenges and tell their truths.”

“You see, Enough didn’t sell enough copies to become a paperback. That paperback might have come out today, if the world had been different. There won’t be a paperback. The publishers don’t believe there ever will be a paperback.”

“You share your story. And you are released.”

“But if you want to keep sharing your story in print, you have to sell more copies. I probably should have promoted my book on Amazon. I probably should have played that sales and marketing game, promoting my work endlessly, working all my connections behind the scenes to land in more magazines. But I couldn’t do it with this book. I just couldn’t do it. It did not feel right.”

“I might never get another book deal again, based on these numbers.”

In this newsletter you can see that Shauna blames the world for her thoughts and virtue signaling not being a smash hit. Remember Shauna’s never the problem, everyone else is. And the reality was, Shauna was never going to be a big hit. She had burned bridges throughout her career and swindled people out of money while blowing through it by feeding Dan’s alcohol addiction and her ego.

Even if Shauna did more promotional work, she was never going to sell enough copies to get her book published in anything other than an audio or digital copy at the time. Even though her book is available in paperback now, it took 5 years and I guarantee you it’s only because of a clause in the publishing contract.

And Shauna was right. She will never get a book deal again because she’s a sh*tty writer with a sh*ttier personality. She tried to hop on the woke train in the height of wokeness and still no one wanted to promote her.

In a now deleted newsletter from February 21st, 2023, Shauna admitted that her cookbooks never sold enough “to justify another one” either:

“My book editor, who loves my work — and my agent, who has been pulling for me since 2006 — wrote to tell me that my book proposal for a journal of ENOUGH had been turned down by her publisher. She was saddened. She believed in the book and this idea. Why did they turn it down?”

“I had not sold ‘enough’ copies of ENOUGH to bring out a paperback. I had not done “enough” in marketing the book on my own to justify publishing another book. They were relinquishing me.”

“I sat there and stared at the email, tears forming in my eyes.”

“And then I wrote separately to my agent. ‘What does this mean? Does this mean what I think it means?’”

“She confirmed it for me, kindly. This local publisher was the only one who had wanted to buy my book. My cookbooks had never made “enough” to justify another one. This local publisher had the right of first refusal on my next book. They had just refused it.”

“‘I'm sorry to say, Shauna, that I think you're going to have a really hard time getting another book publishing deal right now. I don't think it's going to happen.’”

“I walked to the ferry dock to get on the passenger boat home. I didn't cry. I sat there in stupefied silence. Since I was three, I had wanted to write books. And now I had written and published 5 books. One of them won the James Beard award. Another had been commended as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times. Another had been nominated for best-of award by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Thousands of people had purchased and loved my books. Dream come true.”

“Except, they hadn't been “enough” of a success to justify to a publisher that I should write another book.”

“I was devastated. Deeply humiliated. Crushed.”

In one post Shauna had finally admitted without knowing, that her career’s success was just handed to her over and over again. Shauna was an industry plant and her time as the useful idiot was over. I’m almost surprised that Shauna didn’t realize this sooner when Claire Moncrief left the “Griftstarter” with her cut of money without seeing the project through.

By 2020, Shauna stopped posting on Gluten Free Girl and she has been trying to find other means to make money with her former career paths now gone.

Hilariously enough, GoDaddy ended up selling her domain to another party. The site started showing non-Shauna AI-generated content in early 2024.

In June of 2024, Shauna explained in a newsletter that she was not the beneficiary of this sale and had forgotten to renew the domain:

“Back in March, we discovered — the hard way — that we no longer had access to our own content on Gluten-Free Girl.”

“Since 2018, we’ve had our 13 years of content behind a password. Technically, the website no longer existed on the internet.”

“It had been a few months since I looked at it when I went to the site in the first week of March to put in our password and begin collecting the recipes we would share here. That’s when I discovered something lousy. Someone — a scalper — swiped up the domain name for gluten-free girl when it was up for its 10-year renewal. I no longer check the email associated with that purchase I made a decade ago. I missed it.”

“So, if you go to the url, you’ll find the website says Gluten-Free Girl. It uses the same font and colors we used before we left it. It uses our last logo. It uses my name. But it’s not us.”

“And I can longer get into the back-end. We could no longer access our content. Thirteen years of our lives. Gone.”

The funniest part of this to me is the fact that Shauna doesn’t own the Gluten Free Girl name anymore. She never trademarked it and so when her contract with GoDaddy lapsed, they ended up selling her whole cooking identity and brand with it. They can even use her name, because of how the contract is set up. Shauna James Ahern is the Gluten Free Girl and vice versa. The company that came in and bought Gluten Free Girl, owns the name Shauna James Ahern.

I had the hardest time trying to figure out why Shauna changed her name to Shauna M. Ahern here on Substack and it’s because she isn’t legally allowed to make money off of her name! Seriously, check this out. They bought out everything because she was an idiot and now they can market as her with a small explanation that Shauna stepped away from the blog at the bottom of the page.

The Mother Martyr

The mother martyr archetype gives all that she has, and gives all that she is, if necessary. This archetype, summed up in one word, is sacrifice. These mothers would not hesitate to put the needs of her children and those around them before her no matter what the repercussions to herself and her well-being are. They act with selflessness and a lack of fear. No matter what they have to suffer for the good and benefit of others, they do not mind not being acknowledged for doing so as well.

In December 2019, while Shauna was still working at ChefSteps and before the Christmas holiday, Shauna sent out a (uncommon) paywalled Substack newsletter about her mother titled “How to Survive Christmas with a Narcissist,” referring to her mother as the “narcissist” and her father as the “co-dependent spouse”.

To keep it brief, Shauna complained about these things in the newsletter:

• too many presents for the kids that don't “connect” with them and having the kids later sort their gifts into keepers and ones to re-gift

• overcooked ham and gluten-y scalloped potatoes, lack of consideration for dairy sensitivities, and inability for Dan to influence the menu with sous vide pork

• insinuating that her mother wants to turn off all Christmas music by Black musicians

• needing to bring books and plan for long walks to disengage and "this might be the year to buy some edibles for the visit"

• “too many decorations”

It appears to have greatly hurt her mother, with it being specifically referred to as “Shauna's now famous ‘How to Survive Christmas with a Narcissist’ letter”. The record was set straight over two years later in Shauna’s mother’s public Facebook posts in May of 2022, which were triggered by Shauna's later demeaning attitude to the Uvalde, TX school shooting that happened just two days before Shauna posted this video (05/24/22).

Shauna, the Devouring Mother

The Devouring Mother is a psychological archetype that refers to a mother figure who is overly controlling, manipulative, and emotionally draining. This archetype is often associated with co-dependency, where the mother seeks fulfillment through her children, particularly her sons, emotionally and psychologically. This concept was first introduced by Carl Jung and was a cornerstone of his groundbreaking psychological work. Shauna is the text book definition of the devouring mother archetype.

In a gram from August of 2019, Shauna announced that she was hired full time by a company called ChefSteps, and that Dan had left working at a restaurant to stay home with the kids. (More likely he went to stay home because he could no longer function at work because of his alcoholism.) (Also why would you want a drunk to be home alone with your kids?)

In a Substack newsletter from August 20th called “The sweetness of ritual,” Shauna stated the following concerning how she truly felt about spending time with her kids:

“This year, I was able to sit on the broad front porch of the dining hall, reading while sitting in a rocking chair. Heaven is happy kids playing away from you.”

I understand that every parent needs some alone time from their kids so they can recharge, but with Shauna’s history, this seems less like some peace and quiet and more like disdain for her children.

Especially when you realize that Shauna and Dan have been grooming their black adopted son to be gay and “non-binary” his whole life.

Speaking of adoption, Shauna and Dan adopted their son, Desmond, in 2014, with the help of Shauna’s parents. They didn’t have the money but they wanted a young black child and so they got one.

After missing numerous recipes and newsletters, breaking her promise to “share something new,” and abandoning her Instagram grid spelling strategy (not really that important, because she picks it up then drops it every other week) Shauna dropped a newsletter in April of 2024 called “Why I sometimes don't publish on a schedule” in which she blamed a family crisis, involving another family member, for her lack of preparedness.

She quickly centered herself in the crisis and used it for treats, money, head pats, and sympathy:

• In a subsequent Instagram post, she reiterates that she isn't sharing details (while sharing them) and asks for Venmo and Door Dash donations as well as subscriptions to her [paused] Substack.

  

• During this crisis, she has the presence of mind to share a picture of her Starbucks treats so that everyone knows what she likes, and asks for sympathy and support for herself as a “mama” without including the rest of the family.

  

• She also complains about having to be a functional adult.

  

• She subsequently posts a video on the 23rd and claims that only recently she learned to ask for help, and that thanks to everyone's generosity, they have the next two months of rent covered as well as plenty of $$ for her fat ass to eat alone.

• On the 28th she writes, How to eat when you're staying at a children's hospital. In this selfish, self-aggrandizing piece of work, Shauna re-inserts herself in the gluten-free narrative, grifts family meals from Monday Night Ladies (for herself!), and gives in to Starbucks wholeheartedly.

Fortunately I didn’t have to buy a paid subscription to the newsletter to get the text in full because someone was generous enough to copy it. Here is is in its infuriating entirety:

#1 — Eat the cookie.

There are no calories when you are sitting inside a children’s hospital, hoping that your child will be doing better soon.

None. No calories.

This is the rule. I didn’t make this up. This is simply true.

Eat the cookie.

If you’re wandering the halls of a children’s hospital while your child is receiving medical treatment of any kind, you’re going to want the cookie.

Eat the cookie. Chocolate chip. Oatmeal raisin. Snickerdoodle. Brownies.

Go ahead. Eat the cookie.

Why? Because this sh*t is hard. It’s hard and it’s hard to express. Your body will crave food, because it’s primal comfort.

You need food to fuel you up, to keep you occupied, to have something new to anticipate as you hit the button for floor 7 again and walk across the hospital to the cafeteria.

Maybe they’ll have tomato soup. Or burgers? Good scrambled eggs?

There. See that? You started thinking closely about food and stopped worrying about your child for 5 minutes. Have another 5 minutes without fear.

Chew. Savor. Close your eyes. Taste it some more.

Eat that cookie.

If you’re lucky enough to be at a children’s hospital that stocks WOW cookies, then you’re in luck.

#2 — Relax. You’re not going to find vegetables.

By day 3, you won’t want the cookie. It won’t taste good anymore.

Here you are, steeped in doctor’s notes, referrals to clinics in the city for when you get out, the beeping noises (or other noises) you are now starting to hear in your sleep.

You still need to eat.

But now you want vegetables.

What you wouldn’t give for a kale salad with feta, walnuts, and a lemon vinaigrette, tart on the lemon, less on the oil.

Or broccoli roasted until the tips are blackening, tossed with teriyaki sauce.

Or fresh snap peas you dip into hummus.

Your brain creates images of what you ate last week. You can’t quite remember sitting at the kitchen table, since you entered another world here, and it feels like you’ve been gone for 6 years already.

But you remember the platter of roasted red peppers, cauliflower, and green beans you ate for dinner the day before you came to the hospital through the emergency room. You can still taste the first bite of the quinoa fritters and snappy slices of fresh carrots. You can remember the bite of the asparagus, roasted until it’s just softening, dipped into romesco sauce.

You want vegetables like that.

Instead, you have your choice of baby carrots in a plastic bag that takes strength to open or pale lettuce in the salad bar.

Pile on the slightly crushed garbanzo beans and sliced white mushrooms again. It’s time for a salad on a paper plate.

And by the way, get the ranch.

Also, buy your snack and anything you else you might want to eat for later. You probably won’t want to walk to the cafeteria 6 times in one day. Stock up with a caprese salad for later.

If you have friends and family visiting, ask them to bring you one of these two foods: teeny tiny tomatoes that you can pop in your mouth and experience a snap and pop or grapes. Grapes are one of the greatest gifts in a hospital stay.

3. At the hospital and you have to be gluten-free? Good luck.

I’m still astonished at how little food is gluten-free at the hospital cafeteria. I’m at Seattle Children’s, one of the best places in the world. We’ve endured multiple lengthy stays here, so we always feel our shoulders relax when we enter these doors.

And there’s still not much for me to eat gluten-free.

I have celiac. I can’t eat even a speck. So it’s hard for me — and the millions of people like me — to feel safe in a cafeteria with shared food.

To be clear, I think it’s far more important that this incredible nutrition and kitchen crew focus on ensuring that the patients get the food they need. Still, I’m astonished this time at how few things I can eat.

Packaged salads? Croutons on top of the lettuce. Ooh, a power bowl! Farro instead of rice. Every dessert in the place is pie or cake or cheesecake.

If you are gluten-free and don’t have celiac, there might be more options. But with worries about cross-contamination, I have few choices. The last thing I need right now is for me to get sick.

Take care of yourself so you can take care of your child.

So far, I’ve eaten lots of yogurt. (Yay for Noosa and Ellenos.) Chips. (I’m a Fritos girl for life.) The cooks assured me that the lentil soup was safe for celiac, so I’ve been eating that when it’s available. After a couple of days, I asked about their protocol for the salad bar, and I know that it is prepped in a way that I can trust, so it is all mushroom slices/garbanzo/hard-boiled eggs/spinach and ranch for me.

Plus, this cafeteria has tiny elementary-school-sized portions of Molly Moon’s salted caramel ice cream, with little wooden spoons I’ve eaten one of those a couple of times.

Mostly, though, I’m lucky there’s a Starbucks at this hospital, a big one with lots of color and kind employees. (Shout out to Dante, the night manager, and Em, who works in the morning. I love these people now.)

I’ve eaten 2 bacon and gruyere egg bites for breakfast every morning. (Dan and I are already scheming on how to make them in giant batches at home.) Their cheese and apples pack has crackers, but they are packed in a separate, sealed bag.

So, mostly, I’ve been eating that.

#4 — Ask your friends to bring you food with flavor.

If you are lucky enough to have friends nearby who want to offer help, say yes.

Three days in a row I ate great meals with women who have been in this situation.

If you are a friend who lives nearby and wants to offer help, please do not text “How can I help?” Be specific.

Sunnie wrote: “I’m free [after this time] and I am picking up Ethiopian from this place. They have gluten-free injera. Does that sound good?”

OH GOD YES.

Paula wrote: “I really like this Thai place in my neighborhood and they do takeout. What looks good to you on this menu?”

Pad Thai. Chicken. #2 heat. That’s what I told her. I was eating it within the hour.

Tamiko wrote that she knew about an entirely gluten-free and vegan place in her city, so no chance of cross-contamination. Did anything on that menu look good?

Strangely, the one that jumped out at me was the gluten-free pizza with vegan queso and garlic pickles. And damned if it wasn’t incredible.

Ask your friends to bring any food with intense flavors.

Everything in the hospital is good but it all starts to tastes the same.

Ethiopian feast we can eat with our hands and gluten-free injera? Slightly spicy Pad Thai? Garlic pickles and queso? Yes. Yes.

#5 — Allow yourself to be surprised

That’s the other thing. You might arrive at the hospital and have almost no appetite for days. Or you could arrive and be ravenous, and then watch your appetite diminish. Your experience will differ from mine, of course.

Today, after writing most of this piece, I walked to the cafeteria to try to find a protein bar, a meat stick, or an apple. On Saturdays and Sundays, the hospital hallways are mostly empty. The only parents here are the ones in for a while. Everything else is fairly quiet. It was 11:30 and I still hadn’t eaten.

What did I find when I walked into the cafeteria, the only one in here?

Vegetables. Bright, gleaming vegetables! Roasted zucchini, red peppers, and squash. And next to it? Black beans. Next to that? Red ranchero sauce! I filled up my bowl with them all.

And then I saw chicken tikka masala on the other side. What? Everything on the hot line was something I could eat? And top with avocados?

These foods would never be put in the same bowl in a restaurant. But today? Oh man, I needed these today.

This bowl, plus the Vermont meat stick, plus a berry juice?

Better than any fine-dining meal I’ve ever eaten. I am not kidding.

Today, I felt well fed.

And tomorrow, the kid and I are going home.

What’s the gist of all this?

Feed yourself. In any way you can, feed yourself.

I have passed this display on the wall next to the Family Resource Center several times a day. I finally had to take a photo to remind myself.

Taking Care of You is Taking Care of Them.

Guess what — you don’t have to be in the hospital for this to be true.

Take a walk. When you are overwhelmed, walk up and down the length of one floor of the hospital, and then take the elevator down and do it again on the next floor until you feel restored.

(But don’t walk and text at the same time, please. That might make you fall flat on your face on the floor, in a giant splaying prat fall, and watch everything you have been holding in your hands fly away, while people who are standing near you ask, horrified, if they can help. Not that I’m speaking from personal experience.)

Go to the roof top garden and watch endless Graham Norton show clips on your phone. Olivia Colman and Andrew Scott forever.

Stop worrying that you have the attention span of a newt and you can only keep scrolling through Instagram without taking in anything at all. Let it go.

Sip whatever fancy drink you want. I’m now forever partial to the pink drink at Starbucks, blended.

Take out the watercolor brush and make a shape, a color, a fluidity. You do not have to be good. Do not try to be good. Make something.

(And if you are a friend or ally of someone in the hospital with a child in the hospital, the best, kindest present you can bring is lovely, slightly expensive arts supplies. Oh, this forever.)

Decide to listen to the new Taylor Swift album, only one song a day, listening over and over, watching the video, and thinking about it, so you can talk to your 15-year-old daughter about a clutch of songs when you get home.

(Favorite song so far? “The Tortured Poets Department.” Oh, this woman. I love her.)

Look around in the cafeteria, where you are eating food that tastes about the same as the last meal you ate. Take in the faces of everyone around you. Listen in.

With rare exceptions, whenever I have been in the hospital with one of our kids, no matter how scared I feel, I look around. Within 5 minutes, I realize how lucky we are.

This is how I have been coping here.

What the f*ck did I just read? Her kid is in the hospital and all she can think to do is make a newsletter about stuffing her fat face to forget about her son? That’s f*cking mental.

I remember one time my mother was suffering from complications of Lyme Disease and had to be hospitalized. I remember getting the call and rushing to the hospital where I met my ill mother and instantly went stone faced. I sat with my mother and watched over her as she slept, protecting her and refusing to leave her bedside. For hours, which seemed to be a lifetime, I didn’t move. I didn’t eat, I didn’t drink, I stayed put and kept a stoic face. I did what any person would do, my duty. Nurses would pop in every now and then and ask me if I was in need of anything, but I would politely decline.

I couldn’t possibly imagine leaving my mother’s bedside, let alone if it were my child’s bedside, so I could go down to the hospital cafeteria to shove calories down my gullet and write a f*cking blog post.

But the thing is, Shauna doesn’t actually see poor Desmond as her child, she sees him as an item. Something to use and manipulate, not to grow and nurture.

In Summary

I have spent over a week with little sleep, food, or socializing to get this investigation done. It was draining and sad to see that Shauna is so willing to steal, lie, cheat, and abuse others all in order to feed her fat mouth and god complex.

Shauna is an utter failure of a human being. She has abused her mother by taking her money and feigning gratefulness for it. She has personally taken in a child that she could groom into her little play thing like so many other Liberal mothers that we see in society. She has deliberately sabotaged the careers of other bloggers in an attempt for her to morally posture that she is such a great person when she’s actually a horrible piece of sh*t.

This is the largest investigation that I have done yet. With over 1 1/2 hours worth of content, archived links, photographic evidence and hard work, this is hands down the single greatest piece of work I have produced yet. But it won’t stop here. With your continued support I can expose more people for their crimes. This is just the beginning.

Thank you for reading my work and God Bless you.

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