As I say farewell to The Feminist Kitchen brand I’ve used for so long, I wanted to take a moment to do a little recap of a project that started 14 years ago and has evolved a lot over the years.
The Feminist Kitchen started this side blog about women and food in the summer of 2010 when I was preparing for maternity leave with my second kid.
I was a 27-year-old journalist in a bit of an interesting situation. Just two years earlier, I’d been hired as a food columnist at the Austin American-Statesman. That’s a big job for a recent college graduate who had a toddler on her hip, but it was an amazing opportunity to write about home cooking from a millennial point of view.
After two years of feeling mostly like an imposter, I started to feel more secure in my self as a writer and wanted to branch out beyond what you’d expect a typical newspaper food writer to cover.
I pushed boundaries in the food section, for sure, writing about food with an eye toward race, class, and gender, but I still had more to say about being a young mother — and a “recipe lady” — in a world still run by (and for) men.
When toying around with names for a blog about intersectional food issues, I came up with the name, The Feminist Kitchen, and launched the site on Wordpress. For the first four or five years, I did news round-ups and book reviews and wrote about “hot button” issues like whether Anthony Bourdain’s latest book was sexist or why the HBO character Mildred Pierce wasn’t really a feminist heroine.
I put together a book club and film series that lasted for a couple of years and was one of the highlights of the early days of the blog.
Often critical and judgmental, I was eager to get page views with my hot takes. Feeding the outrage machine was how you got noticed on Twitter, and in those days, everyone wanted to get noticed on Twitter.
But I started to get tired of being part of that machine. I was also starting to see the whiteness in my feminism and knew that focusing on gender at the exclusion of race was a mistake.
In an effort to listen more than I spoke, I posted less and less, and in 2014, I took a hard break from the blog as I processed my divorce and new life as a single parent.
But in late 2015, in the pre-dawn of those awful years of both a Trump presidency and the deaths of my grandmother and dad, I started writing again, this time from the lens of what I can see now is “the invisible thread.”
I wrote about learning how to YOLO from my 8-year-old and a very old quilt at my grandma’s house. I went to Mexico City by myself and finally told the story about my friends who died when we were 23. In 2016, my Swedish story began, and I wrote about those early ancestral healing experiences (before I even knew the term “ancestral healing”).
By the time my dad died in 2019, the grief train had already left the station, and I was on it, three tickets begrudgingly in my hand.
That grief eventually led me to quit my job and embark on a freelancing career that also includes tarot card reading, organizing, dog walking, and consulting. And moving The Feminist Kitchen to Substack, where it will now continue as The Invisible Thread.
I’m out here living my mid-life in a way that feels good for me and is good for the world. Part of that is sharing parts of my journey here when I feel like I can make sense out of them in a way that makes sense to you, too.
One last thing as I reflect on these 14 years of publishing on my own platform: After all these years as a writer, I’ve grown to have so much faith in the reader.
As I change, so do you. You probably got tired of those hot takes around the same time I did. Your coping skills to deal with all the terrible things happening in the world might look a little like my coping skills.
Our unease about what’s ahead feels too much when carried alone, but those squishy parts are a little easier to carry when share them via this lil ol’ newsletter.
Thank you for your support during this time of transition.
Remember, as Octavia Butler says, all that you touch, you change.
All that you change, changes you.
So maybe God is change.
As always,
Addie
P.S. The zines are off to the printer! These will get mailed to paid subscribers in the next couple of weeks, so make sure you’ve upgraded if you want a copy.
You continue to inspire and delight me, sweet Addie. I'm so happy we found each other in Austin and am super grateful that our friendship now spans continent.s Already looking forward to our next visit. Where shall we go?! XO —Mel
Addie this was a tender hearted reading experience for me. I feel awe as well as intimacy with you - your gift of self revelation, soul searching honesty and frankness is refreshing. I’m thankful I know you inside as well as out - you’ve been a great blessing to me!