Gay marriage, Fertility and Radical Authenticity ft. Madeline Tague

Madeline built a strong following after creating easy to follow recipes made specifically for the Whole 30 community. But over time, she realized she was perpetuating diet culture which she wanted to escape herself. She pivoted personally, and professionally - losing followers and income immediately - but retaining her authenticity. Madeline shares tips and tools to become a blogger without completely relying on social media. 

 

Madeline is unique because aside from food, she also shares intimate parts of her life - including the realities of being in a gay marriage, food and body image struggles, and her fertility journey– all for the hopes of helping others.

 

Lisa + Madeline discuss:

• Authenticity: A behind the scenes look at what it ACTUALLY means?
• How Madeline became a full time food blogger that’s financially successful WITHOUT social media.
• Hate comments: why + how Madeline doesn’t internalize comments she gets.  
• Sexuality: why who you’re ATTRACTED to may not determine your SEXUALITY.
• Fertility: anonymous sperm donation and her journey.
• and more! 

 

GUEST INFO

Visit Madeline’s Blog HERE.

Follow Madeline on instagram: @mad_about_food

 

Instagram:

The Truthiest Life on Instagram @thetruthiestlife

Host @lisahayim

 

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Guest submissions, please fill out this form HERE!

 

Edited by Houston Tilley

Intro Jingle by Alyssa Chase aka @findyoursails 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M hm no, Willy a right. Even when times gethart
and you feel you're in the cucy, just how beautiful
laugh can be When you soph in your heart, you

(00:22):
can findly start to fire to see us life. Hello everybody,
welcome back to the Truthius Life. It's your host Lisa
Ham and we have another amazing guest this week, my
friend Madeleine a k a. Maddie, the food blogger behind
mad about Food dot com. Her instagram is mad about Food,

(00:45):
and Maddie uses her platforms to help people make healthy
and approachable recipes. But there is also a lot more
to what Maddie does. She talks about anything that she's
passionate about. She's not afraid to be authentic, even if
it means losing followers. She gets a local about things
that she is passionate about, which includes quitting dieting herself.

(01:05):
What you may not know is that Maddie actually built
a cult following after doing Whole thirty herself to januaries
in a row. So for two januaries in a row,
she created these recipes that other Whole thirty followers obviously
wanted to do, and as a result, they were loyal
to her. But when she realized that participating in Whole
thirty was perpetuating diet culture, something she wanted to move

(01:28):
away from herself. She came out with the statement letting
people know why she will no longer be doing that
and why she's quitting dieting herself. That came with loss
of followers, loss of income, and was essentially a very
brave thing to do that very few I think would do.
She shares it all from how she became a successful
food blogger, which by the way, is not reliant on

(01:51):
her social media. She talks about her fertility struggles, being
in a gay relationship, and what the sperm donor process
was like for her and her partner. She is just
a really fun friend, and I love kind of bringing
friends on this show because we can have really candid conversations.
And one of my favorite parts of this conversation is
we're talking about straight people loving gay porn and what

(02:14):
that may or may not mean for your sexuality. So
I hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll see you
back here next week. Welcome back to The Truth Theast Life.
I'm so excited to talk to you, Maddie, because we
talk all day on texts, and now we're bringing this
to the in person in person zoom, the new in person,
and we're going to get a deep dive into who

(02:35):
you are beyond all the amazing food blogging that you do.
And right before this, you said something that caught my
attention that I never knew about you. You've got all
these fun facts, which is you said, let me grab
my hearing aids before we chat. You are how old
I just turned twenty nine, Happy birthday. And my favorite
thing about you as I said, Wow, I didn't know

(02:55):
you had hearing aids and You're like, yeah, that's my
new two feature, really putting a positive spin on I
think what most people would might be self conscious about.
So what's that about? So I called a feature because
when I get ready in the morning, I'm like a
bionic woman. I've got like my pills, my contacts, my
hearing needs. My family has hearing lots of runs in
the family, and it seems to be switching sexes each generation.

(03:20):
But I don't know if that's like a solid fact.
But my grandmother got hearing aids in her mid twenties.
My father got hearing aids in his mid twenties. I
grew up knowing my dad had hearing aids, and like
when he had them out, we would just like joke
around in the family and like talk about him couldn't
understand us, right, So for me there was way less
of a stigma. It was just kind of like during
the pandemic, I realized I wasn't really hearing people, but

(03:42):
also put it off because I'm like, I'm not going
to go to another doctor's office in the middle of
a pandemic. And then this past fall, my friend visited
who I hadn't seen for two years, and I was like, wow,
I fully can't understand you anymore. And I lived with
her in Atlanta, so I knew like she was my roommate.
I could understand her perfectly fine. I that was scary,
So I went hearing test. My audiologist was like, your

(04:03):
curve is very similar, like your lost curve of hearing
loss is very similar to your dad's. Be able to
hook you up no problem. And it was definitely like
a difficulty getting in use to them. But now that
I have them, I love them. They've completely changed my life.
Like I've stopped listening to music for years because I
couldn't fully understand m my losses like women's voices and

(04:25):
children's voices, so a lot like more high pitched sounds,
so music like sounds completely different to me without my
hearing needs in and like if there's a tone that's
just like in my lost range, I just don't hear it,
so like the turn signal on the car, I just
don't hear it tick. So anyway, I talked about them
on my Instagram because a lot of people are like, oh,
I'm embarrassed to go for the hearing test, So I

(04:45):
try to tell people like, don't be embarrassed. There's I mean,
this is not a video podcast, but they're so small
you can't see them at all. And it changed my life.
I love your approach on it, and I love the
way you're also bringing some awareness to this, because I
didn't know that people in their twenties could begin to
lose it, or that there's something genetic about it. And

(05:06):
I think, like you said, like you know, you could
really lose out on life if you allow the embarrassment
or any stigma to it because you're afraid of what
people will think, say judge, you know, but you're like,
these change my life. The scariest part about hearing losses
that it could lead to cognitive decline, and I just
have I had a relatively recently died of dementia, and
the hearing loss community basically the doctors are trying to

(05:31):
remind people that like, when you can't hear, you isolate
yourself from social situations, and social isolation leads to early
on set dementia, Alzheimer's, all these cognitive disorders, and so
it really is like, if it's happening to you in
your twenties or thirties or forties, like there's no reason
why you can't treat it, except for the fact that
it's wildly expensive and usually not covered by insurance. But

(05:53):
that's a whole other topic. But that was all another
thing that really Like when I went and had the
hearing to us done and told me that, I was like,
oh my gosh, Like I can't believe how real that was.
Because I didn't want to go to parties like I
didn't want to go to like and luckily was COVID,
so there weren't big parties, but like even gatherings of
my family, I would lose out on pieces of the

(06:14):
conversation and you just feel dumb saying like, excuse me,
can you repeat yourself? What did you say? Well, you know,
that was just a little fun fact about you. I
didn't know, and I think really just kind of paint
the picture as to who you are as a person.
You're you're young, but you've you've you've been through a
lot as a young person with autoimmune illnesses, and right

(06:36):
now you're going through a fertility journey. And there's so
much about you, know, you that you put online on
your Instagram despite being a food blogger. So before we
dive into all that fun stuff, let's talk a little
bit about your food blogging journey. Because you are quite successful,
You've got quite the reach, and this is your full
time job. How did you end up as a food blogger.

(06:59):
I have grown up in a family that really appreciates
food and loves food and cooking, and um, when I
was in college, my family was remodeling our kitchen. I
also grew up in a family that their job is construction,
so I grew up in dust at all times. But
one summer we were remodeling the kitchen and I was
living at the time with just my dad and my

(07:19):
brother because my mom was away with my sisters, and
my dad and my brother were like, well, we'll just
live on take out, and I was like, I am
a nineteen year old girl. I'm not just gonna live
on takeout, Like just not gonna happen. So I taught
myself to cook that summer with like a grill, a
hot plate, and a cutting board, and then I kind
of brought it back to college, and I was cooking

(07:39):
way more in my like tiny dorm kitchen than I
was going to the dining hall because I just appreciated
my own food more and kind of found it was
easy for me to like create recipes and pulling ingredients together.
It was just something that was coming naturally. And so
at that time I was a junior in college, I
started just in Instagram and continue to post on that
for like a few years. And then in my first

(08:01):
job out of college, I had little to no time
to cook again because I was a traveling consultant. And
then finally my dad looked at me one day and
he was like, you are so miserable. You love to
cook and this job is giving you no time for it.
So I switched jobs so that I could work a normal,
like nine to five and have time to run my
blog at night. And then through a couple of mishaps
and cartwheels, I made it too a full time food blogging,

(08:23):
which has been amazing, And I have so many like
offshoots of that of like how I got to where
I am today, But the like cliff notes version of
it is that, like what I cooked today is simple
ingredients you could get at any store. I don't cook
with anything special, and I wanted to be like really
straightforward good cooking, and I really want my recipes to

(08:43):
be like easily replicable for busy people who don't have
a lot of time to like simmer something all day
or also don't have maybe a lot of money to
buy a fancier ingredients. So that's kind of where my
blog has gone and now full time. Yeah, I share
on social media and my blog is my home for
all my recipes. Right, your website is beautifully done and

(09:04):
it is a great place to really get all those recipes.
So for those of you that are like, okay, this
is me, you're gonna want to head to her website
mad about food dot co not calm, right, I don't
own trying to buy it for years that just dot
ceo you'll find me, or if you just google mad
about Food, I come up. I think, first, I know
a lot of food bloggers, but I also know it's

(09:24):
a very congested space. Was there a moment where your
career kind of teetered and took off and you kind
of grew a really strong following? This is the weird
twist and turns right, But I did two years in
a row. I did a January Whole thirty and that's
where my career, like as a food blogger, completely took off.
The weird thing now is that I am like firmly

(09:45):
in the anti diet space and like anti hole thirty.
So that's where like I've taken a full turn. But
that was really where I gained a following, but also
was where I was able to like learn how to
actually create recipes online. There's a whole part of that
that's like SEO research and writing the rest of a

(10:05):
certain way for Google and and having a really fast
running site and things like that. So that's where my
career really took off. And then after like two to
three years of writing that high of like the Whole
thirty community, I had like a personal complete shift of
I had been chronically dieting for twelve years, which a
lot of my like food blogging journey followed those diet changes.

(10:26):
So it was like flavor of the week, like Keto,
whatever I wanted that week, and my recipes followed that.
And then there was a huge, huge downturn in my
career and success when I told everyone like, I'm not
doing that anymore. And since then, it's kind of been
like separating in a way, social media and the virality

(10:47):
of the Internet with my blog. And so you could
write a blog today with no social media audience and
be wildly successful. And that's the thing that like, I
don't think a lot of people grasp If I look
at my monthly traffic of my visitors to my website,
I think it's like point five percent come from Instagram
of my rayer traffic, and that's with over a hundred

(11:07):
thousand Instagram followers. So I love my Instagram audience. They're
my people, but they are not necessarily my blog visitors.
Well yeah, so that's where I think, like, yes, my
my social career has taken off because of certain things,
but my website is really just like keyword research, keyword
research keyword research, like you can just play to the

(11:30):
Google gods, which is all as exhausting as algorithms, but
you really don't have to like have a hundreds of
thousands of followers who have a successful food blog and
even congested space. You can start one today and like
be successful in a year. I think that's super inspiring,
and I think it's a part of food blogging maybe
any blogging people who are really bloggers on their website,

(11:52):
not just influencers on Instagram, to really know that there's
so much that goes into a blog and the person
creating the blog. You were drawn to this because you
love food and creating simple recipes, and yet that's not
what you're doing all day. Every day you're editing your photos,
you're making sure that the keywords match up with whatever

(12:12):
in Google is looking for that day so that people
can find you. I always found that too personally, Like
why I never went hard on the blog space was
because I'm not I'm not an s c O girl.
It's overwhelming to me. You got to, you know, put
the word in a million times to get it to
be found. But anyway, what I loved about what you said,
which you know I wanted to have you on the show,

(12:33):
is that you had to pivot your most successful content.
You have to move away from that completely in order
to stay true to you, and that meant sacrificing the
page views and the following on Instagram. We've definitely had
people on here that I've seen do similar things. And
I think that's like the quote unquote bravest thing to do.

(12:54):
And I say brave because so few people do it.
You know, it's so much easier to stick to what
you know the people want. But when that is clearly
from your your voice of passion, so disingenuous to what
you believe in, you made a hard pivot. And and
that came at a quote unquote cost, Like you're I'm

(13:14):
sure you're you had a financial loss from that. Yeah.
I think authenticity, right, is like just something that is
a buzzword, right, Like I only want to follow authentic creators, right.
It's like you're never going to actually know if someone
is authentic because people can play authentic authenticity on the
internet so well. And I think you and I know

(13:35):
that from like meeting actual people behind the scenes. Very
weird old we live in where like you could be
d m friends with someone for years and then meet
them at an event and like, oh wow, So I think,
like people use that buzzword authenticity, but I am more
just like very blunt and like have always been that way,
and so I cannot keep a secret. I cannot not share.

(13:58):
I can't keep my opinion to myself. As much as
I try, I literally, like try my study stoicism because
I would like to be more stoic, right, and that
kind of comes through on the Internet. And so I
could have, yes, prison died that I'm still eating all
these whole dirty recipes or I'm living a paleot lifestyle
or whatever. It just didn't make sense to me to

(14:19):
do that. And at the time, it was actually like
this perfect storm of like I've lost a lot of
my paid partnerships and a lot of my traffic from
COVID anyway, and I was going through a really hard
personal time when I went like fully from like restricted
eating dieting to my like full anti diet eat whenever
I want life. And it was easy almost in a way,

(14:41):
because I had already lost some of those partnerships. I
was had to revert back to a full time job
in an office. It was an easy time for me
to say, like I'm gonna say whatever, like wash my
hands of this. If I never make another dollar from
that about food, that's fine, but let's like do it
with some real integrity because I can't be anyone that
I'm not. And I also think, like I have a
super supportive family and partner, and I think that's a

(15:03):
huge part of it. Like if I was very alone
in that feeling of like we have to pay the
bills and I have to do something, it might be
easier for me to just like you know, stick with
it and do things for money or for whatever. And
it really allowed me to like completely resiliency in me
right where like I separated myself from like what I

(15:24):
thought my business should be, and really it's more like
who am I and what like drives me and makes
wakes me up every morning and it will keep continuously
reminds me like if I have passion and creativity behind
what I do, then I can always pivot and make
a change and the work will always come with that.
And it's just continued to be there over the years.

(15:46):
I think what you said to about having a supportive
partner and family, you know how Aside from the financial
support that they were able to lend towards you it
during that time, is also the emotional and self worth
that you get from those relationships. I have found you
and I have been in this industry for a long time,
and we've met a lot of people, like we said,
who don't necessarily check out in real life as they

(16:08):
do online. And I think that's because so much of
their self worth comes from the internet alone. Um, and
if you're constantly coming to that place for validation, like
or one, if that's one where you're getting your validation from,
it's really hard to make pivot because those are the
people that are coming to you for for a certain reason. Right.

(16:31):
But if you have that support system at home that
knows you're not just Maddie who makes food, you're also
Maddie that does a B, C, D and E, they
love you for your whole picture and you're like, I
no longer want to be Maddie that's doing whole thirty.
They're like, okay, cool, right, Like you're still loved, you're
still made to feel safe, you're still you're still a whole.
Whereas a lot of people, you know, if they're not
putting out let's just say those whole thirty recipes, there

(16:53):
goes their entire community and their support. And that's I
speak compassionately to those people. And that doesn't mean that
they can't pivot. You know, it always should feel authentic
because that's the only way that it will be sustainable. Like,

(17:14):
if you're putting out disingenuous content, why is that so
different than working a job at an office that you hate.
You know, everybody's like, I want to have the dream
job and work online from home. But why is that
any different if you hate what you're doing producing that content? Right?
And I don't want this to say that like anyone
who's sharing Paleo recipes is fake, right, because there's sony
people who are still benefiting from that and whatever. But

(17:36):
I have like a core memory of sitting in my
parents driveway and I got a GM from a woman
that said, I'm so disappointed in you, and it was
all threasons why my shifting content. And I from that
moment and I'm still obviously like I get very fostered
by the hate and the hate comments and the rude messages,
But from that moment on, like disappointment or like I'm

(17:57):
proud of you. The only people who are allowed to
tell me they're proud of me, or like my immediate
family and my wife, like no one else. I mean,
they're allowed to tell me you're proud of me, right
you are, any like you're allowed to say it. But
I don't have to internalize like someone being proud or
disappointed in me if I don't actually value their opinion
of me. And it's so hard to separate on the
internet because you're like even people that I've followed for

(18:20):
let's say, like I've had Instagram, gosh ten years now,
even the people I followed for ten years, and like
they owe me something, but they don't. They don't owe
me anything, and I don't know owe them anything. And
that's kind of like the relationship you have to to
get to as the creator especially. But that was like
a clear moment in my mind when I'm sitting in
my driveway and like, why am I crying over this

(18:41):
random lady telling me she's disappointed in me for doing
something that feels good to me. Actually not, I'm not
doing something that I feel yucky about. And you have
a really bold personality and for some reason people see
that as an invitation to not just unfollow you and
move on with their lives if they don't like it.
But it's as like you do get a lot of hate.

(19:03):
Why do you think that is? Yeah, I don't know
if it's necessarily hate, but it's it's a lot of honesty,
Like people want to be honest back to me, And
I think it's because of that honesty I put put
out right, Like last week, I asked for bra recommendations
and a lot of women said skim and they said,
I hate to say skims, but skims. And I wrote,

(19:23):
you know, a blurb like I'm going to order from
these four brands because they were the most highly requested,
And a lot of what I do on crowdsourcing it
with my audience is like I'm ordering for the everyman.
I'm not ordering for the person who has like a
million dollars has been I'm not ordering you know whatever. Right,
So I ordered from the brand that had the most
and this woman sent me this scathing message about like

(19:44):
how could you order from that trash person, Kim Kardashian
blah blah blah. And I had a really nice conversation
with her where I was like I think this is
misplaced anger at me, it's anger towards him. But I
think people actually see that, like I share my opinion
so freely that they're like it encourages it. And sometimes
like that conversation I have with that woman, actually at

(20:04):
the end of it was like, Okay, we're great, We're good.
She's still like a follower of mine. I'm happy if
she ever yams me again. And then sometimes it's like
an immediate block and we all move on. I think also,
I live a life that is I mean, I'm gay,
so I think that some people want to comment on
that from somewhere like deep down right, and like I've
done such a good job of kind of cultivating my audience.

(20:27):
I'm not on this path of getting a million followers.
I'd actually like be happy to stay where I am
the rest of my life. Like TikTok scares me for
that reason, like I don't want my videos to whatever.
Please allow me to just step in and validate this.
Like when I first got on TikTok, I followed you
because I you know, we're friends that I love to
support you and see the amazing recipes and the last

(20:48):
video she had had over a million views, and then
it had been like three months since she posted again,
and I was like, um, you're a TikTok star and
you're like, yeah, no, it's freaked me out. I'm never
posting again. Obviously you've posted against ins then, but yeah quit.
The height of my startom, people commented things like these
types of recipes are why divorce exists. And I had

(21:09):
just gotten married, and I was like, what the heck?
And it was so crazy because there's so much going
on behind the scenes in your life. Right. I had
made that recipe for a friend who just had a baby,
and the friend was like, thank you so much for
like feeding me and my family, blah blah blah. And
I'm like, the crazy thing about the world is like
I'm letting these comments affect me. I think hate affects

(21:30):
me easily because I just let it. But also I
get more hate because I live a life that is
not straightforward. If it's like internalized homophobia or like or
anything internalized, I just think it's like, well, a lot
of what I share right is like at this point
in my life is our fertility journey and trying to
start a family. And I think a lot of people
have questions, and the questions times out of a hundred

(21:53):
are genuinely coming from a place of like people don't
understand it, right, But that always there's always like hundred
question that comes with a little bit of judgment of
like why aren't you adopting? Which you don't You never
ask a heterosexual couple that's struggling with fertility wirey, Well,
I wouldn't say never, but it's very rare that you
ask a heterosexual couple that's struggling to get pregnant, why

(22:14):
aren't you adopting? But what I've learned from most of
my gay friends is it's a really commonly asked question
of gay people, and it's like, just because we don't
genetically together as a couple have the means to make
a child, doesn't mean our want to have our own
genetic children or to be a pregnant woman isn't as
strong as a heterosexual couples want, right, And of course

(22:34):
for two men, there isn't that option for them to
carry children, but for them to want their own genetic
children as the same want as you and your husband
or anyone in their husband. So we think like it's
questions like those where you can just tell a sense
of tone, like you know that adoption one was recent.
But it's just I think it's it's different from me.
It's different from my family, and I actually feel it

(22:58):
from people in my own life that almost so it's
like I wouldn't want this for my own children or
whatever it is. It's just like a sense I get
from people, especially people who have religious backgrounds, where it's like, Okay,
that's fine, and on the Internet it's easy to just
send me a message and move on with your day, right,
Like I think a lot of these comments wouldn't be
said face to face if they knew me in person. Well,

(23:19):
you know, I think where I sit, and I think
where a lot of our audience it is. You know,
being gay is not very noteworthy, you know. I mean,
I grew up in New York, New York City, you know,
the big urban cities. You have a lot of access
to that. You see it a lot. You know, it's
it's not controversial. But take your blog to the internet
and now you're really talking about different parts of America

(23:41):
where you said like you're also hitting a lot of generations,
but different parts of America where people have a lot
of different religious views, or the really rural areas that
don't have access to the cities. Like there is a
distinct difference between rural cities and cities because in the
rural cities oftentimes this is obviously a big over generalization
of anybody, but like things generally stay the same and

(24:03):
people do the same things. You go to a city,
you're getting a conglomerate of all different types of people,
different ways of living. I mean, I've seen it so
drastically now just being back in Long Island where I'm
from and having those ten years in the city, just
the mindset is really a lot less accepting. Even if
we are, you know, okay with people you know, do
living their lives and their sexuality. There's I understand what

(24:25):
you're saying that there is a level of I'm fine
with you doing it, but I wouldn't want my child
to do that, or what's gonna happen when they go
to school and you know, what's it gonna be like
to have two moms, Like these things are still happening
in two Yeah, Like Amy and I live in my
wife is Amy for all the listeners, Um, Amy and
I live in suburbs of Philadelphia. When we're in our
small town or when we're in Philly, I'm never like

(24:47):
concerned about being gay. But even like twenty minutes outside
the city, we go to this fleet market because my
life loves found furniture. It's not a love of mine,
but that's marriage. And when we walk around the fleet market,
I don't She tries to hold my hand in I
don't hold it right. And so I think that's the
thing that people don't really grasp about, like it's gay
marriage is legal, Like if you're a gay person, you're

(25:08):
not necessarily like living this care free life unless you
are in a really supportive community. Like even when I
lived in Atlanta, I was heckled on the street more
than once holding my girlfriend's hands, Like it still exists.
And I think that's the piece I get on the internet, right,
Like it's someone who lives in a different world than
I do. And to them, they haven't got to know

(25:31):
me as a person. It's always someone who's their first
time daming me, right, Like they don't know Amy and
I and more personalities, and so they're just putting their
judgment out there and for whatever reason, it makes them
feel better about themselves. Right. So two questions. One, when
you say you don't hold her hand, is that out
of just like a spear of safety, Yeah, fear of safety.
The crowd is a little bit more like rural at

(25:54):
the flea market, And so I've never had a bad
encounter where like, okay, we stopped holding hands because of
this moment. But I just get a sense now that
I've lived openly gay for as many years as I have,
I get a sense of the people around and like
the scaring and my wife presents more masculine and but
it's very obvious that she's a woman, right, So like

(26:15):
us holding hands would just most obviously be like, oh,
those are two women holding hands, right, And it's just
a sense. Yeah, that sense is spot on. How do
you feel about you being kind of this point of
access for people that don't have anyone gay in their
life or their community, they follow you online because of
your recipes and then they're like, wait, she's a person

(26:35):
and she's gay, and this relationship looks different than what
I thought a gay relationship should look like. I know
that this conversation might feel kind of archaic for me,
but at the same time, in the reality is is
that people are having a hard time adjusting to it,
and they see you as this entry point and you're
you're showing them, Like you said, they don't know your personality,

(26:55):
but then they get to see it and maybe their
views do change. Is there a part of you at
sees like your role on the Internet as opening eyes
and changing beliefs and opinions about sexuality. Yeah, I mean
I never liked. I never thought when I first shared
that I was gay. I had been privately gay for
over a year before I shared it on the meaning

(27:17):
openly to my family and friends, before I shared it
publicly on the internet, and I never published on that
post being like this is gonna influence people, and like
it never is lost on me. The messages I get
from people that are like, thank you for sharing this.
It helps me relate to my sister, Thank you for
sharing this. It actually encouraged me to come out to
my parents. Like, I still get messages like that from

(27:37):
time to time, and that's from young people who like
live in the same world. We all live, right, And
I didn't realize that, like visibility is a huge part
until like I had to look back at my life
and I came out super late in life, not until
I was twenty two, and I think a big part
of that was I had no visibility to gay women.
I only had visibility to gay men in my life.

(27:58):
I had a couple of family friends who were gay men,
but no gay women in my life. I went to
Catholic schools and then I went to a southern university,
and I think once I was like, wait a second,
Like these people are having an impact from my post
because I am a very visible figure doing something and
I didn't have that when I was younger, Like Will

(28:19):
and Grace existed, but there was no like a woman
like there was no grace in Grace right, So so true.
So it's never lost on me, and it's part of
the reason why I share so openly still about like
me and Amy's relationship, our marriage, our fertility journey. And
while you know we've gotten pushed back on the Internet
and within our own family for being so open about it,

(28:41):
I'll never stop because there are so many women who
are being positively affected by us sharing our story publicly. Yeah,
it's it's something that I again, I feel like I
kind of took for granted as a first of all,
as a non gay person and as just somebody who
thinks like, yeah, it's that same thing, like we're all
we're all there now, But the reality is is that

(29:02):
it's not. And I think also on the family familial front,
it's probably very hard for people to come out mainly
because of their families. That's a it's a huge generational
difference as well, which I feel like that gap will
close and close as time goes on. Maybe not, but
I feel like coming out to your family can be
probably the scariest thing, going back to that initial sense

(29:22):
of where we get our feelings of belonging and safety. Yeah,
I mean I was lucky. My family is amazing. One
of my dad's best friends growing up was a gay
man who actually ended up passing away from AIDS. So like,
from his perspective, like keeping these things a secret is
the worst thing you can do, right because like it
could lead to horrible things, which you know, even if

(29:42):
you know the AIDS epidemic is not an epidemic anymore,
secrets about sexuality is still huge, like risk of suicide
and other and drug abuse and all other things. So
for my family, there was never a question that I
would be accepted from my immediate family, but I know
that's not the case for everyone, and I think that's
like part of the reason why I'm so open to sharing,
because like someone's aunt who has like a gay niece

(30:05):
and doesn't know it yet might fall in love with
me and Amy on the internet and realize like be
more accepting right years down the road or whenever it
comes to light. And I think a lot of my
older family members, like I would have never said something
negative to my face because we're just not that kind
of family. But I feel like there's a sense of
like the fact that Amy and I like got married

(30:27):
and we want to have kids, and we bought homes
and things like that, of like it was just normal,
Like we're just a couple and we're doing life the
way everyone else does. And that's super normal if you're
in your twenties and thirties right now. But if you're
currently in your fifties or sixties or seventies, you probably
have never seen like a gay couple, you know, go
through their entire life together without some kind of like

(30:48):
secretiveness around it. And it's certainly not someone in their
sixties or seventies who was able to openly, you know,
want a family and children. So that's just like, for example,
I think these conversations are so important to have. This
is a little bit of a funny conversation to have
on the truth FIUs life, given that it's not the
topic we normally talk about here. But you and I
were tatting yesterday and I shared with you that I

(31:11):
was with my girlfriends the other day and a bunch
of them or you know what I'm gonna say, and
a bunch of them were like, I love lesbian porn.
And these are women that are really comfortable in their heterosexuality.
Many of them are married with kids, and they're very
attracted to their partners, but they're like, I just like

(31:33):
lesbian porn. And I never heard other women speak so
confidently about their first of all, their porn use or interest.
It was very refreshing to be around like this conversation
and the fact that they could say I like lesbian
porn and I'm not gay that was super interesting to me,
and I thought it really just expanded out the conversation

(31:54):
where I feel like a lot of people might be
afraid of what it means if they are enjoying as
being porn, right, Like, I think that people might shy
away from that. Yeah, And I said back to you,
I think more of my friends are watching lesbian porn
than I am like my straight friends. Right, It's like
we've all now had this, like it's it's out in
the open, all of the listeners can talk about their

(32:15):
with their friends that like, yeah, sexuality is so much
more than like what porn you enjoy, right, And I
think like the more we're all just like more comfortable
in general with like not just sexuality, but like, I
think it also relates back to a lot of the
stuff you do about like being comfortable in your body.
My sisters in school for marriage and family therapy right now,

(32:38):
and we were discussing how like chastity and religious chastity
and body image and eating disorders actually go hand in hand.
And it's like a lot of women are trained not
to trust their bodies on so many different levels, right.
And it's funny because it's like what we enjoy sexually
or what we enjoy, you know, what we're attracted to

(32:58):
then in like a loving and marriage way, right, doesn't
always line up or whatever. And I think people have
a lot of fear if they've never actually like confronted
it themselves, or if they do come across it, they're like,
wait a second, why did that turn me on? I
have husband, right, it's scary, right if it felt scary
until like all of my friends were just so confidently

(33:20):
saying it, And I was like, this is the importance
of having these conversations because even so, like I think
that brings out that internalized fear of being gay, right, Like,
you know, I have a lot of women listeners, but
I want to encourage you to, you know, do whatever
you want, but recognize that, like what might turn you
on might not necessarily be your sexuality. And that was

(33:42):
like a lightbuelb moment for me where I was like,
there must be so many people doing this hidden and
afraid to say it out loud. And then you know,
my girlfriends are really cool and they're just like, yeah, no,
let it's let's be important for me, you know, like
women on rail, that's disgusting. It's very interesting, and I
think like for all of us, and for for not

(34:03):
just your listeners. But what I've explained is like when
I had to explain sexuality to an older person who
was maybe not understanding what I'm saying, like attraction is
on a spectrum, and like if you're at the far left,
like homosexuality is like your number one, and if you're
at the far right, heterosexuality is your number one, and
every one of us is like falling somewhere on it.

(34:25):
And it's actually like way more rare that you're at
the other end of like fully homosexual or fully heterosexual,
like to the point where like I'll be out with
my friends and I'll say a male like celebrity or
whatever is hot, and they'll be like Madaline. I'm like,
you can still like acknowledge a sexy man and then
not want to have sex with him, right, I know,
because you're a lesbian, you're not allowed to do that.

(34:47):
But like it's if I said Zandiah looks hot, which
much more common for women to Yeah, right, it's much
more common for women to say it about other women,
especially men don't say it about other men, right, Yes,
they should because they're thinking it a lot of times. Yeah,
and a lot of the times. For like me, even
with women, a lot of times, if I'm saying someone's

(35:08):
like attractive or beautiful, it's more like I would like
to look like that, or like beauty ideals more than
it is like I'm sexually attracted to that. Amazing points.
Pivoting back to what you've been going through lately, which

(35:29):
is your fertility journey. Can you tare a little bit
about that? Yeah, sure, so I'll share about it, like
kind of from the beginning, because I don't think that
a lot of people, even if they are like I'm chilling,
like okay, friends whatever, I don't know that a lot
of people like come across this or they talked to
their friends about it. But Amy and I both knew
we wanted to be parents, um like right away, so

(35:50):
much so that we didn't do the like COVID wedding postpone.
We just did like a fifteen person wedding, mostly because
he wanted to be parents right away, and so right
after our wedding, we contacted fertility doctor. We went through
the whole process of like genetic testing something that is
crazy to me, but you have to be genetically tested
your your own d n A if you're going to
be the carrier. The FDA regulates pregnancy that is done

(36:13):
in a fertility clinic, but they don't regulate it or
just anyone walking down the streets. So it's kind of
like a little like nitpick of mine, but you have
to be genetically tested. We did that. We picked out
our sperm donor, and that's something that we decided we
wanted to be like anonymous from our sperm bank um.
But for some other queer couples, like male or female,
you know, they would choose to maybe have like a

(36:35):
friend to be an egg donor a friend be a
sperm donor. For us, we have a couple of friends
who like obviously we think would be great parents, but
they have kids of their own, and there's the idea
of like their kids being our kids have siblings didn't
feel right. So we never had anyone where we were
like definitely them. I think for most people when they
find someone like that, it's like a friend who never
wants to be a parent themselves, but maybe would be

(36:57):
like a cool uncle or cool ant, and then they
have that genetic tie to the kid, which is really cool.
And so for us, we did that. And the sperm
donation process is crazy. Picking out the door you did
you did? You did anonymous sperm donor online and it's
like online dating. They all have profiles and instead of
a picture of like an adult, it's a baby, and

(37:21):
so it's like, this is what your baby is gonna
look like, and going into it, I always had this
mindset of like when I met Amy and fell in
love with her, it wasn't like, oh my gosh, and
our kids will look like this, right, because I don't
think anyone thinks that way when you're like on your second, third,
fourth date. Maybe some people, but you know, you fall
in love with their personality and other things about them.
And I never wanted this to be like, Okay, I'm

(37:43):
gonna like pick what my child looks like just because
I can. And we learned so quickly that a lot
of it was genetic and family history of like just
illness or whatever. You get the whole entire family history
straight up to great grandparents, including aunts and uncles. So
we would like fall in love with the guy, and
and he would have like, you know, a genetic marker
for hearing loss, which I already have, so we you know,

(38:05):
get rid of him. And we were left with so
few that like we kind of almost were like touching point,
you know, and picked someone who we both felt comfortable with.
We ended up getting a lot more data about him
after we had already purchased and he has like a
really good SAT score, so like the things like that great,
and then we've tried immediately. Well immediately in the fertility

(38:26):
world is crazy because it's all based on the woman's cycle.
So for me, I have p C O S. I
have in a regular cycle, So that was like a
whole journey to get to this point. But we started
with i U Y, which is inter uterine esemination, which
is like everyone jokes like the turkey baster. So I
would take medication at home to enlarge one of my
you know, follicals in my ovaries. Then when you ovulate,

(38:48):
that focle was supposed to drop. And if you're at
home trying to get pregnant, Sorry, no, just curious. The
purpose of the medication if you're following your cycle, is
it to increase the odd of getting pregnant because this
is a expensive thing and you have limited sperm usage. Yeah,
so the medication that you're on is like a very

(39:09):
low dose of basically like the hormone that naturally allows
you to grow and egg every cycle and drop it
to ovulate. So there are women who are able to
go through like a natural monitored cycle of A lot
of women in the fertility community don't like the word natural,
so I'm actually trying to use it less because it
implies that needing fertility treatments, no matter who you are,

(39:31):
is unnatural. So anyway, if you have a standard cycle,
you could go in and get monitored and they would
be like, okay, like we could do the procedure on Thursday, Friday, whatever.
But for me, because I a pc OS, the chances
of me like they called recruiting, like recruiting a follicle
and dropping it in like a timely manner, was not
as likely. So you take this medication and then you

(39:52):
take an injection like a trigger shot to make sure
that that follicles dropping, and then you do the insemination
on the same day as like if you were trying
at home, you would try to have sex like your
peak window, right, And so the idea with that is
like it's as close to standard pregnancy as you can get.
I did six rounds of that, sorry, hold that six

(40:14):
rounds me and six months worth or it took us
a year, but was supposed to be like six months worth.
And just like a little fun fact, each vial of
sperm is over a thousand dollars, so like when you're
going for all these tries, they use a full vial,
so like every try is not only just like a heartbreak,
but like a huge financial loss, right, um, and some

(40:35):
couples really can only afford one vial at a time.
We were lucky enough to like bulk by but it's crazy,
like anyway, we really were hopeful, based on my age
and my health that that would work. Um and I
went into it with just like head in the clouds,
like first round is gonna work, Like I thought we'd
be parents last April, not parents, but pregnant, and didn't work.

(40:58):
So then we made it through all six And the
way our insurance works is like once you go through six,
you start IVF. So then in January I was able
to start IVF medications, which similar to the i U I,
you take a higher har dose of that medication to
recruit and grow follicles, and instead of like dropping them
into your Philippian tubes and just losing them, they extract

(41:19):
them from the ovaries. And for like a lot of
women who are like I'm freezing my eggs, that's kind
of like the whole process so they grab them, they
freeze them and save them for later. But if you're
married when you're doing it, or you know you want
to be a single parent by choice, or you're in
a queer couple, they make the embryos immediately. It's kind
of this crazy process of like, Okay, we're gonna let
them grow for a week or let you know which

(41:40):
one's died and you're like thanks. Then whichever one's like
health grew in a healthy manner for five days, they
freeze them and then you can transfer the embryo. And
that's where we are right now. You know, and I
know that you're keeping that part of your life private,
which I think is you know, on your timeline when
you're ready to share, if there's an update, please we're
all waiting fingers crossed. But really the purpose of bringing

(42:03):
you on here is to really talk about what it's
like to struggle with fertility as any person, but specifically
in your situation personally, as as your friend. Also, it's
been like I don't know the best way to support
you because it's also been going on for so long.
Oftentimes it's like maybe I shouldn't check on her, Maybe
I should check on her. So, in your opinion, for

(42:26):
anybody listening that has a friend going through this, what
is the best way to support somebody on their fertility journey. Yeah,
so I think everyone handles it differently, and any is
so like stiff upper lip, like she's always good to go.
And I'm much more emotional, I think partially because happening
my body and the hormones and all that jazz. But
I do really appreciate like a soft, gentle check in,

(42:47):
like how are you doing? Like I don't want any
direct questions because that gives me the opportunity to share,
like oh, we're waiting your transfer memboryo or waiting whatever,
and I can share what I feel comfortable with. But
I really do appreciate like the several people in my
life who just send like a thinking of you, checking
on you. Um. I think if you have a friend
who lives close by, you're able to like meet up

(43:09):
for lunch or do something to distract them. A lot
of fertility treatments is like hurry up and wait, so
like get to the doctor's office, Okay, now you have
a week weight. And so for me, it's been like
any friends that like take me out to laun and
shake me for a walk, keep my mind busy. Um.
I even have a friend who will be like, let's
do a zoom lunch in that way, Like we don't
live anywhere near each other, but I'm distracted for an hour.

(43:30):
And I don't know if this is like what other
people would feel. I don't need anyone to like give
me a physical item or like make meals for me
or things like that. That's been a question. I've gotten
a lot in my Q and a S or my DMS,
like would you cook for someone? I'm like no, because
nine times out of ten, I'm not like debilitating lee sick.
I'm just like not myself. So it's more like emotional
support than it is like physical support. And I like

(43:52):
I drove a friend to her egg retrieval, Like if
you have capacity, usually the friend will request. But there
are a few things in this processor can't drive yourself
or take care of yourself during it. It's it's so emotional,
it's so physical, it's so hormonal. I mean, I've read
I watched your stories where you talked about it's like
extended amplified pms, like who needs that? Yeah? No, And like, um,

(44:17):
I don't tell people like the normal estrogen range for
a woman is between like thirty and three hundred while
you're just like living your life. And by the time
I was on these drugs for the IVF for three days,
my estrogen was out of thousand, So I was like
already three times the normal women women after three days.
It is roller coaster. And if someone if you have
a friend going through it, honestly, like take every conversation

(44:39):
with a grain of salt, because there was definitely things
I've said that I regret in the last year, and
they came out of like not my true self, your
high estrogen levels. It was your high estrogen levels clawing
at people. And what are some of the least helpful
or triggering things that people have said in attempts to
be helpful, Just so we can all check ourselves when

(44:59):
we're trying to be helpful of things not to say,
I think it's similar to any kind of like loss
or difficulty you have in your life, right, so like, well,
at least anything that starts with well, at least this
is not a good spinner to say, like, well, at
least you have eggs, Well, at least you can afford this,
well at least a lot. And like, no, I know
a lot of friends who have gone through miscarriages. People

(45:21):
say of them, well, at least you know you can
get pregnant. Like, never ever say that to a woman
when you're in that moment, You don't. You don't think
about the fact that you can get pregnant again. You
just think about that loss. Um, that one's a horrible one.
Um have you thought about? Adoption? Is one that sends
my head spinning, mostly because it like negates the fact
that I'm a smart person. Like my wife and I

(45:42):
sat down and we were just like, let's try for
chilly treatments. No, we sat down and we were like,
we cannot get pregnant as a couple, Like what do
we want to do? And adoption was obviously on that list.
It's just kind of silly question. Most people who can't
get pregnant have thought about adoption. What else? Just you know,
I've gotten a couple comments from people about like, how
do you feel about having a sperm donor in the

(46:03):
age of twenty three and me and I'm like, well,
how do you feel about the fact that someone of
your male relatives could cheat on their wife and father?
A child anywhere in the world at any time, and
then we figured it out be a twenty three and
me like, I don't know. I can't live in life
with the fear that like my hopefully my children would
be sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old when they had access
to something like that, and if at that point in

(46:25):
their lives they felt so strongly compelled to find this
quote unquote family out there, then that would have been
something that like either I had you know, discussed with
them previously life like it's just that thing that a
newborn baby is going to come out of the womb
being like pricked my finger, let's do it twenty three
and me like silly question one that you wouldn't ask
an adopted child, right, You wouldn't be like, how do

(46:47):
you feel about twenty three and me? Because when that
adopted child is old enough to know what it is,
they'll have the conversations with their parents and you know,
do it's best for their family. And a lot of
these donors have closed, you know, donate and so like
our donor has no interest in meeting his donor children,
and we'll have to explain to our children, like you
have to respect that that's how the world works, and

(47:08):
our children will have strong male role models in their
life and hopefully will feel like they can go to
them as a father figure. I'm not I'm not naive
to the fact that we're two women and there are
certain perspectives of raising a mail that we might need
a male perspective to help us on. And we've already
like tapped on our male friends and been like, you're
coming over to our house the first time, like masturbation

(47:29):
topic or anything like that, right, totally. Well, I'm really
excited for whatever is supposed to come for you guys
and will come for you. And I'm really thankful that
you've shared yourself so boldly online and also with that
grain of I'm a really sensitive person, you know. I
think that's what makes your account really interesting. You set
really strong boundaries, You speak your mind, but you're also like,

(47:52):
I'm really soft on the inside, and you don't hide
that part, and that kind of just to me makes
you know, I see you as a full spectrum human being.
Not to lighten this convo too much and take away
from your truth, but I just have to ask you,
as an amazing food blogger, what is your favorite kitchen appliance.
I have just say, like, oh, I can't live without

(48:14):
is the air fire right now? And I know so
anti air fire. It's a tight and oven. I'm just
gonna use convection with my big oven. Great, you can
go to my blog and try one of my air
fire recipes and your oven on conveection and then try
it in a traditional air fire and you will see
the light. Okay, but our fire is also like our toaster.
But truly can't live without is like a good sharp knife.

(48:36):
You just can't live about that. But like of frilly extras,
the air fryer, and every single week I get a
question my Q and I I need an honest opinion
is the air fire worth it? And I'm like, why
are people so afraid to spend? Like you can get
one for seventy dollars, Like there was one for thirty
five dollars at Target, I mean Costco yesterday. I was
going to take a picture of it and put it
on my stories. But I guess it's because they're bulky.

(48:58):
Is it because they're big and bulky that people are
really hesitant to make this investment? I guess so. But
I would have had my air fire. I lived in
a teeny apartment when my oven was fourteen inches wide,
and it would have found my air fire over that,
you know, I'm totally more useful, and I tot to
say they're quick, they're easy to clean, and it's a
great product, and everyone needs to stop with that like
party line of I've got my convection of it. I'm like,

(49:20):
if you have to then rinse a pan, nobody wants
to do that, And then there's people it's like it's plastic.
I don't cook my food and plastic. Mine is all
stainless steel, So I don't know, is it which one
do you have? I have a Ninja flips up on
the counter. I think mine's a I think men's a
Ninja two, but not also a toaster. So maybe you
could link yours below in our show notes because you've
sold me on yours, okay, And then I also just

(49:41):
want to ask you, because you are such a full
spectrum person. If one day you decided you don't want
to be food blogging or putting yourself on the internet,
do you know what you would want to do. I
don't know what I would want to do as a job,
but I also am starting to transition my business a
little bit so that like I could still have a
a food recipe creation business without social media. I think,

(50:05):
like the thing I don't like about my job is
social media. Everything else about my job I love. I
love creating recipes. So I'm creating a more personal newsletter
where it's behind a five dollar paywall, five dollars a month.
You know, come if you want to come, you know,
say if you don't. But that's kind of where I'm
moving a little bit, because I just I don't like
social media. It scares me. And I also fear that

(50:27):
like Instagram is deleting accounts left and right, and like
they're gonna leave me tomorrow. So that's just something of
my my personal thing I'm doing. If I didn't do
any of this, it's so hard to say. I was
a supply chain consultant before I was a food blogger,
So I think it'd be pretty easy to get back
into that space because it doesn't like change a ton,

(50:48):
and I have the degree to back it up. And
if I could work from home seven and do that,
I just didn't like to travel, I would probably go
back to that. I still have connections in that industry.
So I love how you were able to take a
moment to yourself and be like, Okay, I actually do
love my job, but I don't love the social media aspect,
and you're figuring out a way to still do the
parts that you love rather than just abandoning it all.

(51:09):
I feel like all of us can kind of take
a second to be like, which part of our jobs
do we like and how can we amplify that and
less in the parts that we don't like? And I
think that's really cool that you're leaning into that and
continuing to do things that are untraditional that feel good
to you. So thank you for living your truth fust life,
for sharing it with us, and we will stay posted

(51:30):
on your life, food and fertility journey. Thank you, Maddie.
Thank you so much for having me h