HeyJaredThe Kettle with Meagan Francis
Stories from a gentle midlife renaissance. At The Kettle, I write about nature, books, nostalgia, tea, ancestry, and the creative work of making a meaningful, connected life today, steeped in wisdom from yesterday. Put the kettle on and stay awhile.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 8
- Latest publication
- Sep 6, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 5, 2026
Latest issues
September journal: building food resilience (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Each month I create these Journal episodes and posts exclusively for paying members of The Kettle Community. They’re like little care packages full of seasonal observations, reflections, and resources. Enjoy, and thank you for supporting my work!Between recalls, droughts, a fertilizer shortage and ever-creeping grocery costs, the cracks are showing in our fragile food system. With every headline, it feels more necessary to me that we learn to diversify our food sources and prepare our pa
Sunday Steep #11: a cozy summer’s end (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Hello friends,I started doing these “Sunday Steeps” at one point in order to give myself an easy way to stay in touch without overthinking/feeling like I have to turn every share into a full-on literary essay. They went along swimmingly for a while, and then I fell away from doing them (checks notes) two years ago. Since I have a lot of little things to share and I’m trying to save enough writerly mojo to get through revisions on my novel-in-process, I thought I’d bring this feature back! First
For the writer who isn't writing (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Sometime last month I started to feel a familiar, unsettling feeling of writer-panic. The progress I was making on my novel wasn’t matching the pace I’d hoped for, and I wasn’t really finding time to write much on Substack, either. I started to feel a familiar, yet unsettling, panic that I’ve experienced on and off for my 22+ years as a published writer: maybe this is it. Maybe I’ve lost it. Maybe I’m not really a writer after all. Then I remembered that every time I have felt this way over the
August journal: summer reset (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Each month I create these Journal episodes and posts exclusively for paying members of The Kettle Community. They’re like little care packages full of seasonal observations, reflections, and resources. Enjoy, and thank you for supporting my work!Hello friend,July was a month chock-full of adventure, from an all-day kayak adventure to <a href="https://meaganfrancis.substack.com/p/i-dont-want-to-spend-my-5
I don't want to spend my 50s cringing at photos (opens the original)
Read excerpt
It’s not easy to get to Isle Royale National Park. The rugged, remote island in the middle of Lake Superior had long been one of those vague “visit someday” goals that never seemed to make it to my short list. <img alt="" class="sizing-normal" hei
Publishing over time
Last 90 days. Choose a month to open its work.
Recurring subjects
Named in the text we hold. One piece can cover several.
Audience
No verified audience measurement yet.
About this data
Counts cover the work we have indexed. Tone needs enough text and a confident classification. Excerpts and episode notes are not full articles or transcripts.
Identity or attribution wrong? Suggest a correction.