"Wise storybook granny" energy and my plans for 2025

Welcome to The Kettle.

A year or so ago, I was looking for a name for a podcast I was about to launch about creativity and connection through the lens of tea - a beverage I’d long loved that had turned into a growing passion that I’d just started to really explore.

I had just learned about the most delightful invention - the “teasmade”, a combination teakettle and alarm clock that was popular in the United Kingdom in the middle of the 20th century. I loved this clever product and its name, taken from the common British phrase, “The tea’s made”, which conjured up an image of people gathered in a cozy kitchen around a freshly-brewed pot of tea.

It was exactly the kind of mood I was wanting to strike with both my podcast and my Substack publication and community, and I jumped on the title “The Tea’s Made” in both places.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t considered that most people in the United States would not be so familiar with the phrase, which has led to a fair amount of confusion. My fellow Americans seem to really want my podcast to be called “the tea IS made” which led to emails going awry, promo codes and URLs not working, and me doing a lot of sheepish correcting.

Also, we humans can be awfully literal about labels, and I’ve gotten almost-apologetic emails from readers and listeners who prefer coffee or cocoa over camellia sinensis, or who are confused about whether they should bother listening or reading. The fact is, that while I love writing and talking about tea and have no plans to stop, I write and talk about a lot of other things, too, like midlife motherhood, my return to faith, kitchen routines, baking and cooking, books, and even raising chickens.

For me, tea has always been many things: a delicious beverage, yes, but also a linchpin in century after century of human culture and history, an avenue for wellness and healing, and a touchpoint for rooting myself in what’s real by finding connection both with other humans and the natural, physical world.

As I age, I’m also finding myself craving deeper conversations about the connection between the natural world and human traditions, and the ways bringing those things together can help us flourish.

Is there a symbol, I wondered, that could encompass all the things I’m wanting to explore: the wisdom that can come with aging, the lessons in tradition and ritual, the power in conversation shared over a warm beverage?

Yes! There is!

Welcome to The Kettle with Meagan Francis.

I love everything the symbol of a kettle conjures up, don’t you?

To me a kettle suggests warmth, nourishment, conversation, tradition, and perhaps a little enchantment, too.

The kettle is the purview and property of a loving, wise, and well-humored storybook granny, and that’s the kind of energy I’m leaning into in this space.

For those of you who’ve been around a while, I wouldn’t expect much to change in the content you’ll see here, except that I’ll be leaning in a little more on the above themes in 2025. I’m hopeful that the more inclusive title will feel like an invitation to new readers, too, to pour a warm drink of your choice, settle in, and connect with me here.

You don’t have to be a tea drinker or a midlife mother to hang out at The Kettle, but you’ll feel especially welcome if you’re curious about the possibilities inherent in midlife, or are hoping for some conversation about the wisdom of aging that goes deeper than hot flashes and hormone fluctuations. And you’re still going to hear about what I’m sipping. I’ve got some fun new tea content planned for 2025.

A note that, as of January 1, I will be turning paid subscriptions back on. This move has three goals: 1) to give those who want to an easy way to financially support my work (I appreciate you so much!) 2) to provide security/privacy for those who want to connect with me in the chat area, which I will revive as soon as the paywall is back up again, and 3) to limit search-ability of very old posts that I might at some point develop into other material.

For the foreseeable future, all new posts will remain free, and the paywall will only be in place for posts more than one year old. If you run into a paywall on an older post and want to access it without becoming a paying member, just send me a DM or email me with a link to the post you want to access, and I’d be happy to send you a gift link. Likewise, if you want to join in the conversation but a paid membership isn’t possible for any reason, email or DM and I’ll add you, no questions asked.

I’ve also moved my podcast - which will share the same name - over to Substack just to keep everything in one place and make it easier to share new episodes with you. If you’re already a listener, you should still be able to find the podcast in your favorite app - nothing has changed there, but you’ll also be able to easily find and listen to episodes here, and they’ll also go to your email if that’s how you get new posts. The next episode will drop on January 1, so look for that soon.

Welcome to The Kettle, friends - I hope you’ll feel at home here, whatever’s in your cup.

Illustrations in this post courtesy of artist Danika Corrall.