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Serena Smith

@serenasmith__

1.9K

followers

1508

following

banter apologist
@onthetablewithserena + @shopify masters host
@venice_western co-founder + head dance bish
@stud.country teacher
🇨🇦🇺🇸🇮🇷🏳️‍🌈💋

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Our little show passed 100k YouTube views & 10k subscribers last week(!), a marvel to consider given the years (& I mean YEARS) I spent lying awake wondering if I’d ever get out of my own way enough to make it. It felt like both a foregone conclusion & impossibility, my internal landscape ping-ponging between faith, fear, & self-flagellation.

That faith won out I owe to a constellation of factors—spiritual guidance, meditation, the unyielding love of my community, @stud.country, some highly trippy nights—but the unsexy truth my ego doesn’t want me to reveal is that my final straw was desperation.

The career I’d built to insulate me from suffering (lol) came to a standstill last year & suddenly the dream I’d justified deferring for safer paths was wailing at me from the back burner because, welp, there was jack-all on the front. I hid this from nearly everyone except Ian, who held me through my panicked paralysis until I could begin to see what was being reflected in the mirror he was holding up–

This isn’t happening to you. It’s happening FOR you.

So I leapt, & have been catching gifts on the way down since. The conversations light me up. Owning my truth has radiated to new spheres. Choosing courage over fear revealed a well of self-love I didn’t know existed.

And people have come out of the woodwork to help: my incredible crew & generous guests; my zinque squad; my parents & their viewing parties; every friend, family member, former lover, colleague, & stranger who has taken the time to watch, comment, offer feedback, & apply the wisdom to their own lives. And Ian, my director & partner in all things, whose love for me can be felt in every corner of this show: none of this would exist without you. My gratitude is endless.

I wanted to make a series that honors the messiness of being human & alive, & with each episode I accept it a little more in myself. Where I’ll land I don’t know, but for the first time I’m happy to be in free fall. I know it’ll all be ok.

If you have something burning inside of you this likely won’t be the thing that galvanizes you to go after it. But I hope you find it. It will change you in ways you can’t anticipate. x by @serenasmith__

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2 years ago

do what makes you feel omnipotent and alive. taken in Acre Resort by @serenasmith__

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4 years ago

how many dreams come true are we granted in a lifetime? it strikes me that even one puts you squarely in the category of extremely fucking lucky – & here I currently sit, after winning a james beard award last week.
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there was no question in my husband's mind that he'd be in new york to support me, & apparently, not in my dad's either; he surprises me shortly before the awards, handsomely suited & ticket in hand. they've both shown up to share this moment with me. remember this forever.
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soon I'm at the ceremony flanked by the two most important men in my life, my inimitable colleagues surrounding, dominique & team indulging quasi-embarrassing tales of my adolescence courtesy of pops. fortunately, my nerves usurp any feeling I might otherwise have, & that story about me forgetting three trash bags of beer cans in our foyer for my parents to find is funny anyhow. bourdain & jonathan gold are, in their absence, acutely present, & the air in the room is thick with reverence. remember this.
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then it's our category, & marcus samuelsson announces masterclass as the winner, & everything swirls for an instant before ian's kiss zaps me back into my body. I get to the mic, say a thing, I think in mostly the right way – only I forget to thank my parents & husband, who are, respectively, the reason I'm here & the reason any of this matters. as I realize, too late, I'm immediately armed with empathy for every actor who has moronically done the same. I am this moron. we leave the stage & are ushered to the step & repeat where a woman tells us to remove our nominee pins, because now we're winners. remember.
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I feel a tap on my shoulder later & turn to find bill & yvonne kim, whose restaurant was the subject of my very first review. I was 23, deeply in love with the restaurant world & barely able to pay my rent. they're beaming, genuinely proud of this woman they haven't seen in years but somehow haven't forgotten, & the full-circleness of it leaves me stunned. I pivot to my men, speechless & brimming with gratitude, & the magnitude of the moment hits me. I'm crying, but it's in their eyes – teary, filled with pride – that I realize it. this I will remember forever. #jbfa taken in New York, New York by @serenasmith__

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7 years ago

Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate our anniversary show with us! 🤠❤️ And a huge thank you to everyone who has joined us on the dance floor over the past year!
We’ve had the BEST time line dancing with y’all and can’t wait for many more nights of dancing, good times, and memories!
Make sure to follow us for upcoming show dates—we’ll see you on the dance floor! 🍻🤠 special thank you @ethanlovell for the 📸 #linedancing #linedancinglosangeles #linedancinglessons taken in The Venice West by @serenasmith__

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18 days ago

They say never meet your idols. They’ve clearly never met Gloria Steinem.

I had the privilege of interviewing Gloria over three days across two coasts in 2021. Years earlier I’d put her at the top of a list of dream conversations, & here it was, materializing! Hours to dig in with my hero! A job I could hold in part because of her work! Some wild shit.

I was stoked and nervous as hell. I’d spent months consumed by the research. I wanted so badly to do right by her & all women (lol easy, tiger), to be worthy of her time & energy. I also knew being overly deferential wasn’t the move. She deserved it, ofc, but we’re talking about someone who’d devoted her life to the pursuit of equality. I needed to act like an equal.

So I gobbled up pep talks, scream-sang Mariah in the car, & walked on to set that first morning hoping to disarm. Only Gloria beat me to the punch. As we’re getting ready to roll, she looks at me & says:

“If I’m fucking things up, Serena, get in there and tell me.”

ME tell HER if she’s fucking up? Like I’m the authority.

It was generous, funny, grounded, cool. And I could hear what she was actually saying: You have nothing to prove. We’re in this together.

& right there I understood why Gloria Steinem has endured as Gloria Steinem. Here was one of the most famous feminists alive using her power to flatten the room. To make me feel bigger, not herself. We’ve elevated her to mythical status over the years but she never bought into the hierarchy herself. The level playing field she’d spent her life fighting for wasn’t an abstraction. She created it between us in 8 seconds.

And suddenly it wasn’t an Important Interview With Gloria Steinem anymore. It was two women talking – enthusiastically, conspiratorially, at the level of federal legislation & who does the dishes – about being women. I stopped trying to be worthy of the conversation and got to actually have it.

We have G to thank for systemic freedoms most of us rarely consider (like, say, a CC in our name), but her power was as much in the intimate ways she liberated us. At the root was her belief that we should all be able to live whatever life we choose.

I do. Rest easy, Gloria ❤️ by @serenasmith__

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24 days ago

It was my due date yesterday so it feels like the right time to say: we’re having a baby! Any moment now! The portal is open!

Sitting in the liminal space, I’m aware that talking about pregnancy isn’t unlike talking about falling in love. What’s left to say about an experience so nearly universal? And yet anyone who’s been through it knows: it’s singular as hell. There are infinite ways to be pregnant, & as many to be cracked open by it as we stretch physically, emotionally, spiritually, our brains & bodies reorganizing themselves on a level that is unparalleled. But literally. Look it up.

Pregnancy, for me, has been a softening & strengthening, a newfound awareness of both my power & my limits. A surrender – to another level of caretaking from Ian, a bones-deep barnacled attachment to him, & allowing us both to admit we like it; to the physical pain and its lessons; to not being able to control my body in the ways I’ve long used to make me feel safe.

The divine timing of being two months behind two of our best friends, & then another serendipitously on our tail. The acts of love: an unforgettable sex reveal (gender’s a construct, don’t get me started) & showers from my girls, the care from every corner of our community, the strangers who told me I looked amazing on days I’m positive I didn’t.

Dancing onstage all the way to 36 wks, doing some of my best interviewing at 31, & the dawning recognition that my dimensions don’t collapse because I’m pregnant: I can still be sexy, incisive, alive. And also: letting the field narrow for this season; working to release the need to be pre-preg me. S/o to my renewed love affair with bread.

The alienation from myself in the early months replaced by the absolute gobsmacking wonder of feeling a growing human wiggle inside me. Consciousness, inside me. My husband’s son inside me. A little penis inside me!

I was ambivalent for a LONG time about doing this. & I wasn’t entirely wrong to fear what I’d lose. What I couldn’t see – what we can almost never see before a leap of faith – were the gifts we’d gain along the way.

Today we perch on the edge of an even greater mystery, only now all I feel is magic. Magic and reflux. by @serenasmith__

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5 months ago

Been wanting to learn line dancing? Learn from my fave @serenasmith__ this Saturday 4/11 @venice_western Get your tickets before they sell out! by @serenasmith__

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6 months ago

lordy lordy went and turned by @serenasmith__

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9 months ago

right on time. by @serenasmith__

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a year ago

Thicc As Thieves at Stud Country ★

#linedance by @serenasmith__

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2 years ago

12 years with the freest thinker I know, and the least likely to remember anywhere we’ve eaten. what a trip. ❤️ by @serenasmith__

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2 years ago

didn’t know 39 could feel like this ✨ by @serenasmith__

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2 years ago