What It's Really Like to "Go Viral"
15 Million Views While Unplugged at an Eco-village Retreat
The irony is not lost on me.
My daughters grew up in a relatively screen-free home (at least at mom’s house—the TV got lost in the divorce and was happily never replaced).
I have bumper stickers like “Plant Seeds and Sing Songs” and “Tree-hugging Dirt Worshipper” on my Prius.
I put my phone on airplane mode when I sleep, and my college kids tell me that some day they will be in a ditch and my ringer will be turned off. (I believe in both of their capabilities to get out of said ditch, and I never had a phone when I was a teen falling in ditches.)
I hate doomscrolling, and punish myself with more work when I catch myself doing it for a minute.
Yep. I foundationally detest social media.
But I am a grand communicator and author. I send my friends and family text-novels, which they don’t always appreciate. As a writer, I use punctuation and tight little paragraphs, saying “comma” out loud as I dictate annoyingly on my phone. My 20-year-old daughters challenged me to send only one-line texts in 2026. Like most new year’s resolutions, I dashed that one swiftly.
And, I want to interest a newly adulting following in my upcoming book.
If I want to interest a traditional publisher in this book, even though each of my previous books has won several awards, I need a social media following these days.
I was getting tired of being ignored by literary agents. I’m a super-scrappy oldest child of seven siblings. If someone tells me I can’t do something, I see it as a challenge. When a doctor once told me, “Join the club of three out of five adults with back pain” after a serious car accident, I showed him. I swam fiercely and worked hard to get my broken back so strong that I gave birth to full-term twins with very little back trouble five years later.
Those ghosting literary agents initially demoralized me. Ok, I said, I’ll show them.
In 2025, I started a TikTok account (cringing all the way) and a YouTube channel. I decided that my Pinterst account, which I’d started to interest parent readers in my second book, Nurture: How to Raise Kids Who Love Food, Their Bodies, and Themselves, was not getting enough engagement, so I’d concentrate on the audience for my next book instead: the more recently named category of New Adults (NA).
That group of 18- to 35-year-olds is who I want to reach. They are the majority of my clients and people so heavily marketed to by the beauty, fitness, and diet industries, as well as “wellness culture,” which is often the beauty, fitness, and diet industries trying to hide their capitalism.
I started with a social media campaign, dreamed up with my spunky college daughter, Ava, for Eating Disorders Awareness Week. It did fairly well because people liked our lighthearted banter about college dieting behavior in our kitchen, sprinkled with her calling out my awkwardness. (“Bruh, look at the camera!”).
My video reel views increased. Not my following on Instagram, though. It had been deadlocked at 2K followers for several years.
Not that I care about metrics, but publishers do.
I kept making little video reels. They were rather rudimentary, but I got more and more comfortable in front of the camera. I continued to ask myself why in the world was I doing this.
For the young people who will benefit from reading my next book, I kept replying. This book was inside of me and gradually coming out onto my Word doc as I nosed around on social.
My younger brother, who is a serious influencer in the music industry (he loves this shit), asked me to send him one of my videos. He mocked it up and made it funny, poking fun at how dorky I am, even more than Ava did.
We decided that headlining the video, “I’m never letting my little brother edit my videos again!” made sense, and that got some attention. People seemed to love the sibling rivalry, especially between siblings who are a couple of decades apart. (I’m 54. John’s 33. Same parents. Five siblings in between us, so we are the ultimate oldest and youngest children. Age matters little in our relationship, but we played it up.)
After creating a handful of these videos, our schtick got popular, and we started to have fun with it. I gave him complete creative control of the final product, and decided that the greater good was better than being vain about my presence on social media. Sometimes I’d get an idea for a video and I’d be in my jammies with my hair wild. I decided that I had to not care.
In fact, that was some of the message behind the madness.
One outrageously embarrassing (at first) video now has 15 million views (and counting) on three different platforms, most of them on Instagram (@heidischauster) and TikTok (@nourishingwords) where young people hang out. My stuck 2K following on Instagram ballooned to over 25K, almost overnight.
I couldn’t keep up with the comments and shares. I still can’t. But people all over found my wholesome messages about whole-self care mixed with my brother’s hilarious comic timing on editing somehow mesmerizing. Young people wrote saying they watched a video 12 times in a row, couldn’t stop cry-laughing, and that we’d cured their seasonal depression.
Oh, and this all happened while I was away on a women’s retreat for a friend’s birthday, housed in a woodfired roundhouse in an ecovillage. We celebrated a computer- and phone-free weekend while my social media presence was literally blowing up.
So, my strategy of trying to increase my following to interest a publisher… Did it work?
I can’t tell you just yet.
I have to keep updating my book proposal daily with new numbers, and I’m hopeful that some agent out there likes my idea and appreciates how my topic is indeed engaging to a New Adult (NA) audience. As I see it, the proof is in the millions of views, thousands of comments, and hundreds of shares.
The funny thing is that I couldn't care less about those metrics personally.
But I do care about the people who message me to say they decided to read one of my books, and it changed their relationship with food. Or the teen who tells me they don’t have eating disorder resources in their little province in Canada, so my content is keeping them going.
If I can use the algorithm to spread good over evil (and it’s a fine line because capitalism is insidious in how things unfold on social), then maybe I can indeed reach more people than the five clients I see in one day.
I haven’t made a cent from my social media work. Our fans keep telling me to give my brother a raise, but I have to pay him in scones because it’s not in the budget. (Luckily he really digs my scones, and enjoys editing my videos.)
Like I said in a recent video reel, I still have laundry to do. I still have to cook myself food. I’m not getting paid for all those millions of people to see me farting in the middle of a serious discussion (thanks, John), but…
I’m putting myself out there.
I’m not playing small, as I have at times in my life.
I often see this as a theme in eating disorders recovery work: learning how to show up as your unedited (or in this case brilliantly edited, thanks to a loving brother) self.
I’m trying to use my “influence” to further my path as a human being on this planet. In fact, I recently joined Harvard Chan’s Public Health Creator Program and started networking with other inspiring social media creators who aim to disseminate accurate, evidence-based health and mental health information. I’m also exploring how to combine my interest in eating disorder prevention and writing/content creation into a doctoral program.
I can’t possibly respond to every comment on every video spreading far and wide, but I can shut down the rare homophobic comment and keep the ongoing chatter among followers wholesome and values-aligned.
That last part seems really novel to many people scrolling, and they are finding it refreshing. What people claim to like most in our videos, aside from my brother making me look demonic, are 1) the fact that I don’t care (yes, a fifty-something woman is not trying to look perfect or pretty), 2) the mention of our ancestors, specfically John and my beloved late Nana and Grampy, and 3) the menacing sibling chemistry that so many can related to.
In fact, there’s a lovely article, written by Anthony Macri for a marketing audience, that goes behind the scenes with John and me and shares our magic. (We have never felt so “seen.”) People are tired of salesy content and want some trusted advice from real heart-centered people.
Maybe I can get my third book published by dazzling an agent and publisher with my suddenly robust and highly engaged platform. Stay tuned…
Oh, and here’s two of our latest viral videos if you are blessed to be completely off social. Please remember that they are NOT aimed at this rather literary Substack newsletter audience but at young and new adults on short, fast video-based platforms. John and I are mocking social media and influencer kitchen trends while using the platform to put out some sound messages.
We may be keeping people on social, cry-laughing as they share and watch our shenanigans over and over (which is something I do have some misgivings about), but at least it’s because they are viewing something rooted in sibling love and whole-self care rather than capitalism and oppressive diet and wellness influencer culture.
Other Nourishing Nuggets:
If you don’t have a copy yet of my friend Deb Benfield’s book Unapologetic Aging, what are you waiting for? You aren’t getting any younger. (But, seriously, this well-researched and beautifully written book is a winner.)
I also want to give a shout-out to the updated edition of Sick Enough: A Guide to the Medical Complications of Eating Disorders and Undernutrition. Dr. Jen Gaudiani, expands our understanding of the complexity of eating disorders, discussing updated topics around neurodivergence, weight stigma, and harm reduction in medical and mental health systems.
There’s room for a couple more people in my new Somatically-based Group for Community Support While Healing Your Relationship with Food, Body, and Self. Please reach out at heidi@anourishingword.com if you are interested in being a part of this group.
I have a little space in my practice for a new supervisee or two. If you are a health or mental health professional who works with disordered eating and would like mentoring and clinical consultation from someone who has learned a lot (sometimes the hard way) over the last 30 years in practice, please reach out.
There is also room for one or two new clients in my practice this emerging Spring, particularly those interested in Somatic Experiencing (SE) and embodiment work as an adjunct to their work on food and body concerns.
If you are in the Greater Boston area, I invite you to a performing arts event I’ll be a part of on March 22. “Love Now” is a collaborative project including original songwriting, live musicians, poetry, classical Indian dance, modern dance, and live chorale singing, including a chorus comprised of persons with disabilities. It is a celebration of humanity in all its diverse forms. I’ll be dancing with local modern dance company, Encore Dance Ensemble, a hardworking group of women 40+.
Lastly, if you are feeling similarly disheartened by events in this country and on the planet right now, I encourage you to not lose hope. Please give yourself space to feel what you feel about it. The anger, the grief, the fear… But then, look for the good in humanity, and stay steadfast in your values and intentional work, for change will not happen if we lose trust in our common goodness.
Amazing Heidi. Lovely bonding with your brother in it all!
I am so curious whether this will help get the attention of literary agents and publishers. Please do keep us posted 😀