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Gwyneth Paltrow has spoken candidly about her experience as a stepmother to her husband Brad Falchuk’s two children, Isabella, 19, and Brody, 17. On 30 August, the wellness mogul took to her Instagram Story, inviting all of her 8.3m followers to ask her anything. From hair colour inquiries to questions about her late father, Paltrow’s audience didn’t hold back. In fact, one fan forced Paltrow to open up about what it’s been like marrying a spouse who already had two children. “I did find it really hard at first,” the Goop founder admitted. “You know? There’s no book on this. Nobody tells us what to do. And in fact, all of the existing media around what a stepmother is casts us in this evil, villainous light.” “It’s kind of like trying to avoid landmines,” she added. Paltrow married the TV writer in 2018 after four years of dating. She was previously married to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin for 10 years, before announcing their divorce in March 2014. Meanwhile, Falchuk shares his two children with his previous wife of 19 years, Suzanne Bukinik. When the health enthusiast tied the knot with Falchuk, she welcomed Isabella and Brody into her family - with her mini-me daughter Apple, 19, and her 17-year-old son Moses, whom she shares with Martin. The Academy Award-winner acknowledged the difficulties of being thrown into a new family. She pointed out how existing dynamics between each member are tricky to navigate all at once. For her, there was a fear of how becoming a new figure in her stepchildren’s lives would affect everyone. “You’re going into a family with dynamics, and there’s all kinds of fear around loss and what does this new person mean,” Paltrow noted. “But you know for myself, the minute I decided and fully embodied the idea that my step-kids were my kids and I loved them just as much, and I gave them the same rules and boundaries and just kind of wholeheartedly went for it, the easier the whole thing got.” Paltrow’s Instagram confessions come after the A-lister decided to take a social media hiatus earlier this month. In her 2 August post, she was seen sitting below the branches of a tree with the light of the moon peaking in. “Taking this full moon energy with me as I go into a social media break. Going to work on being present,” her caption read. On 14 August, the healthy living advocate broke her social media silence to share a poignant tribute for the renowned artist Clarence Avant. She posted a photograph of them embracing one another, expressing her sorrow over the loss. “You were beloved by so many, including our family who looked forward to every dinner, every drop of wisdom, just the warmth of your presence,” she wrote. Read More Gwyneth Paltrow was asked to film an ad for a probiotic - and the results were chaotic Holly Willoughby channels Gwyneth Paltrow with ‘orgasm anxiety’ blog post Gwyneth Paltrow announces social media hiatus Gwyneth Paltrow was asked to film an ad for a probiotic. The results were chaotic. Marijuana users have higher levels of toxic metals in blood and urine, study finds Rugby star Ugo Monye: Boarding school shaped my career and my personality

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A cooking teacher who lost her sense of taste and smell and “never fully recovered” after catching Covid last summer has decided to shut her business because she can no longer gauge the quantity needed or quality of ingredients in her dishes. Raisa Ali, 51, said to continue teaching people how to cook Indian food would be like “the blind leading the blind” as her sense of taste and smell have never been the same since she caught Covid in July 2022. The mother-of-three, who lives in Kingston, south London, knew “something was missing” after her husband Akbar, 52, and her students found she was being heavy-handed with the spices but could not tell the difference. Raisa made the difficult decision to close her Sweet Sultry Spice cooking school after teaching a class how to make the Indian spice mix garam masala and realising that, while she knew the recipe from memory, she could not smell the pungent ingredients. Covid has “killed the joy of cooking” and dried up her source of income, but Raisa has now accepted what happened and is looking for a fresh start. Raisa, who has three sons, twins Zain and Zakir, 16, and Yusuf, 19, said: “I can’t dwell on this anymore and just have to move forward. “My main mode of cooking and learning and teaching has been to follow my nose. “I used to make my students take whiffs of everything at every stage. “I decided to close the school because when I lost my sense of taste and smell, my passion died. “Covid killed the most important part of food for me.” Raisa started giving cooking classes in her kitchen after completing a nutrition course in 2018 and taking advice from a friend. “I did a one-year nutrition course and started working online, trying to build a small business, but it wasn’t going anywhere and I was feeling very isolated,” she said. “A friend of mine came over and said ‘you’re doing it all wrong, why don’t you just open a cooking school’. “I was scared but she was like ‘feel the fear and just do it anyway.” She soon found herself giving two or three classes per week to groups of around five people for between £60 and £70, teaching them to cook Indian cuisine. “People would come over to my house and they wouldn’t leave – it was great,” said Raisa who moved to the UK in 2008 after her husband was transferred to the country for work. “It was a really great experience and then when it went away, I just thought now what am I going to do?” Just when her budding business started taking off, bringing in between £500 and £800 per month, Covid struck. “Suddenly Covid’s happening and from one day to the next the business totally died,” she said. “The income that I had was gone and everything that I had built was gone. “I spent that first year (2020) feeling sorry for myself.” Then while travelling back to her native California, in July 2022, Raisa caught Covid and spent two weeks in bed. “I spent the first two weeks in bed and then started to recover slowly,” she said. “When I came back, I had brain fog, I couldn’t smell things properly and I couldn’t taste things properly.” She noticed her taste buds were not firing on all cylinders after eating some tortilla chips which tasted like “cardboard”. “I’m eating them and thinking, I don’t understand, what is this?” she said. “And it has just never come back properly.” While Raisa started to recover after spending two weeks in bed, some of her symptoms lingered for months. Once lockdown rules lifted, Raisa went back to giving cooking classes, but it was not the same. In January 2023, while teaching a group how to make garam masala from scratch, Raisa’s sense of smell was put to the test. “When they could smell it across the room then I knew, at that point, that this wasn’t going to work for me because it would be like the blind leading the blind,” she said. “I remember telling my customers, look I’m telling you everything from memory and my past experience because I don’t have have my sense of taste and smell. “Isn’t that depressing?” On another occasion, she was cooking a chicken dish and a student asked about the ingredients but Raisa could not “taste anything”. “It turned out it was black pepper but I couldn’t even taste it,” she said. Her husband and children also started picking up on strong flavours which appeared relatively mild to her. “I knew something was missing because when I cooked things for my husband he would say ‘oh, you put a lot of this in’,” Raisa said. “But I could not tell the difference.” Even to this day, Raisa says she has not fully recovered her sense of taste and smell. “If I would sum it up, Covid killed the joy,” she said. “I just feel like I don’t want to bother anymore because I feel like my drive is gone. “So I decided, either I can be upset about it or I can reinvent myself again.” Raisa has decided to see her Covid nightmare as a positive step towards new beginnings. “If you are cooking something, you have to be able to smell and taste the ingredients and I knew I couldn’t do that so I decided it was time for a complete shift,” she said. She has not been to see a doctor about her long-lasting symptoms as she believes there are many other people who are “far worse off” and that the NHS already has “too much on its plate”. She is now looking to explore other business opportunities which do not rely on having a sense of taste and smell. “Sustainable living” is one area in which Raisa is particularly interested, but what this will look like in practice remains to be seen. “I want to get rid of my carbon footprint,” she said. “I don’t need to prove anything to anyone, it’s just what I want to do.” For more information about next steps, follow Raisa on Instagram. Read More Covid Inquiry could see unredacted Johnson WhatsApp messages despite legal clash I decide what’s relevant, says Covid inquiry chair in Boris WhatsApp row Covid Inquiry head making ‘no comment’ on legal row over Johnson messages Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

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