Our mission at Shona, which we do accept, is to inspire and empower girls. So for this week, our chosen hero is Dench. Dame Judi Dench. Actress, philanthropist, advocate, it’s hard to choose what we like most about Dame Judi. Luckily, we don’t have to. With experience on both the theatre stage and the silver
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Hey, welcome back. In our last post, we talked about confidence (you can check it out HERE). As confidence usually involves taking a bit of a risk, which can sound dangerous and scary, we want to chat about it a little more. When you look up the word “Risk” in the dictionary, it usually mentions
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How many times have you been told you should “have more confidence in yourself?” It’s not exactly helpful, as confidence doesn’t grow on trees and isn’t given out as a freebie with a Happy Meal. To be honest, most of us don’t even know what it really even means. Well, here we are, your friends at
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Learning to Love Unlike many people’s coming out stories, I never really ‘came out’, instead I see it as a process of accepting myself and my sexuality. I grew up Catholic like many others in Ireland, attending mass on Sundays and going to a Catholic primary and secondary school. We never learned about same-sex couples
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Hi, y’all! My name is Julie (she/her/hers) and I’m an intern here at SHONA. Today, I’m going to share my story. I was around 14 when I first began questioning my sexuality. Maybe this story sounds familiar: I’d grown up in a community that assumed people were straight and treated anyone different as weird at
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If you’ve ever watched “Orange Is The New Black” you will, of course, recognise Laverne Cox, who played the sassy but vulnerable Sophia Burset. Whilst OITNB gave Laverne her big break, we now know and love her as a huge advocate and inspiration for trans folks. Born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, Laverne was a
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I have never struggled with a piece of writing more than this one. I have opened and closed this word document what feels like 100 times in the last few weeks, trying to find the right words. The document is saved as “pride month”, and I think the reason that I am struggling to
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In a weird way, I was lucky to have had a little bit of a different leaving cert experience than most others have. I say “in a weird way” because it wasn’t exactly lucky that I was depressed during my leaving cert. However, it did allow me to have a very different perspective on the
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We won’t lie to you, Cristine Rotenberg is a firm fav of the whole SHONA team and we were buzzing at the chance to do a Shona Heroes on the holo queen herself! Whether you are new to the holo fam or you’ve been there since polish mountain, we guarantee you’ll be heading over to
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via GIPHY Hey! It’s us again. You know, your cool best friends that are a little further down the life road than you, and are sharing all of our learnings with you so you don’t have to make the same mistakes as we did (hello blue mascara!) With summer in full flow and life starting
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Anxiety. It’s often a feeling that people put down as occasional nervousness, maybe before a big exam, or before a big event. But what some people don’t know, is this ‘feeling’ can overtake your whole mind and body, and leave you feeling that you’re on the brink of breaking down 24/7. That’s what happened to
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As many of you may know, we ran 2 competitions over the month of May. One of those was a design competition where we worked with our amazing friends at The Wonderkind, who are launching a new range of beautiful badges, each featuring an inspiring female designed by one of you! We had hundreds of entries and
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As many of you may know, we ran 2 competitions over the month of May. One of those was a writing competition where we aimed to amplify your voices and give the girls of Ireland a platform to share their stories. We had hundreds of entries and the talent displayed absolutely blew our minds! You
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Mary Robinson is an icon in Irish history, as the first woman to become President. After serving most of her term, she left the role in 1997 to become the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and ever since, she has worked tirelessly to make the world a better place. In fact, we were gifted
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We love nothing more than a good movie! And especially those that hit us right in our feels. The movie doesn’t necessarily have to be sad, just something that hits you emotionally, something you can relate to, or something that makes you think about your role in the world differently. Whether those feelings are good,
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If you’re a Hunger Games fan, you’ll already know Amandla Stenberg. She played the adorable Rue and was awarded a Teen Choice award for her performance. Amandla has been acting since the age of 12 and has been an activist for almost as long. Her journey to becoming a true role model for us all
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It’s time to talk about the ‘S’ Word. So, let’s do it! In the olden days (as in, the ’90s and forever before that), young people were expected to figure out sex and all it entails without ever talking about it. This meant that they had all sorts of assumptions and expectations that weren’t particularly
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This name may ring a bell as Megan Rapino is a professional soccer player who captains the United States, national team. She holds the title of The Best FIFA Women’s play from 2019 and helped her team win gold at the 2020 London Summer Olympics, 2015 Fifa Women’s World Cup, and 2019 FIFA Women’s World
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