Dear 18 Year Old Kat, Everything got better. You’ll discover many things in your final year of secondary school. You’ll drink for the first time, kiss people, go to house parties and spend Saturdays wandering around the city. You’ll also fight with people, and fail class tests and feel low, but I promise it get’s
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The world is full of self help books, meditation, hypnosis and other big ideas which are supposed to help you remain calm, deal with stress or handle anxiety. But there’s one super simple trick that you can do anywhere at any time which will make a difference when your head is spinning and its all
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Let’s be honest, there aren’t many of us who haven’t had a love/ hate relationship with our bodies. As women, we’re taught that the skinnier we become, the greater our worth. We feel guilty for eating cake and embarrassed to ask for a second helping. Our relationships with food and our weight are built on
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What a stoopid question. How many times were you asked this question before you could tie your own shoelaces? And what was your answer? As little girls our options were pretty limited; a nurse, a teacher, a vet… Hands up if you ever answered, “Well Auntie Bridín, my interest in the erosion of the polar
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What people say about you is none of your business Sometimes we can get very upset about what someone has said about us or called us. But we don’t need to. If someone calls you a name behind your back or on social media this should always be taken with a pinch of salt as it
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Yesterday, it was revealed that over 150,000 young people are not registered to vote in Ireland. This was shocking to us as in just over 3 weeks, Ireland will be holding one of the most highly anticipated votes in years. As young people we often feel unheard, ignored and invisible when it comes to the
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In 18th January 2018, 21 year old Nicole ‘Coco’ Fox Fenlon took her own life after years of horrendous bullying. The bullying started when Nicole turned 18, with her bullies allegedly burning her with cigarettes, pulling her hair, pushing her, and spreading vicious rumours about her online. Now Coco’s mother, Jackie Fox, is leading a
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Phones, technology and social media are everywhere around us these days. We are all guilty of spending too much time scrolling through the latest posts, texting into our group chats to find out the tea or checking how many likes our recent selfie has gotten. We think we can all agree that social media, phone
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U2 are as much a part of Irish culture as St Patrick himself. They created anthems which saw us through our biggest challenges, the troubles in the North, equality, loss and so on. Over the past 42 years their songs have been anthems, and most of us grew up in homes with at least 3
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Rebecca Ryan is smart, well spoken, capable and a published author at 16. She also has OCD which, in the past, has controlled her life, and prevented her from being able to deal with anything blue, the number 4 (or multiples of) and resulted in her climbing through her windows because of her fear of
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We’ve been following RTE’s youth mental health initiative this week and are super impressed with all the amazing materials they have made (just follow #RTEBigPic for more). Loveliest of all is how positive the conversations have been about what is traditionally a dark and sad conversation. The messages are hopefull and honest, which is exactly
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This week RTE have a really special campaign to promote youth mental health. On Sunday they unveiled a beautiful piece of Joe Caslin artwork on the side of the RTE building. We’ve heard frank chats across their radio programmes from Joanne McNally, Bressie and others, and there is lots more to come, including a chat
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Zimbabwean-Irish singer Pearl Natasha has enjoyed critical acclaim in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Malawi. She has played international stages including Live & Unsigned for Sea Sessions, Lake of STARS Festival & HIFA; radio and TV including Highland Radio, ZiFM Stereo, ZBC TV and Ocean FM Ireland; sharing her unique blend of Diasporan-Pop, featuring heavy African roots, lyrical ballads reminiscent of Irish
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Being a parent can be tough, especially being a parent of a teenager. There are a lot of emotions, attitudes galore, and enough sass to rival Lizzo. But something we often hear parents say about their teenagers is “They are just so lazy.” We’re not here to call you out (well we are just a
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The year my parents separated was the year my whole world completely crashed and to say my mental health suffered was an understatement. I went from being a severely athletic young girl who loved her body and everything that she was to a complete hermit who hated any sort of interaction with the world and
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I had my 4th session with Pat today. He had well bad coffee breath, it was knockin’ me sick! I was a bit tired an’ all cos mam had the telly up way too high watchin’ Game of Thrones so I couldn’t fall asleep proper. Daft bint! Anyway, I went in to Pat as usual,
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In her first post for shona.ie, Libby had a chat with Zlata Filipovic, a hugely accomplished writer and filmmaker who lived through a horrendous war which forever changed her home country. Take it away Libby… “I think I’ve managed to retain this complete optimism and love of humanity and belief that people are good.” Ladies
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Nobody likes talking about periods. Period. They may not be fun, but they’re for sure nothing to be ashamed of. And the more we talk about them, the more empowered we are to deal with issues such as menstruation. Californian artist, Annie Wong wanted to shift the stigma and turn periods into something positive, and
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