Women are fiery, strong, compassionate, resilient and beautiful creatures. And yet we live in a world that doesn’t celebrate these things as much as it should. Media celebrates a very narrow definition of beauty, one that doesn’t last because time passes, and we grow up and grow old. Gravity hits and traumas, scars and stretch
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Our SHINE Festival in March 2021 was a roaring success, smashing all of our targets with 40,000 girls attending. Over 80 incredible, authentic and badass women joined us to celebrate being a girl for 3 whole days! Over the next few weeks, we’ll be catching up with some of the speakers to share why we
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Our SHINE Festival in March 2021 was a roaring success, smashing all of our targets with 40,000 girls attending. Over 80 incredible, authentic and badass women joined us to celebrate being a girl for 3 whole days! Over the next few weeks, we’ll be catching up with some of the speakers to share why we
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I am not being overdramatic when I say that doing a Post-Leaving Cert Course (PLC) was the best decision I’ve ever made for myself. Seriously. Last September, I enrolled in a Level 5 course in Art, Craft, and Design, and it gave me so much freedom to learn and grow, not only as an artist
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Every week, we tell you about some of the amazing ladies we have the honour of sharing this planet with. This week, we thought, what about all of the ladies that we look up to, that aren’t real?! For this week’s Shona Heroes, we’re highlighting some impressive leading ladies from animated shows. **Spoilers will be
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Whether you know her for wearing a red jersey for Cork, as a coach on Ireland’s Fittest Family or bopping her way across the dance floor on Dancing With the Stars, over the last few years, Anna Geary has become a name we all know and love. Just like us here at SHONA, Anna aims
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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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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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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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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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