Steph, our gorgeous counselling and psychotherapy expert is back to help you, our followers, out with some sticky life situations. Endings come in all shapes and sizes and can be super tricky to cope with. Our parents’ relationship ending is never really something we ever think could happen. This reader is struggling to process her
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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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Here at Shona, we love when we get to meet someone who is stepping outside of what the world considers “the norm”. It’s so interesting to have the opportunity to chat with women who are doing cool, unusual, and interesting jobs. So, we were only delighted when our friends at UCD School of Mathematics and
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To Anjelica from ten years ago, There’s so much I wish I could tell my younger self, lessons learned the hard way, warnings of bad days to come but most importantly, I wish I could let you know everything turns out ok and you will be alright. In 2012 people kept saying the world would
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Today, we are delighted to have the lovely Aoife Doherty pen a guest post for us! This is a gorgeous piece ties in with the fact July is Disability Pride Month, and we know you’ll just love it! Take it away Aoife… As avid travel lovers, my boyfriend and I had always wanted to
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We would like to provide you with a trigger warning before you continue to read. In this article, Izzy makes a reference to disordered eating. Dear Isobel, As I’m writing this, the July sun is shining in through the sunroom windows and warming my skin. I look down at where the light is hitting,
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Everyone’s experience of counselling is different, but I want to tell you about mine, and what I wish I knew before I started seeing a counsellor. The time between being told by my doctor that I likely have anxiety and should talk to someone and actually going to see a counsellor was very rushed, so
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If I could send a letter back in time, letting the words of gentle encouragement and enlightened compassion sift through the sands of days gone, this is what I would say to you, my younger self: You are going to fail. You are going to fail more times than you can possibly imagine. Those failures
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Here at Shona, we are all about representing girls, women and non-binary people from all backgrounds, but we especially love when we get to meet someone who is stepping outside of what we consider “the norm”. So today we would like to introduce you to Councillor Emer Kelly. Emer is 22 years old and has
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Dear Aoife, I am writing this letter to you, aged 23, preparing to graduate from college with a Bachelor of Business and ready to explore the world. While I know you struggled in your teenage years with extreme anxiety and depression, I am so proud to be able to tell you that you have taken
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Steph, our gorgeous counselling and psychotherapy expert is back to help you, our followers, out with some sticky life situations. Social media can be cool and all, but nobody ever tells you how much effort goes into juggling all the different platforms and group chats. So, when this follower found herself excluded from a chat,
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Dear younger dee, I’m twenty years old now, but I still hold on to my ten-year-old self in many ways, because she was the one who taught me how to be kind, outspoken, independent, and brave. Who I am now, is because of who I was when I was younger. All of the good and
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A gorgeous human reached out to us a while ago and shared this really powerful piece with us. We thought, with it being pride month, it would be the perfect time to share it. We’d just like to thank them for sharing their story with our Shona Community x Sometimes it’s like being invisible. Watching
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Daisy, I am writing this to you as a 20-year-old woman, you are no longer just a girl in a school uniform being given out to for having badges plastered over your jumpers, you are in your 20’s now. And this is somehow even scarier than entering the halls of secondary school and finding yourself
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Clothes. We use clothes to express ourselves. There is also reason to believe that what we wear and, whether or not we feel comfortable in what we wear contributes to our overall mood, expression, and mental health. Scientists call this phenomenon ‘enclothed cognition’. On average, it takes someone about 7 seconds to form an impression
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Dear Emma, I’m writing this aged 18, preparing to sit the Leaving Cert, and completely unsure of what will happen next – and I want you to know that’s okay! Since 12 or 13, you’ve struggled with your mental health. Since then you’ve worked with 2 different counsellors, spoken *honestly* to your doctor (which was
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For Pride Month, I spoke to my twin sister, Katie, about her experiences as a lesbian in Ireland (the conversation has been edited a bit for length). We spoke about being gay in a suburban setting, LGBT youth groups, and Pride. Read our conversation below: Do you want to tell the Shona readers a little
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When you are just becoming a teenager you think you know everything and understand people but now that I’m twenty-two and I look back, I just think about how I didn’t know anything. I remember it as a time without big responsibility but everything counted back then. I was still only learning how people work
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