The weekend I talk about in this new episode, less than two weeks ago (at time of writing this) was bookended by the fantabulous Panti Bliss’s If These Wigs Could Talk at Westport Pride and the parade then Dublin for the amazing Kimberlé Crenshaw, Backtalker. It went a long way towards healing the heartache I’d been feeling about racism in Ireland.
I’m facilitating a workshop for therapists, coaches, supervisors and other helping professionals, Sustainable Practice When the World is on Fire for onlinevents.co.uk on 22nd August and hope you’ll join me to support yourself and your communities in protecting your nervous system in order to live wholeheartedly and lovingly.
Something Panti Bliss said during her show has stuck with me: A quick nod to the “suspension of disbelief” around acting as if she was beautiful and the audience also acting as if she was beautiful.
She WAS and IS.
Beauty radiates from every pore when people let themselves shine (more on shining in ways that feel safe for your nervous system in next week’s Summer Solstice episode!)
Love truly is stronger than hate and the more you celebrate your whole self and connect with communities that help you do so, the better.
Can you imagine a world in which everyone was nurtured and supported in finding ways to express their uniqueness instead of being hurt for it?
As I say in the episode: if every child, if every adult had the support to flourish, to be celebrated, to their unique gifts, to be nurtured and finessed and the world’s problems could be solved and there’d be so much more joy and collaboration.
And I know I sound way too old to be so idealistic but this was how we were created, this is how we are wired: we are wired to thrive when we feel safe, welcome and loved and we know this now through modern neuroscience.
By not loving others, by not welcoming others, by making others unsafe, we are making ourselves unsafe, we are making ourselves less loved, less welcome.
We’re creating a hell on earth when there could be a heaven on earth.
If humanning feels too much at the moment, with everything that’s going on, give yourself permission to hang out under the duvet and regroup. 2026 is a LOT.
I still believe we can defy dystopia but it’s about continuingly checking in with yourself to identify whether you need self-care, Self care or community care.
Sending love to everyone everywhere.
le grá (with love),
Ev3
LINKS
Panti Bliss https://www.instagram.com/pantibliss
Kimberlé Crenshaw https://www.instagram.com/kimberlecrenshaw
Related episodes
If you enjoyed this, check out:
Episode 80: Own your privilege, change the world
Episode 83: Community as self care with Elizabeth Potts
Episode 84: Be kinder to your extra-sensitive nervous system
Book your free telephone consultation and access 100s of body-mind practices at https://solestosoul.ie/free-downloads
CHAPTERS
0:00 An unforgettable weekend and finding joy in difficult times
2:54 Mayo Pride and feeling inoculated against despair
6:17 Dancing, celebration and the healing power of joy
9:37 Speaking up, community and restoring faith in people
13:30 Kimberlé Crenshaw, hope and responsibility
15:44 The FEEL. LOVE. HEAL. framework in action
20:10 Self-acceptance, love and personal transformation
25:14 Pride, belonging and celebrating who you are
26:29 Community, connection and turning pain into action
29:07 Reflection: finding sources of joy
HASHTAGS
#belfast
#pride
#intersectionality
#kimberlécrenshaw
#pantibliss
FULL TRANSCRIPT
An amazing phenomenal weekend and I want to share parts of it with you because life is so hard for so many and we really owe it to ourselves to not let anyone control our bodies and nervous systems and put us in that dorsal vagal shutdown, despair, despondence, hopelessness, overwhelm, dissociation, feeling hopeless and helpless.
The weekend inoculated me against some of the despair. Welcome to episode 115 of the Souls to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD podcast.
This is Mighty Meadbh. I have quite a precarious setup today. I’m in a different room to normal so I’m hoping that she doesn’t send everything flying. She now thinks this is a game.
Each week with the Soles to Soul Care Podcast for Trauma and AuDHD, it’s about learning to love and care for all your parts from the soles of your feet to your soul and there are new episodes every Tuesday.
You can access full transcripts and show notes and older episodes at solestosoul.ie/podcast and you can also subscribe wherever you listen or watch podcasts like YouTube, Spotify, Apple, all the rest of them. So links in that page as well or just Google it or wherever you’re watching or listening now, feel free to subscribe.
That would be lovely. I really hope you enjoy this episode.
I was just saying to the cats I think I had the best weekend of my life even though I’m very tired after it and promptly nearly broke my thumb. So this happens quite a bit over my life where like one time I was on a beach in Essex walking along. I’m so happy! And promptly fell into the sea in my clothes. Another time I was running down the back garden. I am so happy! Promptly dropped my phone and broke it.
It was still an amazing phenomenal weekend and I want to share parts of it with you because life is so hard for so many and we really owe it to ourselves to not let anyone control our bodies and nervous systems and put us in that dorsal vagal shutdown, despair, despondence, hopelessness, overwhelm, dissociation, feeling hopeless and helpless.
So I’m seeing it as if the weekend kind of inoculated me against some of the despair and I also recognise I’m going to need regular boosters which I’ll talk about later but it was just amazing.
We had Mayo Pride at the weekend which is just always so lovely to see. Just I think any kind of love is just so divine. In the last census I put Love and Nature as my religion.
It just feels so healing for the town and for the world. And I went to see Panti Bliss on Friday night as the first night of Pride with a couple of friends and it was just divine. It was so gorgeous and she was talking about how dancing when the world despises you is in itself a radical act and it’s like of course it is. I mean that’s how Pride began isn’t it? It was a survival thing.
People were supposed to be invisible and like criminalised and it was horrific and so it was really interesting that she ended the show kind of talking about intersectionality and then yesterday I was lucky enough to see Kimberlé Crenshaw who coined the term intersectionality in Dublin.
And it meant just three and a half hours sleep the night before and a crazy amount of travel over the weekend for me. Other people do much more but I did more this weekend than I do most months.
But just thinking it really is the case that we are all connected and it’s about looking out for ourselves and for other people and speaking out but something also that she said on the Friday night.
So I cried as well as laughing loads like it was really really funny but also really really moving. The show was If These Wigs Could Talk in case you get an opportunity to see it near you but at a certain point she was like we’re all suspending disbelief and I’m probably misquoting it, paraphrasing it.
I certainly don’t remember it (AuDHD brain) but it was essentially she was completely fabulous and completely confident and completely like yay loving every fibre of her being and it was glorious to see and she said that we’re all buying into the belief that she is beautiful and everyone laughed and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it all weekend because she IS utterly beautiful.
And Derrick, who I didn’t recognise until we spoke at the Pride March on the Saturday was in his Cornflake Girl drag and anyone, whether a drag queen or whether expressing their whole selves in ANY way is beautiful.
And it’s inspiring and it’s fabulous and flamboyant and encouraging and allowing and inspiring and transformational.
It’s art and yeah it’s just so I thought I’d do this solo episode after a lot of interview episodes, guest episodes.
Look into your own lives, think of the times in which you feel helpless, hopeless, the times you wish you felt more confident and able to speak out, the times you feel run down and hurt and like despairing about it all and ask yourself how it might feel to dance, how it might feel to bring joy in.
At the Kimberlé Crenshaw event yesterday, Dr Ebun Joseph was facilitating and interviewing her and there were performers before and after and it was just a really gorgeous day and I can’t remember what she was talking about, it was something like about horrific racism in Ireland which is horrific and the people who minimise it and it’s not all trolls, it is very much humans as well who are somehow missing every logical point about the Irish immigration diaspora.
I’m not going to go into anything here, I’m going to focus on the joy and she was talking about the need to find humour and to laugh but also just it was such a joyous belated celebration of Africa Day and people from across the continent.
I look white, I sound English, I’m Indian Irish, my mother was born and raised in Kenya and I went to an African diaspora day probably for an Africa Day a long, long time ago in London and it was really, really lovely but very much on a stage.
And this was a gorgeous like hotel function room, just so much joy in the room, so much inclusion, so much celebration, so much fully ourselves. I went to a V-Day conference when I first went freelance in 2004, it was a Women In Power conference organised to end violence against women and girls, Eve Ensler who wrote The Vagina Monologues who created V-Day and my first ever press conference there like Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Eve Ensler, Gloria Steinem had to leave but I got to meet her, it was incredible but I remember there was dancing at different points during this like three-day conference and there were amazing speakers and I was in my 20s and I hadn’t done my trauma recovery, I was beginning to process it, I was beginning to.
But I was so disembodied, oh my goodness, and people would be dancing in the aisles at certain points and it was just like yesterday I was joining in with the singing, I was joining in with the dancing and recognising how much healing, it just felt so celebratory and just thinking about how healing and how transformational the power of love is and so for today’s episode I want to share a bit.
So basically there was the drag show on the Friday night, the Saturday morning then kind of packing, getting ready for Pride, meeting some Social Democrat lovely people, I joined the Social Democrats when I was feeling so hopeless and helpless, last week after I organised a very small vigil to honour Yves Sakila in Westport to send love across the country to Dublin and I got so much hate online in local groups and I’ve always been like Westport meets all my criteria, like a friend said Westport meets all your criteria before I immigrated here, I’ve always had an Irish passport, I’m an Irish citizen, I’ve got Irish blood, it’s the first time I’ve lived somewhere with a blood link but I’m an immigrant, I moved here for a better life, I moved here to get away from the toxic hate after the Brexit vote where all of a sudden it felt like people were celebrating the horrors of empire instead of trying to make reparations or things I thought, anyway, it’s horrifying seeing things like that here, a lot of it is bots, a lot of it is humans, I know I saw a friend’s brother post one of the hateful comments and all the messages I was getting and I did go to the Guards because someone in one of the groups I’d posted in was basically like you need to speak to the Guards and it’s like well it might just be me, but I ended up showing them some of the messages and they were really sweet, said let me know if you need anything.
There were only 12 of us but it felt better to do something rather than nothing and also my hope and faith in wondrous Westport was restored, talking to loads of gorgeous lovely people and the kindness of some of them made me feel like crying but again recognising me putting on a Black Lives Matter t-shirt, feeling more vulnerable, it’s something I can put on and take off and it’s just horrifying that you need to say that Black Lives Matter, that like of course all lives matter but not in the co-opted way like white lives matter, white lives have always mattered.
I’m very much going off on tangents so some of the other gorgeousness of the weekend was snorkelling on Achill. Seeing my love and meeting up with old Sub Aqua friends and rejoining as a visiting member which feels much more sustainable but being there for the one night, lovely food, feeling adventurous, driving places I’ve never driven before.
It was a gorgeous snorkel, meeting new people, being able to drive and being able to stay out late for dinner and then drive back, getting home crazy o’clock Sunday night only to leave stupid o’clock yesterday morning on three and a half hours sleep, then crossing the country to get the train to Dublin and then like getting so lost and I think being so sleep deprived it was like I’d never left the house before let alone being from London.
I was not citying very well. I looked like a complete tourist, I was emptying out my bag accidentally but it was just a gorgeous gorgeous day. And I think the more we do that brings us joy, the more we do that takes us out of our comfort zones in safe ways, that helps us build community and just remember that we’re all connected, remember the delight.
I’m going to go back, I should be rewinding, I should have scripted this probably but I didn’t want to, so in terms of the weekend I did make a couple of notes, so yep, so I don’t want to forget everything I wanted to say.
Kimberlé Crenshaw has this phenomenal book which I meant to put next to me here when I was recording and I’m going to bring it over now, so Kimberlé Crenshaw has this gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous book Backtalker and I’ve been listening to it for the past several days and my anxiety paid off.
I was so stressed about missing the last train back to Westport, I spoke to one of the people working there, organising the event and she actually saved me a copy because they sold out and I’ve been listening to it on audiobook read by the author, absolutely phenomenal, I’m not an academic, I’m not.
I met lots of like kind of PhDs, lots of doctors yesterday and one of them was saying about how amazingly accessible it was, she makes it all Kimberlé Crenshaw and I was like yes, as in I understood a lot of it, I didn’t understand all of it, but it was enough to give me hope.
In the book she is sharing a lot about her life growing up and the times she realised about injustice in different intersections, so for example her family she remembers being really small and her whole family being against racism and helping her become a proud Black girl, Black woman, but not recognising the sexism at play in rules in the house and in the world and she was always questioning.
It’s a beautiful beautiful beautiful book and the last question that I heard before I had to go and find my train and miss the last questions and a performance that looked like it was going to be amazing.
She was asked about hope and this is the FEEL. part of the FEEL. LOVE. HEAL. framework that I developed, so FEEL. is about self-care, regulating yourself and doing what helps you feel better. It might be going for a swim, it might be whatever it might be, how can I, when I have the bandwidth, do something that’s going to help me feel better, it might be doing laundry, it might be taking a nap, it might be whatever it might be, going for a run, but it’s something that you’re changing what you’re doing, you’re feeling into what you’re doing.
Kimberlé Crenshaw talked about hope and responsibility and actually not being too in your feelings and I know my partner had been worried about me being, I’m a big feelings AuDHD-er, it explains so much about my entire life and I cry a lot and I know that’s healing and I process and it’s all good, I’m happier than I’ve ever been at 50 but at the same time it’s hard being a human, seeing so much pain being sadistically inflicted on others.
I mean it’s bad enough with people kind of dying, disease, suffering in ways that can’t be helped but when you see the sadism, I’m not going to make myself cry now, she was talking basically, it was a reminder to not go into that dorsal vagal, that freeze, that hopelessness, that despair.
If we do that we’re basically on the other side, we need to do what helps us feel better and she just said about not being too in your feelings and it’s like yep, I can create an introject of her voice and hopefully pull myself out sooner, not wallow like in Buddhist, in yogic philosophy. You’re wanting to be mindful, you’re wanting to notice the feelings but not indulge them, not wallow, not get hooked into them, not be paralysed by them, whether that’s feeling really good, whether that’s like feeling terrible, whatever it is, everything moves and holding lightly.
So moving into the LOVE. part and I said a bit about Panti Bliss on the Friday night and just the love, it felt like being part of that parade, I was going to meet the Social Democrats local group that I’d just joined and I thought I was going to meet them and watch the parade but no, we were in the parade so that was really weird but really lovely and it just felt like just sending so much love to every fibre of Westport which is just such a gorgeous, gorgeous place, I’m so lucky to live here.
Just accepting all of it, accepting for example I am emotional, I do get upset about what goes on in the world a lot, I probably get more upset about that than stuff I know with the AuDHD, I know justice sensitivity, I know I’ll be hopefully talking to an expert on that coming fairly soon on the podcast but it doesn’t help anyone if I wallow, so it’s accepting the feelings, accepting the feeling of despair, accepting the feeling of how on earth are we going to, and then recognising with the celebratory, loving, yes it’s hard work, the organisers, oh my goodness for both events, what they put in to make it all go off so beautifully and to facilitate so much for so many people and curate such joy in both the celebrating Africa Day yesterday belatedly, time of recording, and the Pride, Mayo Pride over the weekend.
I’m at a bit of a loss for words thinking about everything that must have gone into all of that and how it leads me into the community part, the HEAL. part, so the LOVE. part is going backwards, I really should have made better notes I think, I’m going to accept that I didn’t, I didn’t want to, the LOVE. part is about accepting, about loving ourselves and that was something I missed out about the gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous weekend.
I had done a psychosynthesis, kind of, it’s a every couple of months kind of thing that I can’t often make, but I could make it this weekend and I’d forgotten how lovely it is, just this reflective journaling, meditative practice which changed my life.
I’d been pretty upset the night before about something, a lot of early childhood stuff coming up for healing and I’d said something I regretted and I was trying to accept myself and trying to accept the other person involved and I was like being hard on myself and then the exercise we did on the Saturday morning, the Sunday morning, it was looking at the Love and the Will archetypes and for a lot of the people in the group they were saying that they hadn’t really worked with that so consciously in a long time, but the Love archetype was a huge influence for the LOVE. part of the FEEL. LOVE. HEAL. framework.
In psychosynthesis when Assagioli was creating it and developing it and the will had fallen out of favour because of the Victorian very heavy iron fist kind of will, whereas this is more, he was so influenced by yogic philosophy for example and the idea of self-discipline and you want to change something, you change it, you keep making those little movements in the direction you want to go in, it’s a practice yoga or any kind of transformation, it’s all a practice, the LOVE. part, so there are different types of will, the LOVE. part is more about the accepting things exactly how they are and sometimes the love and the acceptance of something exactly how it is, is all that it takes to transform it, so the idea of loving yourself, it might sound like oh but if I love myself too much then I won’t do anything to improve things, I won’t do anything to change things, I’ll get lazy, I’ll get slobbish, I’ll get slovenly, I’ll get, it’s like no you won’t because that’s where the decolonising ourselves comes in as well.
We used to remember that we were part of the earth, we used to remember that we were part of nature, part of the divine and that was all separated hundreds of years ago and we can reclaim that every time we pay attention to our appetites, every time we pay attention to like whether you’re hot or cold or want to put on another jumper or take off or whatever it might be, when you want to dance, when you want to sleep, when you want to, these are things that ADHD-ers, that autistic people, we often struggle with, they call it alexithymia, not knowing how you feel and that’s more emotional as well but also with physical sensations.
I used to go blue as a teenager because I wouldn’t recognise that I was cold and should be wearing a coat and I was also quite rigid because I didn’t want to wear anything but black for this certain time and I didn’t have a black coat so there was that as well so I’d have black t-shirts and purple arms but the FEEL. bit is the do what you can, the LOVE. bit is accept what you can’t and how acceptance, how love, how supporting yourself, putting supports in place when you know things are going to be tough.
In the past I’d have given myself such a hard time about trying to do too much this weekend whereas this weekend it was just like I’m tempted to show you the enormous pile of laundry behind the camera and I’m going to, so just the state of my house at the moment because I was away and I decided I was going to prioritise doing these amazing things that I knew would inspire me, I knew that like kind of fill me up and recharge my soul, my heart and so it’s having that balance and the LOVE. bit helps you accept where you are on any given day.
I developed the framework to help with self-care whatever is happening with your bandwidth, like sometimes it’s much easier to think I’m going to go to the gym, I’m going to do this active thing and we’re going to feel so much better when I clear out my house, whatever it might be, when I sort my finances, when I catch up with this paperwork, when I write this chapter, whatever it might be.
The LOVE. bit, it sounds simpler but it’s much harder for many, many people and I think because of this weekend and what Panti Bliss was saying about the amount of, for example, Irish gay people who died by suicide and by being kind of killed but the suicides were essentially murders for having been so not accepted.
And what’s happening now in terms of so many people deciding who gets to be Irish, who gets to be considered human and worthy and belonging and how insane it is when none of us do anything to deserve where we’re born or who we’re born to. And it’s about reclaiming that inherent being part of nature and celebrating yourself and singing loudly, dancing, dressing up in clothes that celebrate who you are and I was going to say and bring joy to others but you don’t have to bring joy to anyone else, just bring joy to yourself, do what makes YOU feel joyful, do what makes you feel like you’re celebrating yourself.
So the HEAL. part is where we turn what hurts our heart into action and this weekend has just been a massive reminder of the importance of community and just thinking about where do you feel like you belong, where do you feel safe, where do you feel welcome, where do you feel loved.
I mean that’s the basic kind of polyvagal informed approach we need to feel safe, welcome and loved in order to thrive and everyone on the planet, every mammal on the planet, every creature on the planet deserves to feel safe, welcome and loved and then able to thrive and I keep thinking if every child, if every adult had the support to flourish, to be celebrated, to their unique gifts, to be nurtured and finessed and the world’s problems could be solved and there’d be so much more joy and collaboration and I know I sound way too old to be so idealistic but this was how we were created, this is how we are wired, we are wired to thrive when we feel safe, welcome and loved and we know this now through modern neuroscience and by not loving others, by not welcoming others, by making others unsafe, we are making ourselves unsafe, we are making ourselves less loved, less welcome, we’re creating a hell on earth when there could be a heaven on earth.
Oh my goodness, I did not expect to go there but think about where you feel safe, welcome and loved and if you don’t, like even online communities like the psychosynthesis thing on the Sunday morning, then I’ve not met any of them in real life but I felt so, oh this is a community I’d even forgotten I was a part of.
And how lovely it to reconnect.
Think about all the communities you’re part of, think about the people you love spending time with, the people you feel energised around, the people you feel less energised around but still love and just let yourself design your life as much as possible around what brings you what lets you celebrate every fibre of your being, love every fibre of your being and of others.
So thank you for listening, thank you for being here and I look forward to sharing more next week.
And before you go you might want to just pause and scan your whole self from the soles of your feet to the soul, if we go with the crown chakra, the top of the head but just notice how you feel listening to this, noticing what is activated in your body, in your energy field, what feels alive, where that charges, what your body needs, it might be like oh I’m thirsty or I need to eat my dinner or it might be I feel lightness, bubbly effervescence and I’m going to arrange to see that gorgeous friend I haven’t seen in so long or I’m going to hug my partner or whatever it might be, scan yourself from the soles of your feet to your soul and notice what you can do differently just by taking that moment to check in with yourself that shows yourself some love, some celebration, some acceptance and also think about what will help you feel more grounded, what will help you feel more resourced, what will help you feel safer to speak up and stand up for others when you see horrors on public transport, wherever it might be, how can you without putting yourself in undue danger, how can you help, how can you be a force for love, how can you remember your connection to the earth and to the world at large and connecting with that sense of community.
It makes me laugh how I woke up this morning and something happened and I just had an immediate oh bless them and it was almost identical to the thing that had happened on the Saturday night that had made me feel really unworthy and unloveable and all the things I’ve worked so hard to overcome to heal from and this morning it was just like there was none of that because I was so filled up from the weekend and I just felt so like oh bless and yeah that’s so interesting and it’s a bit like when you see hideousness online it’s like the people spreading hate are so much more organised and I know the majority of people don’t agree with them but by not showing any support for non-controversial comments but friendly comments it’s gonna make the haters less likely to pounce but again feeling all filled up, feeling all having had this lovely time, feeling inoculated and making sure I get my boosters by doing more things like this as much as possible.
How can you inoculate yourself? How can you give yourself boosters? What community events can you put in your calendar as regular things that you don’t even have to think about? Things that just it might be like I don’t want to kind of give too many suggestions because everyone’s different but think about communities you want to feel more connected to and how you can let yourself, let yourself be held, let yourself belong, let yourself hold others.
Have a delightful week and I will see you again next time. Before you get on with something else I’m going to encourage you to pause for a moment and scan your whole being from the soles of your feet to your soul and the crown of your head and notice what you’re aware of. Notice any physical sensations, pleasant, unpleasant, warmth, tingly, whatever it may be just being curious about what you’re feeling as you’ve listened to this episode, making a note, asking what those sensations might be trying to help you with, what you might benefit from doing for your body right now, being aware of your thoughts, noticing any feelings that feel more prominent as a result of listening to today and any intuitions, any insights, anything that you can actually schedule in to ground and improve your life in some way.
So let me know how you get on, make a note, doodle, journal, whatever feels good for you and thank you for listening. This episode like all of them was produced by me, your host Eve Menezes Cunningham and I look forward to sharing more next week. You can find out more, access old episodes and free resources and more information at solestosoul.ie/podcast.
See you next week.
