For Black Cat Appreciation Day this week, we explore how we "other" creatures like sharks and black cats - and how this mirrors the parts of ourselves we reject. Join the Sole to Soul Circle for a live (online) deeper dive into your own shadow on Monday 18th August

🖤 Join Eve Menezes Cunningham as she dives into shadow work using the Feel...Love...Heal framework. Inspired by Netflix's "Shark Whisperer" and her own rescue cats (especially Rainbow MagnifiCat), Eve explores how embracing our whole selves (including the parts we've labelled as "monstrous") can transform our relationships and create a more compassionate world.

✨ You'll learn:

* How projection keeps us from seeing our full humanity

* Why we fear powerful parts of ourselves

* Gentle approaches to shadow work and self-acceptance

* How loving our rejected parts heals our connections with others

🔗 Join the Sole to Soul Circle for deeper shadow work exploration

🔗 Find more resources at selfcarecoaching.net

Next week: High Functioning Co-dependence (Episode 72)

#shadowwork #SelfCare #TraumaInformed #ADHDFriendly #Podcast #SelfAcceptance #feelbettereveryday

This episode features special guest appearances from Mighty Meadbh, Eve's rescue cat 🐱

Feel Better Every Day! Learn from the self and Self* care practices the professionals depend on. With a mixture of solo and interview episodes, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham (author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing) shares trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly self and Self* care ideas to help you:

• Feel... regulate your nervous system and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from

• Love... accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing and

• Heal... turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large

Thanks for watching. New episodes come out every Tuesday morning (Ireland time) and if you subscribe (via your favourite podcasting app or by joining the Sole to Soul Circle), you’ll be notified about each new episode. Sole to Soul Circle members get deeper dives each week.

WANT TO WORK WITH ME?

• There’s the book – 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing – and all the book bonus videos.

• All the free resources (for trauma, ADHD, menopause, solopreneurs, anxiety, sleep, confidence, resilience, finding purpose, meaning and joy and more) across my platforms and the library of self-care ideas and practices at

https://selfcarecoaching.net

• You can join the Sole to Soul Circle on Substack (https://evemc.substack.com ) and get bonus interviews and content specially designed to help you dive deeper into each week’s theme.

• If you want to support my work but don’t want to commit to a membership, even for a month, you can choose any amount at https://ko-fi.com/evemc

• Find out more about my private practice for one to one work. If you’re based in Ireland or the UK, it’s worth completing the short form at https://selfcarecoaching.net/contact to book your free telephone consultation in the hope that we can find a mutually convenient time to work together (trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly therapies, Self care coaching, clinical supervision and supervisor’s supervision).

WANT TO CONNECT WITH ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

You can find me almost everywhere – please say "Hi" and share your questions or comments:

YouTube @evemenezescunningham

Substack @evemc

Bluesky @eveimc

TikTok @evemenezescunningham

Insta @evemenezescunningham (and @rescuecattitude and @thefeelbettereverydaypodcast)

Facebook @FeelBetterEveryDay

And if you’d like to leave a review and/or rate this and other episodes you’ve enjoyed, your feedback and support helps me help more people (of all genders) with trauma histories and/or ADHD take better care of their whole selves and create lives they don’t need to retreat from.

CHAPTERS / CATPURRS

(0:00 – 0:58 ) Black cat cameo and podcast intro

(0:59 – 11:02 ) Sharks, shadow work and misunderstood creatures

(11:02 – 11:31 ) Healing through acceptance

(11:33 – 13:20 ) Leaving the world better than you found it

(13:20 – 15:18 ) Shadow work and embracing our power

(15:19 – 16:34 ) Rescue cats, love, and letting it expand

DISCLAIMER

The content I share is not a replacement for one to one trauma therapy (etc). While you can do an enormous amount to support yourself, please always seek appropriate medical advice. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe / follow and share with someone who you think will benefit from this episode.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Like Marianne Williamson talked about… [pop Marianne Williamson into the Search on my site to read my interview with her]. I think I have a cat behind me. I do, I have a cat right next to me. It's not a black cat, it's Mighty Meadbh, little wondercat. She was the feral mammy who, oh bless her, she's gorgeous. And I othered her, when she appeared in the garden, she was terrorising Rainbow. I didn't know she had all the kittens at the time, but she kept turning up and I was like, oh my god, I can't have any more cats. And then there were 11 cats and I had to deal with them.

Hi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and you're listening to episode 71 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday, I share trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly self-care ideas to help you take better care of yourself and your Self with that uppercase S for that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself.

Ideally, to help you create a life you don't need to retreat from. You can find out more at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com and for deeper dives into each week's theme, you can join the Sole to Soul Circle. As well as bonus interviews and practices, there are live circles online and instant access to the whole Love Your Whole Self chakra journey.

You might also find the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, helpful. And other resources available at selfcarecoaching.net.

Today's episode, in honour of Black Cat Appreciation Day this week, I was hoping to have a little cameo from Rainbow, but we're going to be talking about sharks, those misunderstood monsters.

I recently watched Shark Whisperer on Netflix. If you haven't seen it, I recommend at least giving it a go. I would not have thought it was my kind of programme / documentary at all and I absolutely adored it. Someone close to me really pushed recommending it and I'm so glad I did.

It follows Ocean Ramsey as she uses her long history with sharks. From the time she was growing up in Hawaii she wasn't scared. She swims with them and does an enormous amount of work trying to save them from the real monsters on the planet, the humans.

Sorry, I don't mean to be down on humans.

There are many, many amazing humans, but the point of Black Cat Appreciation Day is that a lot of people malign paw, beautiful black cats as unlucky, as bad somehow, as not photogenic enough. They brought in this day to help rescues place more black cats.

Rainbow Magnificat (obviously every day is Rainbow Appreciation Day here) changed my life.

Sharks changed Ocean Ramsey's life. The power of connecting with her own energy as she works with theirs and also what she's had to do in life… I'm so happy she found her partner who's equally in love with sharks.

For the purpose of this episode, we're not going to be diving with sharks. We're not even going to be swimming with sharks. I've also been watching, what is it? Shark: Celebrity Infested Waters, which again, is aiming to bring awareness.

I wish they'd shown more around what they were doing to support contestants with their anxiety and fears. It could be quite educational in that regard as well, but the sharks are amazing.

We call sharks monsters. I don't, but a lot of people hate sharks. They won't swim in the ocean. They're scared because we've been taught to fear them. They've been othered.

Unfortunately, we live in a time where many, many, many groups of people and individuals are othered for things they have no control over. The more we own our whole shadows, the more we can bring about a more peaceful way of life for all who come into contact with us by not projecting our fears and our monstrous parts onto others.

Start by asking yourself, have you ever really, really, really not liked someone?

And it might be like absolutely loads of people you really don’t like, or it might be, “Oh, I'm not supposed to dislike people.”

The more we can work with the parts of ourselves that don't like someone and own those parts we're projecting out onto them back in ourselves, we can create beautiful friendships. We can really transform things.

But if we just let ourselves dismiss politicians, people, like entire groups of people as completely monstrous, we're dehumanising ourselves. We're all complex. We're all worthy of love and safety and shelter and all good things.

I want you to think about how you feel about addressing your shadow. As we move into the feel, part of the Feel... Love... Heal... framework, do you consider black cats to be bad luck? Do you consider sharks to be monsters?

Think of something you dislike or someone you dislike or even hate and just ask yourself how it feels to contemplate the possibility that what you hate within them or what you dislike or what you fear in them is within yourself.

We're going to be doing a deeper dive into shadow work on Monday the 18th for Sole to Soul Circle members.<