Grief, sex drives and the power of bullet-journaling: This week’s episode of The Spill

Have you ever had one of those days that screamed for a wine and chats sesh with your girlfriends?  Enter Image.ie’s new podcast, The Spill 

The Spill is hosted by our very own self-proclaimed agony aunts Sophie White and Rhona McAuliffe.  With a mix of discussion on current affairs, arts and culture and some healthy advice to our listeners, it’s the best place to unwind and deliberate the issues affecting Irish women today.

To kick off this week’s episode, Sophie and Rhona discuss a subject that is often ignored, especially in Irish society – grief. Sophie is enjoying the current revolution around how we approach grief, and how more and more people are finding their own ways to deal with it. Sophie recently lost her father after a long illness and speaks about the many conflicting and confusing feelings and behaviours she had during the grieving period. Rhona has a less direct history of grief. She grew up in a “pragmatic” household, where death was dealt with quickly and without much discussion. But when Rhona recently lost her dog, she found herself behaving in the same erratic ways that Sophie had. Is there any ‘normal’ way to deal with loss? Are we getting better and healthier at dealing with grief?

The term ‘self-care’ is thrown around a lot, but some definitions are more dubious than others. Sophie has found one method that works for her though – bullet-journaling (or bujo, as we like to call it). With society being drawn back to a love of routine (between skin care, meal prep and everything in between), bullet-journaling is another way to self-soothe and take comfort from something structured. But while Sophie is a bujo convert, Rhona is less convinced, as it seems like something that would be too much pressure to keep up on a daily basis. Have you ever tried bullet-journaling? Is it just a hipster diary, or does it have real benefits for organising our lives?

Rhona’s agony aunt letter this week was on a subject that many couples have had to deal with – mismatched libidos. Under Pressure, a woman from Cork, has been married for eighteen years, but since she and her husband had their children, their sex drives don’t sync up. She is content not having much sex at all, but her husband is really feeling frustrated and has said that if he can’t have a decent sex life in their marriage, then he will be looking elsewhere. The issue has affected really their relationship – is it sink or swim for this couple?

Listen to The Spill on Soundcloud here: