blaithinmcdonnell.ie

12/11/2025

02/11/2025

May you always find shelter from the rain and your son’s coat that feels like a hug 🥰

17/10/2025

Everything is information and sometimes you just need to look in the right place and in the right way to find the hidden treasures x

14/10/2025

My unpopular opinion: The wellness industry is exploding and it’s driven by consumerism. We are being sold fake wellness day in day out. It is one of the fastest growing industries of our times and there is an absolute fortune to be made from it. Let’s face it: we are consumers living in an insanely fast-paced world, we are super materialistic and we are looking for instant results. If it doesn’t look good, sound good or can’t be bought easily or cheaply, it doesn’t fit the wellness trend.

Think nails. They look good when they’re done, people are always ready to like and comment on them and when I bore of them I just get them redone! Easy peasy. Except that’s not wellness! Even though I’m looking after myself, I’m taking time out to get them done, hell I even crammed in a coffee with the girls afterwards, why do I still feel sh*te, why am I still overwhelmed, why am I still so easily triggered?

True wellness comes from within. Unless you actually let go of the burdens you’re carrying, unless you understand why you’re carrying them in the first place and unless you learn what it is you need to learn in order to grow into the person you want to be, then no amount of getting your nails done will ever amount to true wellness.

Absolutely get your nails done. Go to your yoga classes. Have coffee with the girls. If you’re doing all of this and you’re still raging, overwhelmed and emotional, unfortunately you’re caught in the hamster wheel of busyness. Stop doing and start being. Just be. Learn to sit in your own company, in silence and reflect on what life is trying to teach you. Try to uncover what learnings are hidden in the midst of your struggles? That’s where the gold lies. The peace that comes from these learnings ans from letting go of what no longer serves you is what real wellness represents. That peace can’t be bought.

Find someone you can trust to hold this space for you and show you how you can do this for yourself. Be discerning: only you know what it feels like for you to feel well. Only you know what feels right and who to trust. Only you know when someone empowers you into true wellness. B x

06/10/2025

Knowing the difference between treating the symptoms versus treating the root cause is immense. After years of visiting numerous consultants including cardiologists, endocrinologists, OBGYN, rheumatologists etc, it was only when I took back control of my own health that I finally understood this difference. It was my experience that it was easier for medical professionals to treat my symptoms and mask my pain than it was to actually delve into the cause of what was causing my pain, inflammation, autoimmune diseases - the list goes on.

I had to do this myself and one thing I learned was that if big Pharma were not backing the ‘solution’ either in the form of research, medication or training, then rarely were medical professionals interested. It takes too long and there’s no money to be made in advising patients to take herbs, change their diet, cleanse their systems, reduce their stress etc.

Perhaps it’s time too for you to reclaim your own power. Perhaps it’s time to start understanding what’s a symptom versus understanding the cause of the problem. Perhaps it’s time to reset, reboot and re-empower yourself.

DM to be added to a waitlist for my juice cleanse detox day to kickstart your way to true and lasting wellness.

22/09/2025

The opportunity to have a positive impact on someone, especially a young person, is the reason I do what I do.

As a child, I always knew I wanted to help people but I was never 100% sure what that would look like. I toyed with medicine, dentistry, physio, pharmacy and radiography then settled on BioChem in UCC. I fell in love with chemistry, in particular organic chemistry. I could eat drink and sleep it! The trickier the problem I more it thrilled me. I knew instantly then that I wanted to make medicines to help make people better. At least that was the story I told myself!

For almost 20 years I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, starting out as a chemist doing R&D and after a very unorthodox career path, finally ending up in Program Management for Corporate Finance. It was while in finance I began to realise that what I thought was a noble effort, was actually a global business where the primary customer was not the patient but the shareholder. It was all about profit, turnover and share price. The patient was nowhere to be seen except on a nameless poster in an empty foyer.

When I got sick, I began questioning what it was I really wanted to do, and how had I ended up so far removed from what I had once believed was a noble cause? In Pharma I wasn’t making a difference; I was just another cog in the wheel of a global corporation whose sole objective was profit over patients and its own people.

Doing what I do now has an immediate and direct impact on real people. When someone you’ve worked with says a genuine ‘thank you’ it means more than any 2% pay rise as a reward for working 24/7, forgoing family time at evenings and weekends and stressing over meeting a corporates KPIs and objectives. I know I am privileged to now do what I do. I am so grateful that I was able to step away from the comfort of corporate and that I found the courage to do so. But most of all I am grateful for the ‘thank yous’ I receive and the ability to make a real meaningful and lasting difference, no matter how small. B x

28/08/2025

The school gate…politics.

Let us please be kind at the school gate.
Let us not judge other mothers for the choices that they make.
In all the work I’ve done, I’ve never met another mother who doesn’t try her best for her children.
But please, let her alone be the judge of her good-enoughness.
Let her choices be hers, made in the best interest of her children, her family, herself.
Do not judge the mother who works for her ambition where you make feel lack.
Do not judge the mother who stays at home for her freedom where you lack.
Do not judge the mother who walks her kids to school where you drive.
Do not judge the mother who cooks every meal from scratch where you do not.
Do not judge the mother who arrives late and frazzled - you don’t know what she has been through that morning.
Nor judge the mother who cries as her child walks away for a little piece of her heart is lost to the grief of letting go.
Please let them be and look upon them all with love. Deep down we are all the same.
Please do not judge, or gossip or bitch or moan. This type of behaviour may surround you with friends in the moment but know they too will one day turn on you because what bonds you is not pure, it’s not loving or uplifting or kind.
Nor is it in a woman’s true essence, it is not in solidarity with our sisterhood and neither is it aligned with our gifts of nurturing, protecting and caring.
It is not strength that makes us compare and criticise. We are more powerful when we lift eachother up and stand together as mothers and as women.
Let the school gate be welcoming and cheerful and kind, for our children and all mothers.

Bláithín x