Cork friends hope new podcast will help people ‘feeling stuck’

Cork friends Fiona O’Donnell and Ber Downey have quite a few stories to tell.

With 50 years of combined experience working in health and wellbeing, their paths converged last year in a very special way.

Fiona is currently awaiting her second kidney transplant.

In an effort to raise awareness for the importance of organ donation, Ber embarked on a charity bike ride from Paris to Nice, in aid of the Irish Kidney Association.

The pair joined together to promote the fundraiser and the important issue it highlighted, and ultimately Ber’s cycle raised €12,000.

Realising what a good team they made, they decided to come together to create a new podcast, ‘Full of It.’

The tongue-in-cheek title came to them while planning the podcast content.

It’s a nod to the fact that women can sometimes feel afraid to confidently share their knowledge, for fear of being judged.

“I think, as women, we’re not inclined all that much to stand up and say, ‘You know what? I’m good at my job. I can do it well, I have confidence, I have some great achievements behind me’. So maybe people will think we’re full of it, and that’s okay too,” says Fiona.

The podcast is a product of their extensive and varied experience working in physical and mental health.

Fiona is a nutrition and health coach, with a background in clinical physiology. She works with clients in Pilates, fitness, and triathlon training, and is currently completing a masters in applied psychology.

Ber is a mental health nurse, with more than 30 years of experience of working in areas from suicide prevention to pre- and post-natal support with women. She is a keen cyclist, and has completed multiple charity cycles. She is also a cancer survivor.

Their friendship is what makes their conversations so special.

“We have this fantastic relationship, the cornerstone of which is just trust and honesty. And we have great conversations,” says Fiona.

They learn a lot from each other, and realised that others could learn from their conversations, too.

“We’ve had all these struggles, we’ve had all these challenges, and life has thrown some serious curveballs at us,” says Fiona.

“We do have quite a few tools between us that have helped us through these things. And maybe if other people could see things with a slightly different perspective, and maybe think about how they might use these tools, it might be helpful for others too.”

The podcast is for anyone who feels they might be stuck and in need of a fresh perspective.

“I think that an awful lot of people out there at the moment are feeling stuck. We’re not honest with ourselves about what we really want from life,” says Fiona.

“I think our purpose and our goal in creating a podcast like this is to offer people a little bit of perspective so that they might be able to identify what the next step is for them.”

While Fiona recognises their initial audience may be women of a similar age to them, she believes the lessons of the podcast apply to everyone.

“Shifts in mindset and growth aren’t isolated to small groups of people. It’s open to everybody,” she says.

Fiona hopes their own stories will show people that there is so much potential in life, regardless of the challenges you encounter.

“Ber has lived through a cancer diagnosis and an entire year of treatment. I’m waiting on my second transplant, and we’re still out doing things,” she says.

“We’re still achieving, we’re still on the bikes, we’re still running, we’re still cycling, we’re still swimming, and there’s just so much living to be done. There’s so much potential out there for people, and we just want to share the possibilities of it.”

The podcast is out every Saturday, with the first episode last Saturday focusing on New Year’s resolutions, something the co-hosts don’t totally see eye-to-eye on.

“Ber thinks that if somebody else actually asks her what her New Year’s resolution is, she’s going to lose the run of herself, because she just feels change should only come when we’re ready for it, not just because it’s a specific time of the year,” explains Fiona. “Conversely, I love a blank slate, and I love the potential of ‘it’s the first of January, what can we create this year?’”

The second episode is based around honesty, which Fiona says is a thread that runs through all of their conversations.

In the third episode, the pair discuss bucket lists, and talk a little bit about Ber’s cycle from Paris to Nice.