Keelin Moncrieff has built a thriving community of followers, both on- and offline, who feel a kinship with her empathetic and vulnerable take on topics like motherhood, sex, women's healthcare and friendship.
Through her podcast Growing Up with Keelin Moncrieff and her YouTube vlogs, the Dubliner has brought fans through some of the biggest changes in her life, from moving and break-ups, to welcoming her daughter and getting engaged. Parenting, identity and understanding yourself are key themes she comes back to again and again.
The creator will be bringing her podcast to a live audience this week at FUNDRUM, Dundrum Town Centre's beloved summer festival. Running from 10-13 July, the festival celebrates all things family, fun, and feel-good with a packed programme of free and ticketed entertainment, workshops and live shows.
Here, she speaks about what to expect from her show, being a young mum and bonding with other women.
Your podcast celebrates childhood, growing up and knowing yourself, and is beloved for its 'girly chat' vibes. When you think of 'girlhood', what comes to mind?
Girlhood for me would be the relationships and bonds you form with other women. It's the unique experiences that we all share and laugh about as we get older. Our outer worlds can cause a lot of distress, as women and girls in particular are under an immense amount of scrutiny, with the metric of our successes being weighed up by how skinny we are, how many children we bore or how well we can preserve our youth - rather than our intellect or contributions to the wider community. In girlhood, we share these same pressures but still find a way to laugh.
What can audiences expect from your live podcast show on 13 July?
The first segment is an interview with Alex Morgan and Sam Kelly, we'll be delving into a huge range of topics such as our school years, relationships and heartbreak, friendship and our experiences growing up in Dublin.
Between your podcasting work, YouTube blogs and live events, you've cultivated a large and international community. What is the importance of these spaces for you?
I think it's very important to have the space to bring people together in real life, my audiences would be relatively similar in their interests, so it's great to have an event like this on in FUNDRUM so young people can meet each other for a laugh. I always arrange a group chat for people attending solo so that no one feels excluded or out of place. It can be daunting going to an event alone, but it makes it much easier to know people are in similar situations to you.
You've spoken recently about your relationship with Dublin shifting, and I think many people would agree that the city has changed since Covid. How do you find raising a young child in the city, is it enjoyable or challenging at times?
There are a lot of amazing resources, space and activities to do with children in Dublin, we never find ourselves bored, even in the rain. For example, the FUNDRUM festival has a jam packed weekend for kids, such as a Bluey meet and greet, Ms Rachel Dublin LIVE, a neon painting workshop, and so much more.
That's not to negate the fact that parenting a child in Ireland is challenging at times; I have not been able to find childcare for three years so have been scrambling to find people to mind her whenever I need to work, this makes it much more difficult for mothers to go back to full-time work I can imagine.
As a mum, you have been intentional with the research you've done about parenting, and especially about raising a daughter, from the start. How do you think of your identity as a young mother and also a young woman now?
I am constantly evolving and adapting with the more knowledge and information that I learn, especially about parenting. I will say, with all the research and parenting experts I've listened to, there is a lot to do with intuition and finding out what your specific child is receptive to and [what their] needs are. Even if my daughter one day has a sibling, the same parenting techniques I've learned this time round may not work for the next child, so I have to be open to changing my mind and learning from mistakes.
The only major thing I've noticed about my identity changing is that I'm a lot more anxious than what I used to be.
As a content creator, your work is largely online. How do you manage screen time and grounding yourself?
You're faced with a lot of criticism online, this is something I have learned to deal with, but it can get overwhelming at times. My best trick is to block all social media apps for the day and take myself out to sea for a walk - this has always worked wonders for my mental wellbeing.
As an avid reader, what are three books you would recommend people read if they want to learn more about themselves?
Reading non-fiction can be invaluable for learning about yourself or the world, I don't really recommend any of the infamous self-helpy books as any of them I have read I would argue can be summarised into an article or even paragraph, but they're dragged out into a book for consumption and financial purposes. You will learn much more about yourself and the world from reading fiction novels about someone who lives a completely different life to you, you can put yourself into their shoes and empathise with another person by getting into their head.
A lot of self help books only promote individualism and self-optimisation, which in my opinion, is a scam to keep people thinking they need to buy something in order to emulate an unattainable standard of perfection that is sold in these books.
Non-Fiction recommendations:
- Talking to My Daughter, A Brief History of Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis
- Don't Touch My Hair by Emma Dabiri
- This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein
Keelin Moncrieff will host a live episode of Growing Up With Keelin Moncrieff on 13 July, 7pm at FUNDRUM.
