What is a Good Life? #74 - Holding The Light & The Shadow with Dee Mulrooney

On the 74th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Dee Mulrooney. Dee is a multi-disciplinary Irish artist. Inhabiting a female body, mythical imagination and story as medicine are the main preoccupations of her work. Exile, class, displacement, social history, longing, and belonging are some of the themes explored by Dee through painting, drawing, film, storytelling, and performance. Her art is fiercely authentic, and she leaves no stone of her own personal healing journey unturned. Dee works with the alchemical aspect of transmutation in her art, using this process to deal with difficult topics including abuse, death, and loss.

In this glorious conversation, Dee shares with us her journey towards greater purpose, self-acceptance, and more wholeness in her being. A path that included joining and leaving a cult, moving her family from Dublin to Berlin, giving birth to herself once more through her experience of menopause, accepting her own nature, and the process of transmuting her pain and torment into art and expression. Throughout this conversation, she never looks away from the pain humans create nor lets go of hope or appreciation for life.

Dee is someone who I see as fiercely engaged with both the great joys and depths of sorrow in life. If you are too attached to the light, perhaps this conversation invites you more into the shadow, and vice versa, ultimately giving you a sense of a greater wholeness that is possible within us.

Subscribe for weekly episodes, every Tuesday, and check out my YouTube channel (link below) for clips and shorts.

For further content and information check out the following:

Dee's Website: https://deirdre-mulrooney.com/

Socials, FB, Insta, TikTok: @deemulrooney

- For the podcast's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@whatisagoodlife/videos
- My newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/
- My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/

Contact me at mark@whatisagood.life if you'd like to further explore your own lines of self-inquiry or create experiences that lead to more connecting and genuine conversations amongst groups of people.

Running Order:

03:30 It’s about purpose

07:50 The realisation of being in a cult

10:00 The sense of seeking and God

13:30 Giving birth to myself

17:45 The changes with empathy and compassion

22:00 Exploring shadow

28:10 Our ability to transmute 

32:30 The denial of the feminine archetype 

41:30 The power of art to transmute torment

48:00 Making art for herself and sharing it

50:20 Coming into acceptance of her anxious nature

56:50 What is a good life for Dee?