The Healing Dimension of Creative Expression Ko te auaha te ara e tukuna ai ngā kōrero o te whatumanawa. Creativity is the pathway through which the stories of the heart find release. Let Me Tell You About a Poem A few years ago, my daughter wrote a poem for me. It was about plastic windows. On the surface, that does not sound like much. But when I read it, I felt something shift in my chest — a recognition so deep it was almost physical. She had found language for something

There is a world that exists before a life is born. A threshold. A held space between what is and what is becoming. Our tūpuna knew this. They built everything around it. The Whakapapa of a Wound series traced a wound from childhood through to the next generation — from the child at the washing basket to the Tamariki asking why they cannot go home. But there is a place the series did not reach. A place before the washing basket. Before the child draws her first breath. Befo

Series Introduction Humble Beginnings: Matapihi Kirihou – The founding backstory of Te Poutama o te Ora The plastic windows were never just plastic. They covered what glass couldn’t be afforded. They let in light, but not clearly. And they were the beginning of a backstory that travels forward — into bodies, into relationships, into the homes our children grow up in, and sometimes into the arms of experiences, others and systems that step in when those homes become unsafe.

The Question Children Carry What the Whakapapa passes on – the Children of the Wound The continuing story of Mere Children of the Wound This is the fourth piece in The Whakapapa of a Wound. We have followed Mere from the washing basket, through the biology of her childhood, into the relationships that replicated what she first learned about love. Now we turn toward the children. Toward the question that is the most tender of all: Why am I not with my Mum and Dad? There Is No

Last week, I introduced the Weeds of Anxiety and how those were planted at the age of two when a sibling arrived, and all of the love and attention went to this new person. Leaving the question for this two-year-old of "why do they need them?"...." aren't I enough?". We pick up this story again, this time in relation to Mere - a Māori Wahine struggling with these weeds that have played out in her life. This narrative now forms a wider body of work called 'Whakapapa of the Wou