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 Narrative...

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 Simple Answer...

Trauma Bonding, Debt-Based Love, and the Wound That Goes Looking The continuing story of Mere She is in her forties now. She left the first one after seven years. She told herself she had finally chosen better. New city, new beginning, new person. She believed it completely. The second one looked nothing like the first. Different face, different voice, different reasons she fell. It took four years before she realised she was standing in the same room with different wallpaper. By the third...