When the dust settled.

Chaos.  Five months in Christchurch, a beautiful city I have been told, but for me the City holds horrible and ugly secrets.  Lies.  Mess.  Pain.  Grief.  Chaos.  The end of 14 years, and the end of the whanau that I believed my kids would be a part of well, forever.  Thats what I wanted for them.  Thats what I couldn’t give them.  I was devastated.  We left Christchurch as fast as we could. 

We hit Otaki, where our whanau home is, in the middle of the night and I curled up on the floor and symbolically died.  The very next day without missing a beat my kids all returned to the kura that knew them as whanau and the kohanga that knew its moko, and they were welcomed and reabsorbed like they hadn’t been away for five months.  Not many people in New Zealand would proclaim this but the New Zealand education system saved our lives.  As a Māori Educationalist I may yet live to reflect on that statement many times over.  But at the time, I was grateful for education.  More precisely, Te Kura-a-Iwi o Whakatupuranga Rua Mano (WRM) and Turoa Kohanga Reo (TKR).  In simple terms WRM is a Composite School in NZ for ages 5-18 and TKR is an Early Childhood Centre for under 5’s.  Both WRM and TKR are underpinned by Maori Pedagogies and philosophies of which the notion of whanau is a central tenet.  The principal language of instruction is Te Reo Māori.

I trudged back and forth between Wellington and Otaki, an hour each way, to a job I loved (I may reflect on that later in life too)  and ultimately needed and, surprisingly, to a whanau that I never knew existed.  Wake.  Wellington.  Work.  Otaki.  Sleep.  That routine was to be the saviour of my sanity, for almost a year.  While I was on zombie survival mode, my work whanau looked out for me and the Kura and Kohanga nurtured and raised my kids, because I could not.  I am usually a very engaged parent and care much about the doings at Kura and Kohanga, especially when it relates to my kids.  I like to invest time into both Kura and Kohanga because I believe so strongly in the kaupapa (cause, philosophy) and the system works best when whanau give back in kind.  I was so emotionally messed up that I couldn’t give.    I feel pretty bad about not giving to them.  But there will be a right  time for me to give back to the Kura and the Kohanga.  I only hope it will be in a manner equal to that which we have received.

We found another special whanau to support us during that first tough year.  A strong woman and her beautiful children.  They were always there.  How many tears did she witness - mine, my childrens?  So many.  Each tear carried grief and pain, and healing too as they dried.  How could a woman who had so much of her own pain give so much to my children and I?  Open home, open heart.  She was meant to be in my life, I truely believe that.  And I am so very thankful for her friendship and support.  He wahine purotu, he wahine toa. 

I barely kept it together that year. I know I fed my kids.  Clothed them.  Laughed and cried with them. But I was grieving for the whanau I should have had.  Grieving because I felt like I had failed to provide that for my kids.  I was very numb and dazed.  How was I going to do this?  Why did I have to do this?  Many tormented hours wondering about what whanau meant.   Were we a whanau?  Of course we were.  A rejigged, reformed, redefined whanau.  I symbolically took back my life.

Whanau takes on a whole new meaning and so many different forms when you go through a break up.  When the dust settled, I was the head of a new whanau, and more importantly my kids and I had found a support network of new whanau.  Only they weren’t really new, they were always there.  Whanau at Kura.  Whanau at Kohanga.  Whanau at work. Whanau right next door.  And I haven’t forgotten the strengths of the women in my life who gave so much to me, in subtle ways and more direct ways.  My Wahine Toa Whanau.  My two beautiful sisters, my friend in Otaki, my empathetic 'see right through me' friend at work, my Varsity friends, and so many more.  He mihi.  Wonderful, powerful women who are indeed whanau.  All of these people, our  Whanau4life.