Anita | Tāmaki Makaurau
“Last time I felt thankful or grateful I would say this morning I felt thankful, very thankful. I am looking after three kids for a week while their parents are over in Australia, and I only had to get up twice in the night to one child, so I am very, very thankful for an almost full night’s sleep.
I grew up in Auckland. I’m a early childhood teacher, I work part-time just in the afternoons. I have a heart condition, so I get really tired really easily, so I can’t work fulltime at the moment.
I’ve got a high grade AV block. So, I’ve got a pacemaker that keeps my heart going because it likes to take some annual leave without telling anyone, which made me faint a bunch of times. The doctors and cardiologists figured out what was happening, so had surgery a few years ago for that, and yeah got 10 years on this one before I have to have more surgery.
I suppose I have to be wary of how much I take on, make sure that I’ve got time to rest and recover, because I get tired quite easily. When I get sick my body just doesn’t have the strength to fight off coughs and colds as easily as most people. I try to be more careful, not get sick too much and have quality sleep and good food, and can’t do impact sports. Yeah, that’s kind of it at the moment!
What’s important to me; friends, family, my faith, Christianity, just the environment, enjoying the outdoors. I would love kids to grow up in a safe and happy environment. For that to happen we need some sort of environment, so I think we need to teach them how to live sustainably and how to look after what we’ve got so it can be there for their children, and their mokopuna, and their future generations.
I think that it’s our role to nurture and guide them, and to choose where to lead them, whether we lead them in good directions or bad directions. Teach them how to think for themselves, so when they grow up to be adults they could do that for the generation below them, and not have any regrets.
I enjoy their unconditional love, their awe and wonder at new things when they do something for the first time. I enjoy trying to figure out how they’re learning, how they are making sense of the world. Just their fun and their laughter and how everything’s exciting and new and an adventure, even if it’s going to the same place you’ve been 45 times already.”
