Annie | Laingholm
“I call all of Auckland home. I live in the west and I’m from the south, and all of Tāmaki Makaurau is my home. I live in Laingholm. It’s Titirangi’s better looking, most underestimated cousin.
So, when a friend did something for me; the community that I’m involved with is basically built on a love vibe I guess, and we’re always trying to do as much for each other as possible. The latest thing that happened to me was that I was gifted a place on a mother’s retreat from a friend of mine, and that was on the back of also being gifted another retreat the week before from another friend. So that was really beautiful. It was a really beautiful thing to do, and as a solo parent, there are not many things that I can afford to do. I don’t have that extra money to spoil myself, and I think we realise that we need to support each other like that. That’s friendship and kinship. One really cool thing that we did not that long ago, was a friend of mine was fundraising. No, she wasn’t even fundraising. She was trying to get the fees together for her dance training, and we put on a dance class for her, and all the funds went to her dance training. So, that was pretty cool. We live in a culture of giving and sharing and reciprocity and lifting each other up. It’s just people. This is what we do. I think having basic needs met, in West Auckland, coming from South Auckland where a lot of people weren’t having their basic needs met; it’s a survival mentality. Whereas in West Auckland everyone is healthy, and we have a strong connection to nature. We have a resilience and robustness where we are looked after, and we have enough, and we live an abundant lifestyle so we can share. There are a lot of people that engage, taking that abundance and that energy back into places where perhaps people don’t have that. I guess how it came about was, well it’s just people. I think when we’ve got enough, we’ve got enough, and then there’s always more to share. It’s like feijoas, you know? When you’ve eaten enough feijoas, you want to give feijoas. Or tamarillos or apples. It’s just the season.
So, I grew up in South Auckland. I grew up on a farm in Papakura. I grew up with the earth under my feet, and the wind in my hair and Papatūānuku is very important to me. Mother Earth is very important to me, and my people, the people of Aotearoa.
I value trust. I value love. I value support. I value the rivers. I value the trees. I value everything. I actually even value the hard things. Life isn’t easy always, and now as I’m a bit older, with retrospect, those things are the medicine that I needed to evolve into who I am now. A strong, resilient, solo parent that is loved and has the capacity to love back. Those hard, dark times that we all go through are important to me as well because they’re medicine just as much as the love and the light is medicine.”
