Sara – Panmure
“A recent meal was on Saturday night when my friends Kendal – and her daughter Jessie, helped me move. Our family has just moved back into our renovation, and because I’m not well at the moment they came and helped us.
My partner cooked curry for them at the end, which was very nice. I have breast cancer, so I’m in the middle of chemo treatment, which is why I have no hair. That’s why food’s actually a bit tricky. So, I ate the kids’ curry. My partner made two curries; one for the adults. I ate the kids curry because spice is not my friend at the moment. It’s quite hard. It’s quite hard on your body. It’s hard. I guess it’s hard to talk about as well, actually because it’s quite demanding.
I’m a mum of three, aged eight, five and three. Kids are great. Kids are really good. I think they understand what’s going on; they’re patient and kind and nice. They’re lovely. I’m a school counsellor at Selwyn College. So I’m fulltime there, live in Panmure, just moving into a house in Panmure after it’s been renovated. Actually, it’s not quite finished yet, and if my builder is watching this, I’d like him to get back onsite and finish it!
Yeah; lived in Auckland for a long time. My school community is amazing. They’re so supportive and so lovely. My friendship community is great, and actually people in this community have been really lovely; people that we go to the shops, have said, oh I’m really sorry to hear. They’ve been really lovely. My local sports club is lovely. I’ve been really lucky.
I do think we could get a little more connected to each other. I think that people who are lonely and sitting at home could volunteer at primary schools to read to kids. I think that really we need to be looking at getting more connected with each other, because the more connected we are, the more we know we’re loved, and the more we know we’re giving to people, and that’s what makes us feel good as humans.
So that would be my thing; as a community, the more opportunities we have to connect with each other, the better off we’ll be. They don’t need to be really expensive; they can be things like things at the local library. They can be street parties – that kind of stuff, but that’s the stuff that when we see each other and when we’re with each other, that’s what’s important.”
