Amy | Palmerston North, Manawatū

“I think the most recent heart-to-heart I’ve had is with my sister. We do tend to do it quite a bit. We understand each other really well, actually both of my sisters, but a lot of the time, I think at our age we struggle with social pressures, and financial issues and things like that. I’m self-employed.

She works from home. So, during lock-down, although it was normal for her to be at home by herself a lot of the time, you’ve still got your outings and bits and pieces like that with friends and things like that. So, even though we may see on the surface that nothing has changed, things definitely have changed and, and lock-down was hard on everybody, definitely. So even though she got to keep her job, and her job is going really well, the heart-to-heart with her and I was working out our situations, and trying to create ways to help ourselves through it.

I think it’s really important for everybody to have what I’ve heard being called ‘their person’. It’s a person that they can talk to openly and freely and discuss and debate and things like that. It just means that there’s somebody there who understands you. You can talk freely. You’re not being judged. 

I moved to New Zealand when I was 11 years old. I’m originally from the UK. My parents packed us up, moved us out here, and I did some schooling in Napier, and then moved to Palmerston North to do my tertiary education, where I met my partner of eight-and-a-half years. We’ve started our own business together here. So we’ve been running for about three years now, in lovely little George Street, and that’s been our journey.”