Ceahna | New Lynn

“I’m a hairdresser, and a make-up artist for a job. Recently, my manager had been really struggling. She’s from South Africa. So, she came here and she decided to, she was going to leave. So it was potentially going to leave me without a job, because there’s only me and her at our salon.

Turns out the big boss was like, no you can just work by yourself, trust me. So, I didn’t end up without a job. So, it was kind of a good thing, because I’ve got two kids, as well. We live on our own with our partner, so you know, two incomes, it’s hard sometimes. It actually turned out better than what I thought. Thought we were going to end up with me with no job again. 

I just talked to my boss. I was just like, hey this is how I’m feeling, and I feel like I’m not going to have a job out of this. Because it’s only me and her there currently, and I’m a junior, technically I have to have somebody shadowing me all the time. But he was like, no it’s okay, we’ve got it sorted, I’m happy for you to work by yourself sometimes, because you’re at a level where you can. Just having that open communication with your boss is huge, because if you feel like you can talk to them, it just eases everything. Even though he’s the big boss, and he runs a big company, you should never be afraid to talk to your boss. Once I talked to him, I felt much better. It kind of clarified a lot more. So, definitely just having that open communication with your other staff members and your boss is huge.

I love being able to help somebody feel good about themselves again. So, having somebody come in and sit in my chair, and feeling really down, and then they leave and they have the biggest smile on their face and they’ve got their head held high, money can’t buy that. It’s something that I love to do and to be able to help people feel great again is the most amazing feeling ever. It’s hard to describe if you haven’t kind of had that feeling before, but it helps me every day to be able to do that for people.

I actually grew up in South Auckland. I was raised in Pukekohe and Tuakau. I moved out here five years ago. I’m a really creative person. Love bright, fun colours, as you can probably tell by my hair. I went to a very public Māori-Pacific Islander based high school. So a lot of my friends growing up were from very different backgrounds, compared to what I was. It’s made me, I don’t know, a kind of a better person because I have a better outlook on all situations, rather than just the standard umbrella of people. We were a very low socioeconomic school, so not a lot of funding. So, my daughter now goes to a low economic school, because it made me a better person, and so I felt it was going to be the same for her.”