Jess | Blenheim, Marlborough

“I work with different people every day, and Marlborough is full of so many different people that it’s almost an everyday experience. You get to meet someone different and someone new, and I think that’s the awesome thing about Marlborough. 

I’ve known him for a while, a psychiatrist at the hub for CAMHS, and his name’s Vikram. He is from another country, and he came over here a few years ago, and he is just the most amazing soft, gentle, kind-hearted person. I see him quite often, but when you really talk to him, the warmth and compassion that comes through his language is just incredible, and he’s probably the one person I’ve met through my job now that when you talk to him, he’s always just warm and bubbly, no matter what’s going on and I think people like that are like the diamonds in the rough. They don’t come around very often, and working in the space that we do in social services is quite hard because you are always dealing with some really sad and tough situations. 

I think that it’s resiliency. That word gets thrown around quite a lot, but just knowing that he’s gone through quite a lot in his life. But the challenge is, no matter what we go through, we can still show compassion and warmth, and as I’m a social worker, I try and do that every day. But it sort of just reminded me that actually no matter what you’re going through, someone else can always use that little bit of extra happiness.

I’m born and bred in Blenheim. A lot of my family is here. I have one sister who I’m really close to, and sometimes we fight like cats and dogs, but I think that makes the beauty of our relationship all the better, because we are so similar. I’m getting married in a couple of months in Marlborough which I’m really excited about, and I just think Marlborough is a really awesome place. I studied in Nelson for four years, and through that, I really realised how much I love Blenheim and how much I didn’t ever want to move away, which was something I always thought I would do. So, it’s been really nice having that disconnect from here, and really knowing that I’m being pulled back here.”