Jo | Glenfield
“I’ve got four kids, and about a year ago I had a really rough break-up from my partner and I have a new partner now.
I guess that brought home to me how important emotional stability, good roots are, family and people that can support you in your life, and doing the same for others. I’d say connection. Family and friends is extremely important in life, and if that’s right then everything else seems to flow from that, and sort of flow-on affect and everything’s good. If you expect that you’ve got to be that yourself, that’s kind of my main focus at the moment.
It’s different things for different people, but to me one sign of a healthy relationship is just how you feel. If you’re self-esteem is high, and you are giving and receiving and there’s lots of laughter, and love and sharing times together those are the main things for me, but everyone probably has a different idea of what works for them. Self-esteem and respect; those sorts of big things.
For me, I felt the lack of it when I was with people that I wasn’t feeling connected to, and I was in the same room as them and I still felt very lonely, very sad. It’s the opposite of that feeling. Connectedness is very hard to describe. It’s the feeling of not being alone, and feeling and being supported. It’s a two-way thing I guess, it’s a big part of a relationship. It’s more than spirituality and emotional, just everything. It’s a very, very big answer. I’m sorry I can’t answer it better than that. Hope that sort of partly covered it.
Community can be a good thing or a bad thing. It’s a collection of people obviously living together and sort of symbiotically but sometimes it can be a good thing, and sometimes it can be a bad thing and that’s really important to have a healthy community, because really great things can grow out of that, or really bad things.
Has a flow-on effect, doesn’t it, outwards like how things are going in America. I don’t know, if it’s getting to esoteric or deep or something but the microcosm reflecting the macrocosm, and vice versa. It’s a really big thing like healthy inter-relationships in families, people sharing that with other people; I guess that sort of thing grows.
I know Kaipatiki which is just down the road here between Glenfield and Beach Haven; they’re really good at trying to encourage a good community. They’ve got a really good project called the Kaipatiki Project; that sort of thing can be a big game-changer, can mean a lot.
Enjoy the time you get to spend with your loved ones, because those moments are precious. Have a great, safe, happy Christmas with your loved ones.”
