Who or what brings light into your life?

Sacha | Tauranga

Through deep healing, Sacha has found strength and purpose in motherhood – committed to breaking cycles and building a better future for her whānau.

Content warning: this post includes discussions of sexual violence.

“My partner, Steve, makes me laugh very often. He is a terrible dad joke person. And so he will always resort to a dad joke no matter what the situation is – if it’s serious, if it’s lighthearted, if I’m stressed, or if the kids are playing up, or if everyone’s starting to get overstimulated – his go-to is a dad joke.

We’re really lucky to have this beautiful blended family. And it’s really exciting for me to see my life now being what I hoped it would be and what I thought it would end up being like. It’s often hard to reflect back on a lot of the years where I would have struggled to find and think of something that made me laugh.

I was sexually assaulted by the friend of my boyfriend at the time. And the hardest part about that, aside from the trauma itself, was the response I got from the people around me. It was very damaging when I did come forward and say things and I was met with a ‘that’s just who he is’, ‘what do you want me to do about it?’

So it took me a long time, and I repressed that significantly. And it wasn’t until I started to actually work through some other things that I realised that that was underlying there and I started to have a lot of flashbacks.

I was very lucky to have a therapist who supported me through the ACC process and the sensitive claims process. I was able to do a full assessment and have a psychologist support me in that too.

There was a lot of trauma that I just carried on through. I didn’t stop and think about it. I didn’t acknowledge that it had an impact on me. I just went ‘I’m tough, I’m strong. I’ll carry on in it.’ But over time it eroded who I was, and it eroded some of the decisions that I would have made for myself.

I had a lot of ideas, like a lot of my life, about what motherhood might look like. And that wasn’t the case for me. So it’s been a really interesting journey of having to overcome my own trauma, and really look deeply at myself and what it is that I want for my son. And for now, my bonus son.

I feel really blessed to have them both in my life because it constantly makes me look at myself and the way that I act or behave and what I want them to grow up with. I feel like he’s been my biggest teacher in life. I don’t think he’ll ever realise it until he’s older. But the way that he forces me to show up both for him and for myself continuously because I have to think this is what I want for him.

This is his future and this is the example I’m setting for him too. And I want him to look back and go, ‘man, that’s how I want a relationship’ or ‘that’s how I want to respond to things.’ And also be able to express emotion and not feel bad about that, but do it in a healthy way that doesn’t harm people. I think those are all really, really important skills.”