Salu | Mount Roskill
“Obviously it would be my mother. She’s influenced me a lot as far as my upbringing, morals and everything that I believe in. She’s 87 and she has dementia, so I’m her fulltime care-giver and saying that, it takes a lot of patience, dedication and so much love. So yeah; my mother.
In a positive way would be, belief in your family. She’s come from an old school, so obviously she doesn’t know the technology and everything that comes along with our age. But, she’s influenced me to be who I can be, and what I should be. Doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve gone that path, but I’ve really tried, and I love that she’s influenced me as far as just being who I am and, and embracing family, people of all origins, and life itself.
I’m New Zealand-born, brought up in Auckland. I’ve had it where I’ve just grown up just doing like obviously with odd jobs and I’ve been working hard and, and now I’m just at the stage where I’m a full-time care-giver for my mother who has dementia. That obviously takes a big toll on my life.
Look at our prime minister, right? She’s a woman, so that’s a plus. Of course, I mean, you’re going to have women here that will help you in the sense of knowing, not saying where a women’s place is, but to encourage other women that may be not able to speak up or speak out about certain things. So, I feel that women on a whole is the most important. I just think we just need a lot of women out there that will encourage our children, because they’re our future, right? So, we need these strong women to influence us in whether to be the best in sports, best in politics, best in being doctors; everything like that. I mean, especially for us Polynesian people; we need a lot of these young women to understand our Polynesian ways and yeah I think that we just need that in our lives.”
