A Little Island Missing. (Patreon)

Hia all. Kia ora.

Just sitting down to the dawn Woodstock kitchen table before the rest of my bustling house comes to life with ten house guests. :) it’s not even quite light yet. Just did more of last nights dishes. We made a feast.

The gathering of people here right now is deeply feeding my heart. The conversations are deep and gorgeous.

It’s so so good right now. Slow. Steady. The kids at the center, the healing in the center.

I need to write the press release for the Sinéad O’Connor release and I just got off the phone with Jordan about our PR plan and we had a good catch-up about life, and pace, and cadence.

As if on cue - my old friend Bianca just sent me these photos that she took of me and Ash while we were on a walk. Big Oneroa Beach, on Waiheke, probably around December, 2021. I had been living in New Zealand by accident for almost two years by then.

In so many ways that are hard to articulate, I miss it. I miss the land and the water and most of all, I miss the gentle, no-bullshit kiwis who held me and Ash through the unthinkable.

I’ve been back in the states for a year now, after being in NZ for two and a half. A collective year of that was spent alone with Ash, and a chunk of that was alone with Ash in lockdown, in a rental, in a country I didn’t understand, where I had almost no people. No family, and no ability to flex my social media capital muscle and call in help. Just…very alone. It was sobering.

Looking back.

Well.

A handful of people lately have said things to me like “but it looked like you were having such a wonderful time / but New Zealand looked so fantastic”, etc.

I mean. It was stunningly gorgeous. But what I need you to understand when you look at this picture is that you are seeing an image of a woman trying very hard to stay sane, to keep calm, collected, tethered, a woman being challenged to the core; literally shaky and surviving. I held my child, but my child held me. Yep. The landscape was stunning. My heart was shattered. My head was spinning. I was traumatized and facing insomnia for the first time in my life. And trying to figure out, on a day to day basis, where I could ask for help. What was too much. What was over-asking. What would rock the ecosystem of this little village. What would allow me to crawl into the space of this tiny community and be accepted, so that my kid could have an opportunity to thrive.

I learned an entirely new kind of asking, and listening, and slowing down. The kiwis schooled me.

I’m only just starting to understand what happened to me on that little island. But my god, it changed me forever.

Arohanui.

If you’re one of my friends in Aotearoa, please send my love to the whenua. I’m hoping to get back, with Ash, by the end of the year. Maybe to play, definitely to hug and to eat.

More soon.

Xx

A

♥️🥝♥️