Ka nunui te mihi aroha ki ōu Atua, me ōu whenua, ā, ōu tupuna hoki. Ka korero ahau i tēnei mihi i te reo māori tuatahi nō tēnei whenua, kei mua te reo pākeha tuarua. Ko tēnei te mihi ki te wāhi o tōku kainga. I nga wā o mua i tae mai ōku tūpuna kei te noho rātou ki te whatumanawa o Kahurānaki, te wāhi whangāia o Heretāunga i te taha ō Tukituki. I tae mai rātou nō uropi kei runga i ngā waka City of Auckland rāua ko Westland, a, he Pākeha ahau. E tipu ana ahau i Heretāunga, ēngari, kei Ahuriri e noho ana inaianei.
I greet you, initially in the first language of Aotearoa/New Zealand then in the most commonly spoken language, NZ English. My home is under the eye of the mountain Kahurānaki and alongside the river Tukituki, the land where I was born and that I call home. My ancestors are from Poland, England, Germany, Scotland and from the Shetland Islands. Some of these ancestors were brought to Aotearoa by two ships called “Westland” and “The City of Auckland” finding their way to the Hawkes Bay on the East coast of the North Island. My ethnicity is Pākeha. With my husband and two daughters, I now reside in Napier.
I am a qualified and registered Psychotherapist MNZAP & PBANZ and a Certified Hakomi Practitioner. I have been working in the Hawkes Bay for the past dozen years and have worked for victims of all kinds of violence, predominately sexualised violence. In my therapeutic approach I weave together my understanding from Hakomi therapy and a little knowledge of Response Based Practice, which draws together principles of awareness, holism, non-violence and dignity. I have been strongly influenced by my training in kaupapa Māori approaches, for both their strength and appropriateness for working within an Aotearoa/New Zealand context. Alongside my private practice I have also worked within agencies that have strong kaupapa Māori frameworks. All these frameworks lend themselves to gathering together an understanding of how we are consistently responding to the world and how we make choices to live.