Tracy’s life reads like a series of chapters in a book connected by a single, but powerful thread – her family. She describes her childhood as incredibly strict and fuelled by alcohol, family violence, and instability. School and friends didn’t feature highly in the list of...
Deanne's childhood is all too familiar, betrayed by the very people who were meant to love and protect her. The sexual abuse started from the age of six, and with the splintering of the family unit, her exploitation at the hands of whanau became her normal....
When I first met Annah, I was a broken soul who desperately wanted something better for myself but had absolutely no idea how to make this happen. As it transpired, the biggest barrier to turning my life around was me. I was living a fear-filled...
From a very young age, Lucy’s daughter Jasmine knew what it was like to live in a household suffering from domestic abuse. At just two years of age she was placed into the care of her grandmother, and at three, her physical connection with her...
Alcohol, drugs, domestic violence, motherhood, homelessness, sickness, children taken into state care, the carnage never seemed to stop. And then when Moana was about to lose her third child to Oranga Tamariki, she reached out to her whanau for help. As leaders of the local...