Mana wahine

I’m sharing this piece with someone I know well.

Matariki has been the focus for Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu over the past few weeks.

As I try to raise and guide three teenagers, I have come to realise that I fall back on what I know and how I was raised.

In my first column for Mana Wāhine last year, I shared that a recent discovery was that my grandmother had spent her first years living on ancestral land, immersed in her Māori world.

My son is named Tūkitaharaki after his great grandfather.

When I go home it’s like stepping back in time.

Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, the country’s youngest member of parliament in 171 years, proudly declared at a pre-election debate in 2023, that the kōhanga reo generation is here.

Names are a big deal in my whānau, hapū and iwi — although the name Megan was an unexciting last resort when I surprised my parents, who thought I was boy and had a name sorted for him.

Kauraka e mataku, there’s no need to be scared.

My whakapapa saved my life.

My husband’s passing has left the biggest hole in the lives of our whānau.

I’m not a traditionalist by nature but I see the value of the processes that many of us don’t practise anymore.