It Takes Just One Person…
I remember one day my father smashed my grandmother's glass-topped table. After that my grandmother became an eagle-eyed woman. She would very carefully check on how I was, and she would sprinkle statements to counteract what she clearly understood was going on for me - things like ‘people can overcome all sorts of things' and ‘this is not your fault'. Children are like sponges for those kinds of messages.
It takes only one person in a child's life who gives them unconditional love and acceptance and time, and I believe my grandmother is one of the reasons I survived my family situation. She showed me Dorothy Nolte's poem ‘Children Learn What They Live', which begins: "If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn." It is about how children learn from the behaviour they see rather than from what they are told. I thought about that poem a lot over the years.
Kia Ora my name is Patumoana Jeremy Eparaima known to some as Patu and some as Jeremy so I answer to both....
I remember meeting Mum’s partner in 2004, let’s call him *Beau. Everything started off sweet for the first year, until he got into the drinking and going to the pub. Mum and Beau fought all the time over everything and anything....
Recently I had one of the best days I have ever had since joining the Police....
I am a midwife, and one story remains with me even though it's been years since it happened....
I was about five years old when my 13 year old half brother began to sexually abuse me and my older sister. I was nine and he had finished school and moved out of home before she was able to tell my parents what had been happening....
As a young Samoan boy I was always beaten and verbally abused and that’s where I think it started. Being abused and seeing it around me, I grew up thinking that was how you were supposed to do things....
“I am not one to ask or say too much, instead I will wait for others to see I want to talk or start to talk softly until some one notices that I want to talk....
When Ray Bishop landed a role in the film ‘Once Were Warriors’ he was acting out his own family’s story....