Ideas and guidance
Articles for understanding, reflection and change
Practical insights from counsellors across Aotearoa, written to help you make sense of what you are experiencing.
Building Kaha • Steps 1–3 – Are You a Starter, Middler, or Finisher?
Find Out Before You Choose Your 18-Day PracticeMōrena e hoa mā. Let me ask you something before we get into the 18-day practice plan.Have you ever started a wellness habit full of energy — and then quietly abandoned it around Day 5 or 6, not because you didn’t care, but because something about the approach…
Not Māori Enough. Not Pākehā Enough – The Brown Pākehā
The Double Exile, and Why You’re Not Broken — You’re ColonisedI want to tell you about a particular kind of loneliness. The loneliness of being surrounded by people in two different worlds and belonging fully to neither of them.For a long time, I thought this was my personal failure. A character flaw. Some essential inadequacy…
Introducing Today’s Alignment – A Daily Maramataka + TPO Rhythm Experience
Kia ora koutou,Over recent months, I have been quietly developing a new part of the IAnTeMo Counselling journey — a living daily rhythm experience integrating Maramataka and Te Poutama o te Ora (TPO), my nine-dimensional wellness framework.
Taha Auaha — The Passage of Freedom – What If Your Creativity Is Not Just About Art?
The Healing Dimension of Creative ExpressionKo te auaha te ara e tukuna ai ngā kōrero o te whatumanawa.Creativity is the pathway through which the stories of the heart find release.
Before the First Breath – The Tapu of the Whare Tangata and What We Lost When We Forgot
There is a world that exists before a life is born.A threshold. A held space between what is and what is becoming.Our tūpuna knew this. They built everything around it.
The Whakapapa of a Wound – Series Introduction – The Wound that Carries
Humble Beginnings:Matapihi Kirihou – The founding backstory of Te Poutama o te OraThe plastic windows were never just plastic.They covered what glass couldn’t be afforded. They let in light, but not clearly. And they were the beginning of a backstory that travels forward — into bodies, into relationships, into the homes our children grow up…
Why Am I Not With My Mum and Dad – The Question Children Carry What the Whakapapa passes on – the Children of the Wound
The continuing story of MereChildren of the WoundThis is the fourth piece in The Whakapapa of a Wound. We have followed Mere from the washing basket, through the biology of her childhood, into the relationships that replicated what she first learned about love. Now we turn toward the children.Toward the question that is the most…
I Keep Choosing the Same Person with a Different Face – Trauma Bonding
The continuing story of MereShe is in her forties now.She left the first one after seven years.She told herself she had finally chosen better. New city, new beginning, new person. She believed it completely.The second one looked nothing like the first. Different face, different voice, different reasons she fell. It took four years before she…
When Love Became a Debt – Epigenetics, Parentification, and the Weight of ‘Not Good Enough’
The Whakapapa of Not Being Good Enough – The Weeds of Anxiety – The Closing Conversation
The Whakapapa of Not Being Good Enough – The Weeds of Anxiety
Where Does Your Wanting Come From? – Tracing the Whakapapa of ‘Wants and Needs’