Bluff to Invercargill - Walk for Hope

Our walk from Bluff to Invercargill is to remember and raise awareness for our young people to be able to access counselling sooner than later.

As an 11 year old young girl - a few years ago - counselling was not offered. I'd had an incident, a really sensitive incident that had happened and it eventually ended up becoming a court case. At that time the perpetrator sat in front of the witness box while the victim had to give evidence of what had occurred.

Can you imagine a child having to do that and feeling intimidated by the offender?

I suppressed everything then and have had to learn to unpack that trauma as an adult.

I had attempted suicide a couple of times because the pain became incredibly unbearable.

Thankfully I made it through the turbulent times with counselling, walking, attending healing wananga/seminars and being around my mokopuna.

As a 57 year old wahine, a business owner, an employee, a fun-extraordinaire, a nana, a mum, a wife of 33 years so far, I am happy and excited to say that I made it through those turbulent times.

I'm no longer triggered as much when I'm faced with certain circumstances, or people who remind me of the perpetrator and when I feel triggered, I have got some effective mindset tools to help me navigate my way through so that I am not frozen in time.

We're walking to remember our young people and to say, "We hear you. We see you."