10am Sat 28th May 2011
I’ve arrived at Boreen Point to feel the space I will be doing workshops in and I am taken back to my childhood where we had lakes all around us, the water lapping in and out, unlike the sea that is rugged and wild. This water, welcoming me, embracing me for the next few days.

This is a different land – but I feel connection and I knew I would, not like the connection that I feel to my own land but a connection that is new, opening me up to new ways of thinking, new horizons, new stories…
The sound of the water has a rhythm, a rhythm that changes, just like we as humans change in order to grow…
Tāwhirimātea comes to greet me, a strong welcome and blow that you would expect from a rugged West Coast coastline back home in Taranaki…and I know that my ancestors are with me also.
So I honor this place, this whenua, this land, these waters that flow from somewhere and will flow to somewhere, just like the water within me that flows from me and will flow somewhere into the future.
I honor the people who have walked this land in the past, whose stories are embedded in the stones, in the trees and in the land…and I honor those who walk this land now, those kaitiaki who look after and honour this sacred journey, to allow healing for all.
And as I write this, I listen to the water, I hear the water sing, a different song… I look to the horizon and I see water there too – a reminder of my connection to Ranginui and Papatuanuku our sky and our earth mother and the stories that they share through the elements. The water that rises from the earth to meet the sky and the rain that falls to meet the earth again – a symbol of aroha, the sharing of breath, of life and love…
Pō mārie,
Jo x