A reflection on society’s obsession with importance, questioning labels, status, and “content creation,” while reclaiming authenticity, human stories, and living from the heart over chasing recognition.

How do you say I’m sorry and end a relationship that helped you grow?

After 21 years, I realised what we created had reached its limit—not because love was gone, but because the structure became bigger than the relationship itself.

This decision was made with love, not fear. We still care deeply for each other, and I believe that one day we will look back and see this as a second chance to return to ourselves.

This is not a goodbye.
This is coming home.

Many of you may already know that my partner of nearly 22 years and I are separating, and I am now living on my own. As we move toward selling our shared home, my social media and work will be quieter for a while.

This decision was not made lightly. We still care deeply for one another, but the structure of our lives together no longer reflected who we have become. What once felt like safety had grown into something that required more energy to sustain than it gave.

I see this not as an ending rooted in loss, but as a second chance for us both. Nothing changes the love I have for him, only the form it now takes.

When I’m alone with my quiet thoughts—the ones no one else can see or hear—I ask myself what I reach for, and why. I ask what really separates us from one another. This blog is a reflection on 2025, and on an honest inner truth I’ve only just begun to recognize.

Kitty Ko doesn’t lead by title or volume. She leads by attention — to people, to gaps, to what quietly needs care. From building culturally grounded mental health spaces to mentoring across generations while living with chronic illness, her work is rooted in relationship, not recognition. Kitty’s story reminds us that real leadership is human, slow, and deeply relational — built one connection, one act of dignity, at a time.

James’ story isn’t about a dramatic breakthrough or a perfect recovery. It’s about staying alive long enough for connection to take root. Through peer support, everyday grounding rituals, and people who refused to give up on him, survival slowly became meaning. His journey reminds us that healing is rarely loud or linear — sometimes it’s simply choosing to keep going, and letting kindness, toward yourself and others, lead the way.

Some stories are not forgotten — they are delayed. Sitting with Scottie, I felt the quiet weight of a pioneer whose courage helped build women’s football in New Zealand long before the world cared to notice. In the 1970s, she wore handmade gear, trained without resources, and helped win an international tournament no one expected them to claim. And yet, for 48 years, that achievement sat in silence.

What struck me most was the grace with which she carried both pride and loss — pride in what they achieved, and grief for the recognition that came too late for some of her teammates. When the caps finally arrived, they didn’t just honour a team; they repaired a story. Scottie’s legacy reminds us that history is often written by those who keep going anyway — and that justice, when it finally comes, still matters.

When I sat down with Dan, I was struck not by his achievements—award-winning writer, advocate, lived-experience leader—but by his softness. He wasn’t performing confidence. He had spent years learning his own mind, then turning that understanding outward to help others.

As a young man, acting offered the thrill of being seen without being known. What no one saw were the hours of panic before auditions. “There’s a week of fear behind a 15-minute audition,” he said.

After a violent mugging in London, Dan was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Three years later, a clinician said quietly, “I think we made a mistake.”

Misdiagnosis unraveled his identity—and became the beginning of him walking back into his own life.

Some decisions don’t begin with certainty, but with grief, fatigue, and a quiet knowing that something has to change. Stephen Worthington’s year in New Zealand was one of those moments. What began as “time away” became a reckoning with loss, identity, and the pressure to turn life into progress. Through van life, uncertainty, and learning to be present, Stephen discovered that growth doesn’t always arrive as reinvention. Sometimes it comes softly—through letting go, listening more deeply, and finally choosing to belong to your own life.

Growing Up Between Cultures: The Making of a Self is a quiet, intimate reflection on identity formed in the in-between. Through Aidan Hung’s story—an adopted Chinese child raised in New Zealand—the piece explores how cultural dislocation, unspoken expectations, anxiety, and self-inquiry can shape a person not through certainty, but through deep introspection. It is ultimately a meditation on choosing authenticity with compassion, and learning that becoming yourself is less about answers and more about listening inward with honesty and grace.