I had a bit of a cry yesterday.
Not because of the new government.
Not even because of how many new social services have reached out for support with Shoebox Christmas and the huge job of finding whānau to help them.
I cried because of the tears I was hearing from so many people coming directly to me or our rangatahi asking for help through Shoebox Christmas for them and their families. Way more than any year before.
Some are hoping for Christmas gifts so their children get the experience we pretend is 'normal' on Christmas day - a day they can only dream of.
Others just need food to get them through the next week. I cried because those shouldn't be hopes and dreams in Aotearoa.
And we only hear from the tiny proportion of our neighbours who were able to overcome their self-professed whakamā or embarrassment at needing to ask in the first place.
I would have cried anyway - this part of the year is always hard.
But it was even harder working through these kōrero with people in our community who are crying out for help, while reading the priorities of the new coalition government like making it easier to sell cigarettes (which kills more lower socio-economic than others) to help fund tax changes which mostly benefit the rich.
This isn't about politics, it's about perspective and priorities.
What's more important to us as a country? The ones who are doing good doing better? Or less people dying from smoking cigarettes?
Government agencies using less te reo Māori? Or public services like Health better understanding how to serve a population (Māori) that currently dies 7 years earlier than its counterparts?
A party with no experience in Te Tiriti o Waitangi, re-writing what Te Tiriti o Waitangi means? Or understanding how to stop the children of the parents who need help today, being the parents of children who need help tomorrow? PS - putting more parents in jail hasn't worked anywhere else in the world, and it doesn't work here either.
I cried yesterday, and that meant it wasn't a productive Saturday. It's hard to help when you're crying.
But today those tears are back where they usually sit - the cold anger in my puku that gives arms to the aroha behind things like Shoebox Christmas and Koha Tree.
I only share that to say this e te whānau, it's OK to have a cry, and it's OK to be angry. But the thing that moves us forward is love and coming together as a community.
Use that anger to push your love and find a way to help. Whatever your political beliefs, whatever else is going on in the Beehive, let's get to work for our people and community.
It’s not the point of this post, but Shoebox Christmas is one way we can do that today.
Have a good week e hoa mā (friends),
Pera