celebrating anyway

Just so you know.....

You won't be seeing many broken pictures here from the recent earthquakes.

After Monday I am really over broken.

We see 'broken' every day and this time it fills me with sadness and loss, more so than February.

I don't want it reflected back to me in this space.

You can see plenty of broken images here and here.

It is reassuring to see how quickly people begin to adapt to change.

Here we begin to try and imagine living with these quakes into the future and this will take us time but in the meantime we will celebrate anyway.

With Matariki and Winter Solstice upon us and the Festival of Lights postponed, a good local crowd decided to gather and celebrate what we have - an awesome community full of resilience, imagination and creativity.

Friends had already bought ingredients for a warming chai tea and had organised a yurt to put up on the old Ground site. Music folk from The Harbour Union played and everyone rejoiced to see a bunch of us stitching hearts and came and joined in.

The lovely Paige, local belly-dancing goddess brought delicious cakes to share with families. She confessed it had been a personal therapy to get through these shaky times; an ancient way for women dealing with crisis.

We all encouraged her to continue this particular therapy and share the results.

Community therapy through baking and eating.

This is Ruby's element. She is on fire in the midst of a party.

We left her there all afternoon and she headed back down in the evening with Gunt.

She made chai, offered food and chatted with lots of friends. I couldn't help thinking that school would just cramp her style.

And Sky also was in her element; singing and playing by herself, happy to be on the fringes -

a moment after this photo was taken a couple of men in high-viz vests asked her to come away from this mostly-collapsed wall. Um yes, with all the shaking, good thinking guys.