* - I was just a toddler when I was sexually abused by a family member. My childhood wasn't full of happy memories. It was filled with violence and fear. At 13, I ran away and started associating with the Mongrel Mob. After years of violence and crime, I finally broke the intergenerational cycle. I am Tricia Walsh. This is my story. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2021 By the age of 40 years old, I'd been in jail six times. My life was spiralling out of control. I had a debilitating meth habit, and I was in danger of losing the most important thing to me ` my moko. (TAPE REWINDS) I was born in Gisborne on the 4th of May, 1966. My dad was a really tough man. We were aware of how tough he was because of the people that used to come to our house to see him. He was a hard worker. He was a labourer. He worked in the freezing works. He worked in timber yards. He kind of was there and not there in our lives. He went to jail. My papa ` he suffered his own trauma. My mum was a really hard woman. My grandfather was violent towards my mama, and... she would be violent towards the kids. There was the sexual abuse in my mum's childhood. It has been across generations of my family ` five generations that I know of. To deal with it, she would just drink, and then, you know, our kind of world would unravel a bit. My mum had a routine. Me and my brother would have to clean the house. We'd learnt to put these big socks on our feet and slide up and down the passageway to polish the floor. You know, it had to be polished. No matter how clean that house was, it was never good enough. She'd come home from work and my brother would get punched up, and then Mum would... do the same to me. She would just start stomping and kicking, and you try to cover up your face, and then that makes her even angrier, so she starts punching into your face. I never made eye contact with my mum. To look in her eyes would be to, um,... see the hate that I felt she had towards me. She would beat me until she had no breath left in her, you know? And that's a lot of violence. That's a lot of anger. And that was most days. Mum never allowed me to go and sleep over at anyone's home. She believed that she was protecting me from, um` she never said it, but it obviously was sexual abuse. But, you know, um,... yeah, the devil and the devils, actually ` because I had more than one abuser ` was in our home and in our... You know, they would come over for parties. They were my mum's friends and family. (PEOPLE YELL, BOTTLES CLINK) Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were the party days at our home. Mum would come home from work, she'd have a shower and head off to the local pub and, you know, when it closed, we'd hear the cars coming up,... (CAR APPROACHES) ...and the rattling of the bottles. (BOTTLES CLUNK) I never slept, because if I slept, I wouldn't hear somebody... coming to abuse me. I never fought back, but it was just that awareness. I could brace my body and prepare myself for what was going to happen. I knew the squeak of the floorboards, the handle turning. I'd know by just the pause that someone was standing outside the door and contemplating whether they were going to come into the room or not. (DOOR HANDLE CREAKS) So, you know, I'd hear that handle turn and I would hold my breath and stiffen my body, and I'd have the blanket up, like, here, and I'd just be really stiff and just refuse to open my eyes because I didn't want to see the face of the person. It's almost like looking in the eyes of my mum and seeing, you know, that fear of seeing the hatred. (DOOR CREAKS) I felt the hot breath against my face, but I shut my eyes really tight, and... I was able to... leave my body. I'll say it was a wairua experience, but other people will say it's disassociation. But I could leave my body and just float up on the ceiling and look down on what was happening to that 6-year-old girl without actually experiencing the pain of it. He raped me. And then he kissed my cheek and whispered in my ear, 'I love you and don't tell anybody,' and then he walked out. (DOOR SQUEAKS, THUMPS) Not long after that, my father came in the room and he said, 'Did such and such do something to you?' And I never opened my eyes. I just shook my head. And he went out and I just heard the smashing and the screaming. (DOOR THUDS, GLASS SHATTERS, MEN GRUNT) I was ashamed because... I knew then that everybody in that room would... I thought they'd think I was dirty and damaged. The party ended and my mum came into the room and looked at me and she said, 'You must have wanted it.' She threw me on the floor and she stomped me in until she had no breath left, and, you know, at that age ` 6 ` I believed that I was all alone in the world, my mother hated me, and that I would never tell anybody again... the abuse that I was suffering. (TENSE MUSIC BUILDS) Absolutely loved school. I was always top of the class. I could escape my world by reading, so I almost ate books. I played sports, and what it did for me was it gave me time away from the house, you know? All the training and the practises. But it made me feel... like... I had potential and I was worthy, because the other parents always, um,... encouraged me and told me how good I was, and... those things I wasn't getting at home, you know? And for those moments, I was able to be more than what my life... said I was. Form One, we did speeches, and I wrote this speech and I memorised it, and I got into the finals. - And if you're confused... - All of the teachers had already said to me, 'You're amazing. You're going to win this.' And I thought, 'Wow.' I imagined my mum and my dad ` how proud they'd be when Tricia Walsh's name was called up to receive this cup. (APPLAUSE) The day of the speech came, and, um,... and I wanted my dad to be there too, and him and mum ` you know, they were in of their on again, off again states of their relationship at this time and he was working not far from... My kura was actually at the back. He was working in a woodyard, and I knew I wasn't allowed. I knew I had to go straight home. Mum had rules, and I was meant to go straight home, but I went over to the woodyard and I said, 'Dad, do you want to come and listen to my speech tonight?' And he said... You know, he said, 'Yeah, baby,' and, you know, I waited for him to finish and then we biked off home, and Mum was home, and she was furious. (PAPERS RIP) - MUM: You're not doing any... - So I got thrashed. Dad ended up biking off because he couldn't stop her once she started. Same old, same old. Smashed my face into the floor and booted me and stomped me. - Don't touch it. Do you understand? - The hiding was bad, but it... It was when she said to me that I wasn't going to go to the speech. I just sobbed. (SOMBRE PIANO MUSIC) It was a really... Yeah, sad moment. And, yeah, someone else won ` another girl. And, you know, at the end of the year, watching her walk up to receive that trophy that should have been mine ` it makes you think, 'Why do you even try? Why bother? No one cares.' And I think that was the beginning for me of, um,... The dream stopped. You know, the hope ` it was the beginning of that; that, you know, life wasn't going to be any different for me. (UNSETTLED SYNTH MUSIC) Not long after that, they got back together, gone out, and it was quite normal practise that when they went out together, they didn't come home together. Me and my little brother were in bed and we heard the car come home. Dad came in and he said, 'Where's your fucking mother?' And she wasn't home. He started walking around the house. I could hear him saying` My mum's name was Edith, so he was going, you know, 'Burn, Edith. Burn.' He'd lit a fire in the fireplace and he started taking the photos off the wall, throwing them into the fire. I could see the bright light on the varnished door getting brighter and brighter. The fire had fallen out on to the carpet and the sitting room was on fire. Dad walked out and he tried to come in with a garden hose, and then he tried to mimi on it. Fear had become such a big part of our lives, to think of running away, even when the house was on fire, was too big a risk to take. So me and my brother, we were sitting on the bed, and then we got up on to the windowsill not knowing what to do. By, I don't know, some miracle, or... one of us leaned out a bit further. We fell out the window, and, you know, when we hit the ground, we just ran across the road and watched our house burn down. That began another chapter of drunkenness for Mum. She kind of gave up, stopped working, and drunk a lot, and Dad was sent off. We moved into a Housing New Zealand home, and Mum's coping tool was to drink. But in her drinking, she became less aware of the sexual abuse. Already at 10, I was having to wear a bra. So I was quite womanly, I guess. I think I became more sexualised, but it was never consensual, so I started learning how to protect myself. I had a dog ` our dog sleeping in the room with me, and he'd protect me. The noise would make them think, 'Oh, someone's hearing,' but I still couldn't protect myself fully and they always found a way of getting in. (DOOR CREAKS) Mum was just too drunk to realise, and I never told her because I learnt at 6, you know, 'Don't say a word,' you know? Because you know you're going to get a hiding for it. (DOG BARKS DISTANTLY) At 13, I realised that I didn't have to stay and accept the abuse in our home, so I ran away, became a street kid, sleeping under the bridges and things like that, and I ended up hanging around with the Mob. (SIREN WAILS DISTANTLY) Even though it was an unsafe place to be and I saw a lot of, um, really scary things, it was... safer than being at home. (SOMBRE PIANO MUSIC) Around 13-and-a-half, we had become a Mongrel Mob family. My cousins had joined the Mob, and before long, everyone was wearing red scarves, barking, and... - It was vicious, and, like, you had to be there to know what I mean. It was hard and fast. Beatings, robberies, weed rip-offs ` you name it. It's all happening around us. - I was 14 years old when I met, um, Raymond. He was my first... real boyfriend. He had just gotten out of prison, but I thought, 'Maybe he would love me. Maybe he would care for me.' But it didn't take long before he started, you know, being violent towards me. - Because of the stuff that happened to her when she was younger, she was looking for love in all the wrong places, and she was willing to put up with the beatings for a bit of love. - (SPITS) - The violence with him was really` it was extreme. - There wasn't a week that went by where she didn't have, uh,... healing for a black eye, blue ears. - He was constantly... chipping away at what little bit of self-esteem I had, and I didn't have much, but it was always about my appearance ` 'You're far,' or you're this or you're that, and he'd stop when,... you know, his brother-in-law might bang on the door, or one of his mates ` one of the younger mobsters ` would come over, and he would hit me in front of them because he thought it was showing how tough he was. Offer me to them, you know? Treat me like a real... like a nothing. They never took up the offer because they knew that he'd probably bash them, but it was just that whole... just letting me know how worthless I was. I started sniffing solvents around that time. I was trying to escape the world, and I would drink shampoo, and... Janola and petrol, and all sorts of things, just wanting to die. Just wanting to` Not really die, just an escape, and death just seemed like an escape. I was 15 when I got pregnant. I was extremely happy because, you know, up until then, I had pets, and depending on the mood my mum was in, she would give them away. Ray used to rip the heads off my cats and rabbits, and anything that I liked, he would destroy. So when I became pregnant, I thought, 'I'm going to have something to love that nobody can take away from me.' But I was thrashed even through my pregnancy. There was no time to actually feel like this is an amazing moment, that,... you know, I'm about to give life to a beautiful child. It was` I was still... fighting to survive each day. Yeah, and I had my` I had Rina. Sharina. I just fell in love with her. Just so... Just loved her. Um... And just thought that I could... be a mum to her, like I` like the mum I didn't have. I just so wanted her to have the best life. Um... But, yeah. I was so young. I was young and still... um... still fighting to survive. So, yeah. Things just didn't turn out like that fantasy that I would have loved to have created for them, for her. (SNIFFS) (PENSIVE SYNTH MUSIC) She was probably six months old when I got my first prison sentence. They sit you in this room called the bus stop that's just a room with glass all around it and all the other prisoners walk past and they're eyeing you up and down, and then you hear the rattle of keys and realise, 'Wow, this is... 'real.' They take you into a room where they strip you down. You've got to stand in a bath and wash in this scabie stuff, and given underwear probably 100 other girls have worn and a set of clothing, and that's your kit. (CELL DOOR SLAMS) You're in a wing with girls that have probably all been treated the same way as you, so there's a lot of tension and aggression. It's scary. - Tricia was this very articulate, intelligent young woman who was trapped by the circumstances of her life and her current situation. She had an inner strength in her, even though she was faced with a lot of adversity. You could see that there was that potential. (DESOLATE GUITAR TONE) - When I got out, my partner ` he was still violent towards me, but he also started to control how I mothered Rina. - If baby was crying over there, she wasn't allowed to go and pick baby up. - After a while, he actually... he hit her. - And I think that was the beginning of the end for them, when that sort of stuff started happening and she knew she had to protect her daughter. - I could accept that... what he did to me, but,... you know, I thought, 'I need to get away from him.' But I was so scared of what he would do if he caught me. Mum actually took me to see my probation officer who was able to put in some protection orders. My partner wasn't allowed to... come near me. It wasn't long after that that I found out I was pregnant again. I had my son ` Tawhiri. When I first laid eyes on my son, and... oh my God. I just... felt such a huge wave of love. He was the first male that I ever, ever loved. When Tawh was around six months old, I got another term of imprisonment. - Oh, she was broken for her kids, eh? I know that each time she went to jail, it was a reflect on how she could be better with her children. She worried about her kids, eh? She knew that they were at home with her mum, the drinking. - I was 18 years old. Um,... two babies, and I started another violent relationship, and I didn't know how to get out of it. - Tricia! - It was just destructive. He was just nasty. Beat the ... out of her. - Not long after that, I got pregnant with Johnny, and my partner started robbing chemists. So, they would go into the chemist during the day, find out where the safe was, and then they'd just, at night, go back and go through the wall and take the safe out. So we ended up getting a lot of quite... you know, narcotics. So we started popping pills a lot. But I still managed to mother my kids, you know? I still... got up for them, they were still well-dressed and well-fed. - She was amazing ` Mum. I could never remember, um,... any feelings of neglect or anything like that, you know? She always told us and reminded us how much she loved us and we got kisses, you know, every night and tucked in. - Oh, she was a staunch mom. She always, always has been. Yeah, no. You didn't muck around with her kids. She would, um,... She would fight men for her kids ` like, full-on punch-up with, you know, grown men. (CHUCKLES) - But I was still trying to survive. I didn't know whether I was going to live through each day, and that's not an exaggeration. I didn't know whether this day was going to be the day when my children were going to have no mum. At one stage, the kids had come home from school, and I'm sitting on the couch, waiting for them to come in. And I think, 'I know they're there,' because I heard them, and I'm sitting and I'm waiting, and 10 minutes goes by. So I get up off the couch and I go out and I go, 'Why are you waiting there?' Because they were waiting on the other side of the couch. And Tawh said to me, 'Mum, we're too scared to come in.' And I said, 'Why?' And they said, 'Because we don't know how we're going to find you, 'you know? You might be dead.' And I thought, 'Oh my goodness. My poor kids.' (OMINOUS SYNTH MUSIC) My kids were crying all the time because they knew what was going on. They knew the violence. I still remember the day when they just turned off. You know, when I saw Tawh, he just kept watching TV without a reaction. And, you know, that was a real... I guess poignant day for me because, you know, he'd seen so much. He,... yeah, didn't even react. - That was my way of dealing with being helpless in that situation. It was really normal and it happened quite frequently, so, you know, I think I just got to a point where it wasn't my problem. - And maybe in that moment, his wairua was up on the ceiling too, somewhere, looking down. I don't know. I woke up one morning and I thought, 'Things have to change.' (POIGNANT PIANO MUSIC) (FLY BUZZES) THINKS: Hmmm... If I get hurt, who's gonna give me a bath? * I woke up one morning and I thought, 'Wow, I'm going to be a 50-year-old woman with no teeth, 'the life smacked out of me, and nobody would ever want me,' and I thought, 'Things have to change.' We ended up running away from him. Ended up in Palmerston North Women's Refuge because Char was living in Feilding then. - We learnt how to sell weed. Well, that was it for us. We knew how to make money. We didn't have to go and do anything anymore. (CHUCKLES) - We were quite a good business couple ` partners in crime. - We both did have thriving shops for selling weed, and we used that money to buy us nice cars and make sure our kids were in Levi's and had PlayStations, and, yeah, our kids never went without. - Yeah, we probably actually had more than... most` bloody, most kids ever get their whole life. - (PLAYS PIANO) - They had piano teachers. They went to dance classes and rugby and art. Whatever there was out there, I tried to bring that into our home because I wanted my babies to succeed. I wanted them to be better and go further than what I had. - When Mum had the tinny shops going, which was pretty much all of our life, you know, my memories were, um,... getting angry when I had to roll the tinnies, cos was an arduous job, you know? Cutting the tinfoil and making sure I got the numbers out of each ounce. I had to work on the door with all the foot traffic, the cars, people constantly coming. We were pretty much a little cog in the wheel, I think, you know? It was big business. - Tawh was a really good rugby player. The coaches at prize giving would tell him, 'If Tawhiri Walsh wasn't in the future of New Zealand rugby, 'then there was something wrong with New Zealand rugby.' - I loved rugby since as far as I could remember back, you know? And it's always what I wanted to do. Like every other Kiwi kid out there, you know, I wanted to be an All Black, and... And so, that's, um,... You know, that's all I ever wanted to do in life was to rugby, was play professional rugby. - But, yeah. I think` I believed that, you know, me always being in the papers, and we were known as drug dealers ` it impacted` well, it changed his behaviour, but it also impacted on the opportunities that people were willing to give him. - She was sad for me, but I always got that sense that she blamed my situation on herself. - It just... took me back to my own childhood, to being the same age and being in the same place. He ended up in the youth justice centre, and they told me that I was an unfit mother. And, you know, since 15, that was all I had been was a mum, and I tried really hard to be a good mum. And there I was, being told that I was an unfit mother, and that` you know, that devastated me. It wasn't long after that that I found out I was pregnant again with Trina. But, yeah. I got` You know, I got caught with possession of cannabis and went back to jail. And when I got out, all of my friends were all on P. I just thought it wasn't for me. But then, you know, being the good tinny shop that I was, I was working harder and had to be up longer. So I tried it, and oh my God. (TENSE MUSIC SWELLS) Every cell in my body was alive, and my mind ` I just felt like I could achieve anything, and the ideas I was coming up with. It was just out of this world. But then, it got to the stage where no matter how much P I had, it just wasn't enough. That was the beginning of a really... downward spiral for me. - It just got worse and worse and worse, and my mate deteriorated before my eyes within a few months. - It just changed her. It just completely stole her mana, took her spirit away, and I resented her because it... it stole my mum. - There were times when I didn't go to sleep for a whole month. A month. (SCOFFS) - I don't know if you've ever seen people` the sort of people on meth, and they think, you know, the police got them under surveillance. There's, you know, wires in their house, and all the rest of it. That's sort of where she got to on it. She thought people were, you know, up on the hill, watching her, you know, under surveillance and stuff like that. - That constant feeling of... being her world, her everything ` it disappeared. It felt like, uh,... like we didn't exist anymore. - At that time, my kids hated me, and I knew that they were ashamed of me. But none of that mattered. All that mattered to me was the next puff on that pipe. That was it. It was just chasing the dragon. - I thought she was a shadow of a woman and she was a shadow of the person that I knew growing up and just felt` really, really resented her for making those choices. The police turned up at home one day, and they arrested her. And she was sitting in the back of the police car. - In my bag, I had some empty bags of P. They were empty. I mean, I'd used them, and Tawh came out to see if I was all right, and I was looking at him desperately because I thought, 'If I got caught with those bags, 'I wouldn't` There'd be no chance of me getting bail.' - She was pointing at her bag, you know, and I kind of got the gist that, 'Oh, there must be something in me that she doesn't want them to see.' - I just looked at him and I was just begging him, 'Please, son. Take my bag. Take my bag.' - And so, yeah. I made the... the mistake of opening the police car and running off with her bag. - They tried to chase him, but he went around the block. And he came back, and when he came back, they arrested him. - That weekend was the trial to make the team ` the rep team. And so, yeah, I was locked up. So I missed a big chance, probably, in that, and then it was plastered all over the paper. So my name was linked with meth, you know, from that stage. - He blamed me for ruining his life, and I take responsibility for that. You know, would I... You know... (DOWNBEAT PIANO MUSIC) I hardly got to see Johnny. He would walk in and he'd just look at my eyes and he'd just walk out. You know, he had a girlfriend, and then they became pregnant, and then I had my first moko. He was only three months old when I went to jail. At the age of 40, I was given six-and-a-half years for possession of cannabis and LSD. MasterFoods has had a makeover. (POP!) (MUSIC PLAYS) (DRUM ROLL, POP!) (MUSIC PLAYS) (POP!) What great flavour looks like - MasterFoods. - Step up. - Step sideways ` - that little step before the big one... - ...into that new office,... - ...new career,... - ...new mindset,... - ...because you can do it. - Tautoko. - So make tracks. * I had been up again for a month, and I was a mess. So as soon as they locked me in my cell and I went through my freaking out period of, you know, the head ` 'Oh my God, what have I done? There you go.' You know, really beating myself up, when I` my body... finally did go to sleep. I slept just about for a whole month. I only had to get up to grab my meals. That's what my body needed, and that's what my mind needed. I needed that rest to be able to understand what was going on. But if I hadn't have gone to jail, I would have died. When I was in jail, I had all these dreams about being the best mum in the world to my kids, and I thought, 'Well, I'll have another chance at being the mum that they deserve to have,' and I get out and Tawh's gone. He packs up, he drops Trina off to me, and he goes off to Aussie. Trina's 16, 17 then. She's already in a violent relationship of her own. I taught her well (!) They didn't need me. They didn't want a mum. They were adults. And so, that dream I had of being that mum and having another chance was gone, and I... It was that empty nest syndrome, and I thought, 'Who's Tricia Walsh if she's not a mum?' You know, I had never been anything else, and I met a friend who offered me a puff. My good friend, meth, came back into my life. Hook, line, and sinker. Just like that, I was back into it. Lying to my kids, not being there when I was meant to be with my moko. I really hit rock bottom, and, you know, there were times when I thought, 'If I just walked out into the ocean now and never came back, 'nobody would miss me.' And then one time, I had really upset Johnny, and he said to me, 'I hate you.' You know, 'I hate you. I don't ever want to see you again.' - I just said to her, 'I'm not going to have anything to do with you. 'You're not going to see these kids ever again... 'if you're going to be, you know, smoking P,' and I meant it. - And I looked at him and he said, 'I'm going and I'm never going to come back. 'I don't ever want to see you.' And he walked out and I was out, off my face, and I thought, 'Oh my God, am I never going to see my son again?' And then, you know, on the other shoulder, a voice was saying, 'Nah, you'll be all right. He'll be back. He always comes back.' - I didn't want my kids knowing that... that that was their grandmother, you know? That person wasn't the same person who raised us. (CAR APPROACHES) - In the morning, I heard the car. Then I heard the footsteps, and I heard the handle on the door, and I thought, 'This is him. He's come back.' And I curled up on the bed, and I sort of laid there. I heard the bedroom door open. I felt someone sit on my bed. Then, I felt this hand gently rubbing, you know, my calf. Just rubbing it, and then I felt the bed starting to shake. And, you know, I looked over, and there was my son sitting on the end of the bed with his head hanging down, and tears just... rolling out of his eyes, and he just started sobbing, and then he said to me,... he said, 'Mum, I love you. 'I love you so much. 'But if you keep doing what you're doing, you won't be a part of your moko's lives.' And, you know, he just told me that they were having twins. I looked at him and I said, 'Son, I want to change,' and I started babbling. 'I've tried to get into rehab. I don't want to be this person.' And he said to me, 'Whatever it is you want to do, we'll do it. 'If it's rehab, we'll do it. I'll come with you. You won't have to be alone. We'll do it together.' In that moment, there was this bit of hope ` a spark of hope. And I thought, 'Oh my God, if he believes that I can change and he's going to do it with me, 'then I must be worth that for him.' So I said to him, 'Son, do you think I can do this? Do you think I can get off meth?' And he just looked me in the eye and he said, 'Mum, you are the strongest person I know.' You know, and I thought, 'Maybe I am. Maybe I am strong enough. 'Maybe Tricia ` that little, abused, broken girl ` is strong enough to do this,' and I thought, 'I'm gonna give it a go.' I realised that the love of my children was the love that I had been looking for and searching for, and I'd blinded myself to that. And that was the beginning of my change. It was right there. (POIGNANT SYNTH MUSIC) * I never went to rehab. I made a decision that I didn't need meth. It's probably 6K's from here to Kaiti Hill, and so what I did at night ` I would run, and I'd probably do it three times a night. Go home and just think, 'Man, I made it' one night, and then my son would drop my moko off. He was 4-and-a-half then. He was nearly 5. And so, my days were spent with my moko and my nights were spent running, so I didn't have time to think. - It kind of felt like I could start to put my toe back in the water with her again, you know? Still weary. Still weary and scared to be hurt, but... yeah, happy. Overall, happy that it was actually real and that she actually... there was a possibility that our mum could come back. - Then I applied for my first job, which was cleaning. While I was cleaning, I happened to clean EIT, and I'd seen all the students and I thought, 'Oh my God. If only I could be like that.' And then I applied for a course, and it was in massage. - It's when she started studying I knew, 'Nah, this is real. She's... 'She's back on track, you know?' And that's when I started to be proud of her, you know? That pride in her came back. - And my mum ` I spent some time with her down the beach, which has always been a healing place for me. And I knew she was proud, and it was just a really healing time knowing that my mum was proud of me. And then she, you know, just one morning, she was out in her garden and she had a massive heart attack, and... I think it was a blessing that she had seen the beginning of my journey. I never got to tell her how much I loved her, and I never got to tell her that I understood. It wasn't that she didn't love me and I was unlovable. It was that my mum didn't know how to love me. But I didn't ever get a chance to tell her, and I'm sad for the loss of her childhood. She got her childhood taken away from her too, and no one ever said sorry to her for that, and I'm sorry to her for that. Mm. Someone said to me, 'Oh, you'd make a good social worker,' and thought, 'Oh, yeah. OK.' By doing the course, I stepped out of my comfort zone and I started public speaking and I went out into the community and I started holding myself a different way and just feeling different about me. It started rubbing off on my children. Johnny went to the wananga, and then Trin started nursing. It was definitely whanau transformation through education. When I finished my bachelor's, I got a whisper in my ear that I was going to be chosen to be valedictorian, and I thought, 'Oh, whoa. Me?' The day we graduated just happened to be a weekend of the Noho when I was at Awanuiarangi. And I got up in the morning and I called, you know, the head of our campus, and I said, 'Look, I'm in Whakatane. I mightn't get back there by 9 o'clock.' And she said, 'Oh, you know, that's OK. If you're not going to make it, we` 'you know, we've got someone else that we can give it to.' And I thought, 'Oh, heck no.' You know, I'd pipped at the post, like, 40 years or something prior before this. I wasn't going to lose this chance to celebrate the success, and it... You know, it was my time. This was my speech time, and it was my time to collect that trophy that I should have had when I was at Gisborne Intermediate, and, you know, to have my kids and my mokopuna there to see, not just that their mum and the nanny had graduated, but that I had graduated as the top student on that campus. You know, that was... That was just beyond belief, you know? And I wanted to share that with them. - Definitely proud of her with how she's turned her life around. It's something that she's done on her own, and it's definitely something she should be proud as of too. Yeah, I love her. Love her. - The day I got my kauae ` it was one of the most emotional experiences I've had. It was like she had been just waiting for someone to uncover her. My kauae is a reminder to me that my kuia are always with me. This is a part of me as mana wahine. This is me saying to the world, 'I'm Tricia Walsh.' (GENTLE GUITAR MUSIC) It wasn't until I started studying and I was able to make an evaluation of my life, I realised that my life couldn't have ended up any other way. Five generations that we'd been abused, and the legacy that I got was shame. I realised that it was... the things that had happened to me, why I made the choices I did ` it wasn't that I was a bad person, and that made the difference, cos I thought I was inherently bad. I was just born this bad thing. But once I looked back at what had happened, it made sense, and I thought, 'Well, if that's the truth, 'then my mokopuna don't have to live the life that I did. 'They don't have to have violence in their life. They don't have to have drugs in their life.' And once I learnt that, I thought then, 'I have got some power. I can make a difference.' - I love her. She's an amazing grandmother. (BOTH LAUGH) Her attitude is 'Enough is enough.' The cycle is broken, and that stuff... no longer affects her family, and especially her mokos. - The main thing for me was that they can go to sleep at night and feel safe and wake up safe ` those things that other families don't even have to think about. They can be the best that they can be, and that's all that I want ` is they can be the best that they can be. (SOFT GUITAR MUSIC) I am Tricia Walsh, and I am changing the future for our whanau. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2021