While I was born here in Bluff, I was raised amongst my mother’s people in Whakarewarewa. I grew up in a village within a hapū, Tūhourangi Ngāti Wāhiao. One of my fondest memories as a child was sitting in the baths with all the kuia who had moko. I was just fascinated, fascinated with lines. I used to stare at them. I just loved moko. Back then a lot of the kuia had moko, and growing up in the pā you used to run around and into everybody’s house, and they fed you, cuddled you, looked after you.
The moko was very common, but only among the kuia.
By Mum’s generation, nobody was being done. That would have been post-war, I suppose. When we had only one kuia left in the pā, I asked my Mum, “Why don’t you get one?”
She said, “Too sore.”
She’d seen it done in the old way as a child; it was a whole lot of blood, and they never flinched or made a sound. My mother was absolutely not having any of that. And by that point I think people thought it was gone, a part of the old world.
But I loved looking at the moko and at the kuia.
I came back to Bluff as a young woman and helped develop the marae; we were quite young to be doing that. There was nothing visibly Māori here, or little to none, back in 1973. There was what they called the Māori house and the Waitaha Hall for functions. After the wharekai was opened, I’d chat with my peers and we’d say we should all get a moko when we turned 40. But no-one was game enough, and it wasn’t the thing to do. It had almost become invisible.
As they started to revive the moko in the past 15, perhaps 20 years, I would see the women and see photographs and think how beautiful it was. A few years ago Mark Kopua, who had come down to do a tā moko wānanga, asked me about my kauae. “Funny you’d say that,” I told him, “because I’ve always wanted one, but now that I have the opportunity I’m a bit scared.”
Three years later I said yes. I’d given myself enough time to get the courage.
I’m thrilled with the revitalisation of the arts. I love seeing the other women and it’s almost like we have a link; an unspoken thing. I don’t know if it’s our moko talking to each other or if it’s the wairua that goes with it.
I think I was fortunate that my parents who raised me understood the beauty behind it; the beauty of the moko. If I think back, there were photos on the wall of two of my kuia with moko kauae – my grandmother’s sisters – from the time I was a baby. And I had a picture of my great-grandmother, and she had one as well.
Mihipeka Wairama of Tūhourangi, painted in 1912 by Charles Goldie, is Hana’s great-grandmother.
I never see anyone talking about how kids can abuse adults though.
Growing up I saw a lot of adult teachers get bullied by students and it sucked. They would purposely push them to their breaking point until they exploded, yelled, cursed, threw desks, and the ones who didn’t have that kind of reaction would just quit or end up fired because the kids would start rumors. One was because our new math teacher was effeminate so the guys thought “obviously this guy is gay and he’s after our dicks” and if he was ever nice to a male student (which… he was nice and friendly with EVERYONE and was the best teacher we’d had that year) they would start whispering behind me, “yo, look at that, did you see that? He’s flirting with his male students, that’s nasty” and so they made trouble for him.
My mother worked at a Discovery Zone type place when I was little and she would come home and break down crying because groups of little boys would call her names, call her stupid her whole shift.
I had friends in childhood who absolutely abused their parents. They were relentless and mean and hacked them into submission and it made for a lot of awkward moments when I would hang with them, because I couldn’t do anything since… they were my abuser too.
Just because you’re a minor doesn’t mean knives you throw are not sharp and won’t hit someone. The fact that so many kids on this site use their age as a weapon, as a way to say “but nothing I do has any impact because I have no social power” is SCARY and we need to try to make people aware of this kind of stuff from a young age because most people who are like that don’t really realize it and they need guidance and rehabilitation so the cycle can stop. Because those people grow up and have kids and do it to their kids and they don’t learn that it’s not normal or okay, that they cannot deny reality by controlling the people around them.
But sometimes it isn’t always that way, some of those parents were so nice and kind and I considered like family, and they just had absolute evil villains for kids.
Check in with yourselves, guys. Especially right now. There’s a lot of upsetting stuff being shoved in our faces all the time and it makes it hard not to get tunnel vision when our emotions get out of control, especially with the pressure to perform by a lot of social circles on tumblr. And if you’re young and a lot of this is new, pace yourself, you’re learning, and you need to be open to the idea of learning more and know that us being adults doesn’t mean we’re just out of touch boring old farts who don’t know anything. We’ve lived things and we have experience and when we say to you that it’s not okay to tell people who like things you do not like to kill themselves, we’re not “apologists”… we’re the survivors too.
yo this is really important
my piano/choir teacher in 6th grade was only around 20-23 whenever she came to our school, and she only stayed for 2 years because all the kids were so awful. one time she told me that me and a few other of my friends were the only ones who hadn’t said a bad word about her the whole time.
in 4th grade, we got an awesome music teacher. he was in his late 20’s at the time, really chill and easygoing (we were in elementary school). some of the kids would just slowly drive him off the edge until one day he ended up throwing pens across the room out of frustration and anger. everybody was either scared of him or laughed at him, and it kinda made it worse. he left 2 years later and teaches a civilized and nice group of kids now.
kids really can abuse adults. I’ve seen it happen a lot and it’s sad and heartbreaking and overall awful to see because so many people brush it off as “kids being kids.”
In 7th grade or so I had the most delightful Maths/Science teacher (the two were taught by the same guy) and he was always super nice. Like he adored teaching, he brought us snacks sometimes and like really wanted us to do well.
By 8th grade he was a changed man. We had young neo-nazis starting shit. We had kids screaming and throwing shit at him. We had knife fights and I’m 90% certain I remember him straight up being forced into a position where he had to wrestle one of my more violent classmates to the floor. My class had actually driven this calm, cool, great guy (he couldn’t’ve been more than 27 at the time) to actually break down crying in class. As far as I heard he was gone by the time I entered grade 9.
I remember lots of my classmates mocking my math teacher because of her accent, when I was a freshman. She was from Syria, in a mexican school. Little pieces of shit were always imitating her accent and mocking her from getting certain words wrong.
I saw her about four years later and she looked so tired of everything, less cheerful and with a tougher attitude from the beginning. Fortunately she still talks to me calmly and smiling, but it’s awful to know she’s always anxious around thw kids she teaches.
In seventh grade I had a teacher named Ms. Burns. It was only her third year of teaching, and it was her first year of teaching middle school. And the class I had her for?
My fellow classmates were fucking awful to Ms. Burns. They talked over her when she was trying to teach, they made fun of her appearance (said she looked like man and called her a ‘tranny’, or “It Burns” instead of Ms. Burns), and when a few months into the school year, she broke down and screamed at the top of her lungs at the class before sitting down at her desk and crying, they considered it a triumph and laughed about it for weeks.
Being a kid doesn’t exempt you from being a piece of shit, and just because, on the whole, adults have more power than minors doesn’t mean that minors get a free pass on being purposefully cruel to adults. Some of you on this website really need to learn this.
Discipline your goddamn kids.
Seriously doubling down on the last part because this behavior doesn’t form in a fucking vacuum.
Back in secondary school, I had a fantastic science teacher and he happened to be gay. I admired him because he was actually out, at a time when it was super rare to see that sort of thing. He was a really sweet, bearish dude and helped me feel more comfortable in my own skin, being a young queer myself.
Well, one day some of the homophobic kids in our class decided to start rumours about him being a pedo (because, to them, all gays were pedophiles) and told their equally homophobic parents about it. There were calls from “concerned parents” about the teacher and his “inappropriate behaviour” and eventually, after over a year of daily complaints, he was asked to leave, not because he had actually done anything, but because the school didn’t want to “look bad”.
So yeah, a bunch of 14 year olds ran to their parents and got him fired for being gay. Over 15 years later and I am still pissed.
Some kids learn pretty quickly to weaponize their youth.
Fandom policing communities have turned this into an art form, shaping and rewarding [fellow] adolescents (and younger) who intentionally put themselves in online adult spaces and publicly implode: destroying the adult space, the adults in that space, and shredding the conscience & mental well-being of the minor that’s being encouraged to turn themselves into an emotional bomb.
on some kind of medication, including but not limited to hormonal birth control, heart medication, and anti-depressants? you better double check with your doctor or pharmacist before you drink that new tea you just bought.
always, always, always tell your doctor or check with your pharmacist before trying any kind of herbal supplement, whether it’s something you made yourself or something you bought at the store.
have sensitive skin? dilute your essential oils before putting them anywhere near your skin or in your bathtub.
have a diagnosed medical condition? talk. to. your. doctor. before ingesting anything or putting anything on your body that you aren’t familiar with.
don’t. drink. essential. oils. essential oils are not consumable!!!!!
don’t put citrus oil on your skin and then go out into the sun unless you want a badass chemical burn.
don’t put any kind of damn essential oil on your skin without diluting it with a carrier oil. almond oil? olive oil? coconut oil? i don’t care. dilute your essential oils.
don’t put essential oils on your animals, diluted or not, point blank.
oh, and don’t put fucking crystals in their water bowls to “cleanse their chakras” or whatever the fuck.
speaking? of crystals? don’t put crystals in your bodily orifices. don’t put crystals in your own damn water. just don’t.
thinking about burning some kind of random herb in your house? you better make sure it’s not gonna release noxious fumes and murder your family.
speaking of random herbs – got the urge to forage for some herbs out in the wild? wear. fucking. gloves.
don’t burn incense or herbs around your pets. they have tiny, fragile respiratory systems and are super sensitive to that kinda shit.
gotta burn a candle down completely for a spell? you better not leave that shit unattended unless you want a house fire.
always. practice. fire. safety. that means, don’t go burning shit outside during a burn ban.
gods help me – if you wanna harvest your own blood via finger stick, stay away from dirty safety pins and needles and invest in some lancets.
drinking dirty water from outside can literally give you worms. boil your damn water.
oh yeah. moon water. everyone loves to make moon water. you know what happens when you leave a jar of water at room temperature? it stagnates and grows bacteria. refrigerate that shit.
fresh herbs or other things of that nature left at room temperature can also grow super harmful bacteria, for example, raw garlic submerged in oil at room temperature is a breeding ground for botulism and mold.
L E S S T H A N S T E L L A R| Character portraits | Busts of 4 characters from an upcoming comedy roleplay podcast created by fans of Bioware’s sci-fi fantasy Mass Effect.
funeral-biscuit 