The Choices We Make

One of my recent articles led to a cousin posting how much she regretted the choices she had made in isolating her family from the rest of our family, and her daughter also messaging me with thoughts in a similar vein.

For privacy I won't use real names, so let's call my cousin Jane. Jane is my Mum's older sister's daughter.

My Mum had a pretty momentous upbringing worthy of its own novel. When Mum was three her Mum died of tuberculosis, leaving Mum, her two older sisters and older brother in the care of their alcoholic and abusive father. Within short time the kids were moved into the homes of immediate family, but in depression era Thames feeding an additional mouth was not easy.

The state and foster care providers were soon called in and the kids bounced from foster home to foster home throughout the Waikato area until they were of working age. The abuse they endured was immense, and would be enough to break most people. That Mum and her brother Bill turned out as well as they did is testament to the final foster home they shared with Muriel and Dudley Hicks of Cambridge. Muriel and Dudley were a childless couple who had a lot of love to give, believed in discipline in the home and were nurturing care givers to impressionable adolescence with every reason to rebel.

Unfortunately Jane's Mum didn't have the advantage of the love Muriel and Dudley had shown Mum, and she subsequently led a hard drinking life looking for love in all the wrong men. One of these wrong men was Jane's Dad, until an immensely abusive relationship ceased.

My Mum and Jane's Mum were close and only became closer over the years; Mum providing emotional and physical support as best she cold. This support included rescuing and caring for Jane as a baby and child, leading to Jane moving in with Mum and Dad in her adolescence, which was when I was in my pre-school years.

Jane acted as an additional carer, older sister and day trip adventure supervisor in my early years, meaning I have always felt a close bond toward her.

Following reaching legal age, Jane made the decision to move out of our home and in with friends. This quickly led to a lifestyle of alcohol and drug abuse before becoming pregnant with her first daughter in her late teens. Jane was soon left a solo mother and had several further children which she was left to raise alone. She also lost her Mum, my Mum's sister, to a car accident around the time of her second child's birth.

Mum and Dad continued to support Jane and her children as best they could from both an emotional and financial standpoint. Weekends in my childhood often involved dropping food and clothing hampers off to Jane and her kids at their Glen Innes state house.

Around the time I turned 13, Jane made the decision to pack up her family and move out of Auckland. With that came a near radio silence, which Jane now concedes was a conscious choice. This choice removed her family from their only extended family relationships and the love of my Mum and Dad who had become surrogate grandparents, which her kids concede has had a major impact on their emotional and mental health.

Jane has since arrived in a far better place personally, with a loving partner and immense love from her children, grandchildren and soon great-grandchildren no doubt. She has come to realise the value of being a positive role model and caring grandparent, and enriches the lives of her family as a result.

This tale of woe provides me with a number of life lessons and key moment insights.

Connection with family and positive role modelling plays an essential part in the development of any child's life. It takes a village... as they say. As my retired Parish Priest recently expressed to me, regardless of school or wider influences, it's the family home that has the greatest influence on the positive outcomes in a child's life.

It also points to it never being too late to realise and rectify the mistaken choices we have made.