Knowing when it’s time to move on

Our girl Hina (moon) went into the Whiro (new moon) phase recently and just like her, our kōrero about Hineteiwaiwa (atua of birthing, weaving) have phased out as well. While we’re in the phasing out space, it’s timely that I share what’s been on my mind lately.

I started the atua blog series: covering various atua (elemental force, celestial being) for our monthly theme in this blog, about this time last year. It was a way for me to keep my whakaaro (thoughts) aligned to tupuna whakaaaro and mātauranga (knowledge, wisdom) while I was over in Perth. As well as a way to make sense of myself, the world and everything in between.

It’s been a challenging, confronting, empowering journey so far,

but I feel like it’s time to put pause on things.

The atua blog series, that is. Not the blog!

This blog is my OG baby, that’s helped me so much to articulate my feelings and thoughts and as a result, understand myself better and even be able to share that with you. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Even if nobody reads it, that’s ok, this is a passion project first and foremost.

I’ve started to reflect over the past few months, covering one atua after the other and thinking about who I could write about next and I’ve found myself knowing less and unable to find as much kōrero for upcoming atua. In the spirit of wanting to do justice, not only to my tupuna (ancestors) and share their stories properly, but also to keep integrity in my own storytelling, I’ve decided to change direction for our waka (canoe).

I just can’t do a good job of it - as good of a job as I want to - and don’t want the quality to drop more and more, just for the sake of writing ‘the atua blog series’. We’ll still have the blog posts each week, but over the next little while, the theme will be broad until I find something to affix my direction towards,

or until that something finds me.

I’m in a reflective phase at the moment and I’ll admit I did consider dropping the blog posts because something felt off. But after further reflection and deliberation, I found the blog itself wasn’t the problem, instead it was the direction I was heading in with it. This is isn’t to say I won’t ever cover atua again, impossible, haha as they’re so ingrained in all of our kōrero, but just that it’s time to park up this atua blog series kaupapa until I can gather more kōrero about our atua and do them justice.

Ka tahuri anō te kei o te waka, ki hea? Ākoakenei tātou kite ai. The direction of our waka shifts again, where to? We’ll soon find out.

Tēnā rawa atu koutou,

Hana.