pounamu is still pounamu, regardless of the form it takes.

Or what it’s fashioned into, the purpose it serves — it’s still pounamu.

You’re still you, regardless of the form you take, what people think, what you accumulate, what you give, what you do, whether people acknowledge it, see it or recognise it for themselves… you’re still you. Perhaps a more wise, seasoned, weathered version of you — but still you.

So, you’re it! You’re already the thing, already the goods before you come earthside. You’re pounamu before being moulded this, that way and the other.

That’s not to say you become less pounamu, less yourself as you go about the world and explore it; as you investigate the depths of yourself and what you’re capable of; as you

“make like Hineahuone and fashion yourself

into something the world has never seen before,

something the world never knew it needed to transcend itself.”

You get to know what it means to be you in different circumstances, under certain pressures and stimuli, and with whom you choose to surround yourself with.

“The sun isn’t bright just because I say it is just as I was bright before I even knew the word for bright. I didn’t decide what it is.

I acknowledged what it is...”

The pounamu Ngahue found in Aotearoa was already incredible before it ‘served the purpose’ of being fashioned into toki to carve the Te Arawa waka. That became a secondary function, but it’s still pounamu at the end of the day. In another form, impacting the world in a different way beyond its home in the awa (river).

“..you aren’t worthy, you aren’t pounamu just because someone says you are. You just are. You were before I even said anything” and that’s on whakapapa! Thousands of years old, tried and true, 1 in 400 trillion.

Know that. Believe that. Behave in alignment with that and you might surprise yourself with what might reveal itself to you.

Pounamu, of all kinds…

Tēnā tātou,

Hana.