Rebuilding the ruins of my taha whanau pillar

When Mum was diagnosed with cancer, everything my family had ever tried to teach me about hauora and the importance of looking after myself first went out the window. 

The philosophy of hauora and its four dimensions no longer existed to serve me, these being: taha wairua (spiritual well-being), taha hinengaro (mental/emotional well-being), taha tinana (physical well-being) and taha whānau (family/social well-being). I no longer thought of them as walls or pillars for my health, and I no longer cared that letting even one degrade would leave my hauora as a whole to suffer. 

Instead, for the next three years following Mum’s diagnosis, I pushed every pillar of hauora but taha whānau to the back of my mind and let Mum’s health decide every choice I made. 

Any resource that could go towards my hauora was shared with her in the hope that it would help keep her healthy, and her health became the foundation that my whare was based upon. To combat the cracks forming in this foundation, I went through a series of checklists of everything I thought could be done to fix her whare. I told myself, ‘If we can get her to drink more water then her kidneys will stop failing, and once her kidneys are working, she’ll be able to start her medication again, so tumour growth is slow down until she’s strong enough for surgery.’ 

I shrugged off most offers to leave the house for friends or sports and only went if she pushed me to or was coming with me. She had always pushed me to focus on my taha tinana and as her physical capabilities began to fail her, I saw no reason to focus on my physical health over hers. 

My emotions hinged on the state of hers. I tried to make every situation lighter and prided myself on dumb jokes I made that resulted in her laughter. I kept chasing that sound, even when her moments of lucidity became fewer and farther between. Every smile I managed to coax from her was a prize, something I could use to patch up the cracks forming in her hauora.   

Her taha wairua had always been strong. She’d been raised Catholic and believed in feng shui to the point where she chopped off sections of our house as though they were the tumour itself. My taha wairua had always been weaker, and I’ve never believed in anything spiritual as strongly as she did. But at night I’d pray to anyone who was listening, meditate as best I could and ask the air around me to shrink the cancer down, to slow its creeping progression.  

I went through every requirement I thought would help and checked every box I could think of. I neglected the fortification of my whare and poured every resource I had into building Mum’s hauora back up piece by piece.  

So, when Mum’s health crumbled and she passed away, the walls came crashing down around me.  

This wasn’t the case of just one pillar, taha whānau, coming down while the others still stood tall. This grief was destruction, bricks scattered everywhere. After three years of giving everything I could to Mum and leaving nothing for myself, it decimated my long-neglected health. Emotionally and mentally, I was an absolute wreck. I had little to no care for myself physically. I had nothing spiritually, because what good were higher powers and energy forces if they didn’t save Mum? Her death was my destruction, and for a long while, I felt like my hauora would never be fixed again. 

But amongst the wreckage, there was still some semblance of hope and love left standing. 

I thought that Mum’s passing was the destruction of my taha whānau. But while it had indeed left a scar I’ll carry for the rest of my life, the pillar was still there in the form of the rest of my family and friends. And it was the same for them, as they felt her loss every day but were able to find comforts and reminders of her within our family. We dragged one another up emotionally, and in my case, I was literally dragged back to physical activities. At a time when I thought I had nothing left I could believe in, I found that I believed in them.  

We shared our time and effort and built the pillars of our hauora back up brick by brick. To a degree, we are still building all these years later. Health requires constant maintenance, and each pillar is important to your overall wellbeing. You can share burdens with others and help in any way you see fit, but you should never neglect your own needs. Each wall of the whare is necessary for you to find shelter within it. 

To me, tana whanau is still my most important wall. It is the barrier I took shelter behind when the world seemed hopeless. It is the binding that holds our pillars together – and what gives us the strength to build ourselves up from ruins.