Aotearoa Diaries: An Introduction

I don't by any means consider myself a great writer, but I believe there is something sacred and precious about stories.

When I was last in Singapore a little over a month ago, I had the opportunity to invite the good people of the congregation I grew up in into the story I've been creating on this little corner south of the equator called the Land of the Long White Cloud, Aotearoa New Zealand. One of the "aunties" who watched me grow up in that church said to me afterwards, "It's so nice to hear about what you're doing in New Zealand. I guess we all knew you were there, but we didn't really know what you were doing."

Which made me re-evaluate what I had been doing with storytelling. My excuse for the lack of stories had been that my first two years in Aotearoa had been "dark and twisted" (to borrow the words of Meredith Grey). The reality was more that I had given my storyboard away to everyone else to fill while I sat in the corner and sulked like I was completely helpless. And perhaps the longer I dwelt in that corner, the more helpless I felt even though the easier thing would have been to reclaim my storyboard and fill it with my own stories.

So this new series, Aotearoa Diaries, is intended to be just that: the reclamation of my storyboard, and the invitation into the story I'm creating here in the Land of the Long White Cloud. I'm not sure where these stories will go, or how much of the last two years I will write about, but I need to write these stories again. If not for anyone else, but for myself, to believe again in the sacredness and preciousness of story.