The Last Time I Hit Rock Bottom 2017

I want to take you back to 2017. Not because I want sympathy and not because I want people hating anyone involved. I’m sharing this because this was genuinely the beginning of my life being rewritten.

By 2017 I was already carrying a lot. A long term relationship had ended, there was a lot of undealt with trauma underneath the surface, and honestly I think I was already emotionally exhausted before everything fully fell apart. At the time, I genuinely believed I was making the right decision for my daughter and I. I decided to move overseas believing it would give us both a fresh start and a better life. I thought I was walking into a completely different future than the one that eventually unfolded.

So I came back to New Zealand, left my daughter overseas temporarily, and spent six weeks selling everything, wrapping up work, packing up our lives and preparing to completely start over. I gave everything up for that move. And when I arrived overseas, it became very clear very quickly that the life I thought I was walking into no longer existed.

What followed was a painful and disorientating season of my life. I was suddenly in a country that wasn’t mine, without my support systems, without stability, without the people who knew me, while trying to process heartbreak, shame, confusion and rejection all at the same time. I felt embarrassed, lost, ashamed, rejected and confused. Underneath all of that was a woman who honestly didn’t know who she was anymore.

Then came the moment that completely shattered me. I was told I couldn’t bring my daughter home with me yet because I had no stability anymore. No home, no job, no setup. I needed to return to New Zealand first and rebuild. So I had to leave without her and I still remember the sound of her crying as they drove away. That moment broke me.

When I came back home to New Zealand, I was not okay. I drank heavily. I cried constantly. I felt ashamed. I felt like I had failed at life, failed as a woman and failed as a mum. I think what people don’t always understand about rock bottom is that it’s not always dramatic. Sometimes it’s just waking up every day disconnected from yourself and not recognising the person you’ve become.

But somewhere in all of that heartbreak, grief and anger, something shifted. I realised this was different now because I was a solo mum and when you’re a solo mum, you don’t get to stay broken forever because someone little is depending on you to find your way back.

I remember realising before my daughter came home that I could not keep living the way I was living. I knew that whether I liked it or not, I was going to be one of the biggest influences in her life. I didn’t want my daughter growing up believing her circumstances defined her or that she had to stay stuck when life got hard. I wanted her to know that she could achieve anything she put her mind to because she saw me fight for my life, rebuild myself and pursue everything I said I was going to do. That became my driving force.

Not proving people wrong. Not revenge. Not validation. My daughter seeing through me that no matter how broken life gets, you can still rewrite it.

That became the turning point. Not some huge dramatic breakthrough, not overnight transformation and not instant healing. Just a quiet decision that I was going to rebuild my life intentionally.

I got my daughter back after 3.5 weeks. I gave up drinking on the 7th of January 2018 and it’s now been over 8 years since I made that decision. I went back to church. Slowly, piece by piece, I started rebuilding myself. And honestly when I look back now, it feels like I’m looking at a completely different person. Not because my life is perfect now and not because I suddenly became endlessly confident overnight, but because I am no longer the woman who abandoned herself. I am no longer the woman who believed her life was over. I am no longer the woman waiting for someone else to save her.

That woman survived, but this woman rebuilt.

Since then my life has transformed in ways I genuinely could never have imagined back then. I built Maia Dreams. Built Wahanui Productions. Created ConfidentMe. Toured Tangihanga nationally. Started Life Rewritten 40+. Written books, blogs, programmes and theatre works. Lost over 85 kilos. Travelled overseas. Won awards. Created opportunities for others. Helped thousands of people through our work. I’ve also had opportunities to MC, worked on commercials and short films, written children’s books and songs, spoken around the country and built platforms and programmes that younger me could never have imagined creating.

But honestly, the biggest transformation was never the achievements. It was learning who I actually am. Learning my worth. Learning boundaries. Learning discipline. Learning how to stop abandoning myself. Learning that healing and rewriting your life is possible even after everything falls apart.

That’s what this new chapter of my life feels like. A completely different timeline. And if you’re currently sitting in your own rock bottom right now, please hear me when I say this: your life is not over, you are not too far gone, and sometimes the moment everything falls apart is actually the beginning of your rewrite 🩵💓💖

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