To my friends at Playcentre... [taking a new route]

Today I saw a sign for the Festival of Cycling with the words "New Routes" and it struck me that embracing the new is not the hard part, the hard part is letting go of the old. One of the things about a natural disaster is that you don't wake up in the morning knowing it is going to happen. So the last time Annie-Rose and I went to play with our friends at Woolston Playcentre, we had no idea that it was goodbye. We didn't get to look around one last time and hug our friends there. We just never went back. (It's still yellow stickered)

 

Over the last few months we have all been adjusting to the changes in our lives. Chrissy goes to a main-stream school that values academics above free thinking, James has left school and gone to work. Annie-Rose and I have been becoming part of the community at Lyttleton Street Playcentre.  All of us are doing things that we didn't plan to do before the earthquake, but that have worked out ok actualy for us. Today I realised it's time to acknowledge to my friends at Woolston, that we are there to stay.

I love what we built together at Woolston, I love all the amazing play we had there, I love how the garden had never looked so amazing, I love how we were busy preparing the older children for school with the writing table, but it's time for me to say Goodbye.

I have to acknowledge our life is not going back. We've all moved forward and changed. So to my friends at Woolston this is goodbye and thank you. Thank you for teaching me so much. Thank you for letting me play with your children. Thank you for teaching me the meaning of "What next?" Thank you for doing the clean up when Annie fell asleep.

 Playcentre is such a awesome place. It's a place for children to feel safe. It's a place to embrace creativity. It's a place where lots of learning happens while the children play.

 It's also a place for mothers and fathers. It's a place to feel safe. To share laughter and tears. A place to be vunerable when we need to, and strong when we want to. A place where we all contribute, each and every one of us. It's a place for learning as well.

For Annie and I our journey is going to take one of the new routes. So to all my friends at Woolston, Kia Kaha! Please invite us to your reopening, we will come with cake! We will rejoice and we will play for the day, and then we will go back to our new home at Lyttleton Street. 

Change is not necessarily

good or bad,

just different.