06/06/2024
A new pepi! But not of the human variety 🤣
Many years ago, K.I.Designs (aka Kelsey) and I meet through this mahi, now nine years later we are working on a different kind of collaboration, developing a charitable community hub, Social Nexus
In meetings today about future of events and retreats for that project, I was talking with another friend who was part of the babywearing gateway for me a few years earlier. A registered nurse turned birthwork supporter and birth trauma counselor who once upon a time worked for Plunket and has SIX tamariki, Kelly.
We are dreaming up a Magical Birth retreat and today I was reminded of my passion for empowering dad's with practical skills like wrapping pepi as a way to support mama and how much this mahi feeds my soul!
We are still dreaming about the magical birth events, but we do have info on our page about the Tired Mama Retreat and the Burnt Out Witch retreat which we are super excited about bringing to life later in the year!
💜💙💚💛🧡❤
Welcome to our new baby, Social Nexus.
Kelsey and Jess met in 2015, both operating businesses in the babywearing space in Aotearoa. Familiar to each other only online, it was serendipitous that they lived local to each other without even realizing.
Between them they have seven children and are both solo mama. Sharing lots of the same values and struggles in life, many a late night conversation seemed to return to the same point, “how can we change the world?”
With a great appreciation for how the current systems fail the most vulnerable, they also sit firmly behind the concept of “we don't need to destroy the old to create the new”.
We want to do our part to make changes that the world needs instead of letting the apathy get to us. There are many ways we can, right now, change things that will help our children's future, but they need better frameworks and structures to make that possible.
That's where Social Nexus comes in.
Both having a variety of different mahi hats so to speak, we are familiar with the juggle that is working from home around children and family life. We needed a space to be able to come together with others to do our work, to support each other, to accommodate our children and our needs as to be able to best parent them, to be held and to hold others through the ups and downs of life, to heal, to create, to grow.
The current system of working 40hr weeks, parenting and living in a house as the only adult with a whole bunch of dependents, isolated from each other… well it has a habit of making people sick or pushing them to breaking point, something we know first hand.
We need spaces to be with one another, opportunities for creativity so our mind’s anxiety can rebalance. We need spaces focused on holistic and multidisciplined approaches to healing and wellness. We need places to parent our children alongside others, so that the role of things like passing on life skills is less demanding and sharing ‘mutual sites of fulfillment’ which are so rich and giving for families and communities.
We need chances to be empowered in our lives, in our households, in general; sharing skills, knowledge and resources in community helps people feel less apathetic and checked out. We need a practical, hands-on community again, we need to recreate the village.
We look forward to bringing more and more of our plans and venue to you in the coming weeks before we launch in June!
