Change is the only constant in the universe. Sometimes it creeps in, slow and steady, over decades. Other times it crashes into our lives - in a split second, a heartbeat. This reality means that we are always in flow - until we are not. Until change sweeps away everything we thought was solid.
Stagnation is something we look at often in Chinese Medicine, the stagnation - lack of flow - of qi or energy can lead to illness and through accumulation, even death. Life must move. But constant movement without something to hold us steady can leave us feeling like a ship without a mooring. We all need anchors - a point of stability that allows us to grow without drifting into chaos.
My life is has been a delicate dance between movement and stillness, between seeking change and longing for something safe to hold onto. Looking back, I can see how these forces shaped me - not just in the obvious ways, but like those before me, in the small, quiet shifts that have trickled down to the next generation.
A Story That Began With Serendipity
My parents story began like a scene from a 1970's film. Like many couples their meeting was serendipitous, with an 11-year age gap, they brought to each other exactly what the other needed at the time.
My father was a travelling man, briefly home in the UK to gather funds to continue his travels after hitching a ride home from India on the "free ride train". My mother was adrift - a lost soul carrying a difficult past - experiencing the trip that was the early 70's in the UK as a young, slightly naive 17 year old.
With the Rolling Stones' Angie playing in the background, they met in a pub and instantly connected, chatting late into the night as puffs of smoke swirled around them. My mother was captivated by my father's stories of travel through Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India (as chronicled in his book Indelible Images). To her, trapped in her troubled life, it must have felt like a beautiful escape. She was enamoured with this long-haired hippy of a man, bronzed from the Indian sun, carrying tales of wisdom and faraway lands - and so it was that I was conceived.
But theirs was a fleeting few weeks together and my father carried onto the next stage of his journey - to America - to meet a women he had previously arranged to connect with - whilst sharing a hashish pipe on the banks of the Goa. He left, unaware of my mother's condition. My mother farewelled this brief reprieve from life and did not realise my presence until well after his departure.
Living in a foster home, supported by an "Aunty" and the group setting of her foster family, my mother eventually gave birth to her baby girl and settled into life as a young, single mother. Until fate intervened. My mother met my paternal grandmother, who upon learning of my existence, wrote to my father. Now living alone in New Zealand contemplating his next move, my father quickly embraced this news. Letters began to travel across the globe, building a bridge across two continents and directing the course of our lives.
The Leap to New Zealand
In 1975, my Mum bundled her few possessions into a suitcase, hitched me to her hip and made the long journey to NZ. The trip was not easy, I was a restless, curious child, unsettled from saying goodbye to the the constants in my life, and too young to understand the magnitude of our adventure. My mother was young, frightened, and leaving behind everything familiar. The reality of traveling to a foreign country to meet a man she barely knew, to begin the life of raising a family, was a lightening bolt across the bow of her life.
At my very core I can still feel this, this shaking of security, the fear of the unknown, the anticipation and anxiety. But eventually, after many long hours we arrived. And so began the next part of our journey.
My father welcomed us, and slowly, stability began to form. My parents married, my Mum embraced motherhood, and I gained siblings. We settled in a quiet cul-de-sac on a quarter acre section, next to a school, surrounded by friends and a surrogate church family.
My father worked hard to provide, our vegetable garden overflowed, my mother baked, knitted, and sewed. We spent our early childhood barefoot, sun drenched, and healthy. We had the freedom to roam, and were adaptable, resilient and adventurous.
It looked perfect from the outside, with holidays each year, homemade jam, desserts and a roast dinner with all the trimmings every Sunday. But even then, underlying everything there was a tremor. A subtle tension, like the air before a storm.
A child's awareness is often broader than a parent realises. As tension increases the imprint becomes stronger.
Dad coming home late from the pub, telling stories of his travels so often that we knew them verbatim. Mum taking discipline a little too seriously, wielding the religious whip with fervour. Events occur that are hard to understand, shaping your future attitude toward relationships. All seeping into the unconscious, while on the surface, you see your home life as settled and stable.
When the Ground Shook
But inevitably, the tremor becomes a full-blown storm and in a heartbeat everything changes. And this is how it was for us. One day our family, as we knew it, was over. And there was no coming back, try as they may, it was gone. And it that moment, as it unfolded, so was I.
With retrospect, I can see that we were victims of our time. In the late 70's and early 80's the women's movement was redefining roles, the nuclear family was evolving, and latchkey kids were becoming common.
As the eldest child I was independent and capable - and bossy. And I wore the bossy hat often with my siblings. But my internal world was very different, I was a sensitive child, struggling to process a grief that I couldn't name. It may have been different if we had biological family around us, but they were thousands of miles away in the UK. So in the absence of our familial village, we relied on whoever was around - some kind, others harmful.
"It takes a village to raise a child"
The atomic blast of our family breakdown created an instability that sent shockwaves through our lives. Anxiety wasn't part of everyday language back then, but I felt it in my bones. And when the pressure became too much, I ran.
The Runaway Years
With a free-spirited Kiwi psyche, Eastern European gypsy blood coursing through my veins, a core memory of travel to faraway places, and a childhood filled with the adventures of Narnia, the Famous Five and my father's travel stories, I had the perfect recipe for how to cope with our new fractured reality.
Believing myself to be writing my own "Go Ask Alice" story, I went from a nerdy, "goody-good" to a runaway whose picture was being posted as a missing child, I ran, and chased freedom as though it would somehow save me. I left notes of apology, thinking this would make it make sense. It didn't.
I dreamed of having a baby at fourteen - not because I understood motherhood, but because I wanted to feel loved and have someone to love. Now, I see I was replaying patterns that had echoed through my family for generations.
Looking back now, with the wisdom of an adult, I can see the perfect storm that led to this time. The actions of those around me, the societal messages of the time, and the desire and drive to have a different life. A life that had been lost through the demands of parenthood. But as a troubled youth all I felt was the need to escape from what was happening.
Womanhood in the Midst of Chaos
The timing could not have been worse, my menstrual onset occurred in a womens refuge, where - abandoned by the church and in the absence of family - my mother felt she needed to go for support. Not because my father was an abusive man, but because there was no where else to go. There, my process of Madhya began, terrified of my changing body, and confused by what was happening in my family, the only family I knew.
The years that followed could have been a time of kicking goals - a bright child I had high aspirations for myself - but instead they were filled with instability. A chronic runaway, I found it hard to settle and feel secure.
Growing up with a best friend who was also experiencing family dysfunction, meant I had a partner in crime. Together we drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes and marijuana, ditched school and ran amok. Misfits at 14, we hung with older kids, and like hooligans we drove around in cars, on the back of motor bikes, unsupervised, unattended and uncontrollable.
Desperately lonely and lost, I was on a slippery slope.
My hormonal journey was awash with confusion, trauma, and neglect.
Those teenage years were a blur of poor choices. Schools gave up one me, adults gave up on me, and at times, I gave up on myself. I didn't see the path before me - just the wreckage behind me.
But there was something in me - a quiet thread of resilience. Maybe it was woven from my mother's grit, my grandmother's strength, and the survival instincts of the women before them. It was thin, but it was enough to hold on to.
Finding the Anchor
I stumbled into adulthood, battered and bruised, but alive. It arrived not as a grand transformation, but as a gradual claiming of my life. Motherhood became my first real anchor. It didn't magically fix my patterns but it gave me a reason to try. I stumbled, I failed, I got back up. I learned, often painfully that you can't alway escape your inherited stories, but you can change your relationship to them.
I came to understand that maybe my anchor wasn't a fixed point at all. Maybe my anchor was the very thing I resisted - change itself. For what are we if not energy in motion, our DNA unfolding in ripples, carrying us toward our purpose.
Our DNA carries the imprint of those before us, unfolding in patterns that shape our bodies, our minds, and our choices. Change is not just inevitable - it's written into us.
The Wisdom of Change
I used to think that finding stability meant holding onto something tightly, resisting the tides. Now I see it differently. Stability, for me, is about having something to return to - values, self-awareness, the lessons I've learnt - even as the waves keep moving.
In Chinese Medicine, movement is life. Stillness has its place, but too much can cause stagnation. The same is true for change; it can be terrifying, exhausting, even heartbreaking - but it also forces growth.
I am not the girl from the cul-de-sac anymore. I am not the runaway, the refuge child, or even the young mother learning to fly. I am all of them, and I am still becoming.
The Anchor of Change
Life has taught me that stability isn't the absence of movement - it's the presence of something steady within you as you move. For me, that something is the understanding that even in chaos, I am still evolving. My anchor isn't fixed to one place or person - it's the awareness that I can adapt, grow, and rise again.
Change, it turns out, is my constant. And maybe, just maybe, it's my anchor too.
Food for Thought
We all carry stories - threads woven from our ancestors, moments of change, and the anchors that hold us steady.
What is your anchor?
Is it a person, a place, a daily ritual, or something you've only just discovered in yourself?
Share your reflections in the comments, or write them privately in your journal.
If you feel called, pass your story onto another woman - your sister, daughter, or friend - because our voices are stronger when we are heard together.
Rebecca x
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