Grief doesn't check your calendar

In Aotearoa New Zealand, Matariki marks the Māori New Year - announced by the rising of a cluster of stars in the winter sky. This week, I attended a session where that constellation was explored through the lenses of many cultures. Different peoples, different traditions, different stories - all looking up at the same stars.

One line from one of the presenters stayed with me:

"One constellation, one sky. Many stories."

Matariki is, at its heart, a time of remembrance. Of looking up together and bringing your whole story to that looking - including the people you've lost. I didn't fully understand how personally that would land for me until I was already standing in front of a room of 60 people, mid-introduction, and my father's name came out of my mouth differently than it ever had before.

The pēpēha
For those unfamiliar with the practice: a pēpēha is a Māori form of introduction that locates you within the geography and genealogy that shaped you. It names "your" mountain, "your" river, your ancestors, your people, your parents. 

It is not a CV. It is not a professional summary. It is an act of bringing your whole self into the room - your origins, your lineage, your belonging. In Aotearoa, it is used across cultures as a way of making connections and situating yourself openly before and with others.

As Tauiwi - a person not of Tangata whenua | People of the land but who calls this land home - I have built my own pēpēha. It names Table Mountain as the maunga | mountain that speaks to my heart. Table Bay as the body of water that alleviates my worries. It traces my tīpuna | ancestry across Java, Burma, India and Holland - four countries, four strands of heritage woven into the person standing before you. It names Cape Town as my birthplace and Wellington as my home.

And near the end, it names my parents.

Ko Shaikham me Mymona ōku mātua | Shaikham and Mymona are my parents.

What happened in the room
I had been practising my pēpēha quietly before the session. And even then - in private, just me and the words - I had started to feel something rising. I didn't know why at first so I kept going.

Then I stood in front of 60 people and began.

By the time I reached my parents' names, I knew.

It was the first large professional gathering since my father, Shaikham, had passed away seven weeks earlier - the first time I had spoken his name out loud in a room full of people as part of who I am. Not in grief or tribute. Just in introduction. Just as fact. Just as: this is where I come from. This is who made me, me.

And the tears came. Not in a breakdown kind of way. And certainly not a performance. Just the body knowing something the diary hadn't accounted for.

Because grief doesn't check your calendar.

I acknowledged it with the room. I told them what was happening - that this was the first gathering of this size since my father had passed, that his name had just caught me off guard, that I was present and I was fine and I wanted them to know why that moment had just looked the way it did.

And then I kept going.

The whakatauki I used… and didn't know I was living
After my introduction, I invited the room to reflect on their existing strengths using a whakatauki | a Māori proverb as a prompt:

Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua | I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past.

The invitation was for them. To look back at what they'd already built, already survived, already carried - and to bring that into the room as resource rather than history.

But standing there, seven weeks out from losing my father, having just spoken his name in public for the first time since his passing - I had already lived the whakatauki before I offered it.

I hadn't planned that and it didn't feel poetic in the moment. It just felt like grief showing up in a professional context, which is unglamorous and slightly inconvenient and entirely well, human. 

But looking back now, that's exactly what walking backwards into the future looks like. You don't get to choose when your past catches up with you. You just choose whether to acknowledge it or hide it.

I chose to acknowledge it.

The hanging thread on honouring yourself
A few weeks ago, I mentioned in passing that taking personal orders to rest after a head knock during football was "a different approach for me - but that's a story for another time."

This is that time. Briefly.

For someone who coaches others on self-awareness, on knowing their values, on showing up fully - I am not always the most natural practitioner of self-care. Pushing through is a default setting. Rest can sometimes feel like falling behind.

But something has been shifting. Grief (or maybe it's just the ever-greying hair) has a way of insisting that you treat yourself with the same care you'd extend to someone you love. That you honour your own limits the way you'd honour theirs. That you stop moving long enough to feel what's actually there.

The rest after the head knock was a small act of that. Quiet. Practical. And more significant than it looked.

What this has to do with you
I work with professionals who spend enormous energy managing how much of themselves to bring into a room. Calculating what's safe to show. Editing out the parts that feel too personal, too raw, too complicated for a professional context.

And I understand the impulse. Professionalism has a particular performance attached to it - composed, contained, prepared.

But what I've come to believe and what this week has reminded me, is that the most credible thing you can bring into a room is your whole story. Not as performance. Not as oversharing. But as the honest acknowledgement that you are a person, with a past, with people you carry with you, with losses that don't disappear because you've put on a lanyard and opened a slide deck. 

The pēpēha asks you to name where you come from before you say anything else. Not because your origins define your future - but because knowing them, claiming them, speaking them out loud is what gives you ground to stand on. That's not vulnerability for its own sake. That's authentic authority.

And sometimes it shows up as tears in front of 60 people. Mid-introduction. Unplanned.

And you acknowledge it, and you keep going.

Final thought
Matariki invites us to look up at the same stars and bring our own stories to them. This week, mine included a father whose name I'm still learning to say in the past tense.

So here are the questions I'm sitting with and I'd invite you to sit with them too:

• What from your past are you carrying into the rooms you're walking into - and are you acknowledging it, or managing it?

• Who or what do you name when you introduce yourself fully - and, importantly, what gets edited out?

• And what would it look like to walk backwards into your future with your eyes genuinely fixed on everything your past has given you?

Because the stars don't care about your professional context.

They're just there. Constant. Carrying the names of everyone who looked up at them before us.

Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua. 

Go on. Take the Next Step.