“Is that a Kiwi accent I hear?” a fellow mum asked me at the park last week.  On the bus, at the playground, in the pub, these are just a few of the places I have bumped into other Kiwi mums over the last few months. Often conversation starts with the basics: where in New Zealand are you from, how long have you been here, where do you live? And very quickly turn to the dilemmas we share: are we doing the right thing by raising our kids here, should we go home, and where is home?

This got me thinking, there must be so many of us over here. And not just mums, but grandmas, aunties, daughters caring for their mums - Kiwi wahine experiencing motherhood in all of its forms. In celebration of New Zealand Mother’s Day, I spoke to some of these women.

Growing up on a one-acre lifestyle block in South Auckland, Katrina Megget didn’t strike her family as being particularly outdoorsy or adventurous. Yet Katrina, 42, has now made a name for herself internationally as an adventure traveller, tramping the entire length of New Zealand, sailing around the UK and scaling a number of volcanoes in a series of ambitious personal quests. Katrina regularly shares her travel experiences in publications like New Zealand’s Wilderness magazine and is a motivational speaker in England. She says going on any kind of big adventure is, in many ways, a “growth process”.

Katrina’s first great adventure was her spontaneous decision to relocate to the UK from Dunedin, 17 years ago. Today, she lives in Kent, where she is a freelance journalist writing mainly on medical science, new drug discoveries and the pharmaceutical industry.

Dozens of Kiwi women - and a few males - gathered at the New Zealand High Commission in central London on March 6th for our International Women’s Day event.

Run by the New Zealand Business Women’s Network and KEA New Zealand, this year’s event championed the theme #EmbraceEquity and encouraged attendees to explore what equity means in our everyday lives. 

After an opportunity for our guests  to mix and mingle, a panel of inspirational Kiwi Wāhine Toa explored what the theme meant to them in their respective fields.