title: Reflections of a practitioner: purely a journey of the heart.
abstract: 32 years ago a man from the villages of Manunu (Upolu) and Fagamalo (Savai'i) and a woman from the inner-town village of Matautu tai-Apia (Upolu) gave birth to their middle child and only daughter Siautu Tiomai Alefaio. The man left a prominent position in the police department's CIB in Samoa to become a factory worker in Hellaby Meats of Mt. Wellington, New Zealand. The woman, a beautiful dancer in Aggie Grey's dance troupe and also an upcoming photographer at the age of 12, left all her aspirations of education to attain a job in order to make enough money for the prospective dream of 'making it big' in the 'land free-flowing with milk and honey'--Aotearoa New Zealand. For some years Aotearoa was exactly that, with money enough to bring over all their other siblings and eventually their mothers. My father (now a Parish minister of a Presbyterian church) and mother (an Early-Childhood educator) both self-sacrificially gave up their own hopes and dreams to pursue a bigger one--of prosperity for future generations. As a registered psychologist I have seen many journey stories similar to mine, and it is my own hope and dream that our contribution as people from "Le Vasa Pasefika" (vast ocean of the Pacific region) will inevitably pave the way for future generations to embrace all that they are and become all that they have been called to be.
authors: Siautu
authors: S
authors: Alefaio
mesh_terms: D018864:Cultural Diversity; D003469:Culture; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D005006:Ethnicity; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D008960:Models, Psychological; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011594:Psychometrics; D018947:Samoa; D012931:Social Environment; D012933:Social Identification; D012938:Social Perception; D014195:Travel