ABOUT

FASHION - EDIBLE ART - EPHEMERA - OBJET D’ART - PSYCHOANALYTICAL MATERIALISATIONS

𝐿𝑒𝓈𝓈 𝒷𝓇𝒶𝓃𝒹, 𝓂𝑜𝓇𝑒 𝓡𝓮𝓷𝓪𝓲𝓼𝓼𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮 𝓦𝓸𝓶𝓪𝓷 | The 𝕼𝖚𝖊𝖊𝖓 of making🥤from 🍋

Kia Ora! My name is Alexandra Murcott and I am an artist from New Zealand who calls New York, USA; home. Thank you for taking a geeze at the things I create on my journey toward personal truth, self-love, and acceptance. I hope what you encounter here feels thoughtful, human, and illuminating.

Since 2006, under my nom de plume, I’ve created a wide range of work across many mediums. Moena Moxham is less a brand more a living record of growth through creativity. On the surface, I make objet d’ art, fashion & accessories collections, paintings, drawings & edible art. But the true heart of my work leaves no tangible trace. It lives in moments shared with others—fleeting or sustained—life-shifting conversations, presence during crossroads, and the exchange of energy that happens when people meet with openness. Creating art around the world has changed my life and, I know with certainty, the lives of others. Surviving an unusual and challenging existence with hope, joy, and whimsy intact feels like my greatest achievement—though I’m grateful that people also enjoy the physical things I make along the way.

What is presented on this website is a visual narrative to the many micro-lifetimes I’ve squeezed into one. These chapters often ran in parallel with love affairs, both physical and fanciful, and form part of my ongoing unmaking. This About page became one of my favorite artworks. I’ve been tweaking it for years—not just as inspiration for others, but as a bookmark for myself when things get dark and I need reminding of how far I’ve come.

This portfolio exists because of epic hard graft, countless mistakes, trials, and tribulations, a fair amount of hustling my cute ass, and the financial and emotional support of family, employers, friends, lovers, and all the people who saw something in me and chose to share time doing cool things together. What matters most here is the reinvention—the problem solving required when life throw curveballs. What you see represents thousands of dollars and nearly two decades of diligent work; what you don’t see are the many hands, minds, and hearts that held me up along the way.

Most of my work is made by hand, but the real magic emerges through collaboration. I work closely with extraordinary artisans: glass artist Emily Doerflein, cashmere weavers in Kathmandu, and Michael and Kristen of WellSculpt in upstate New York, among others. I value connection so deeply that I’ll often travel across the world to meet collaborators face-to-face. Sharing resources, ideas, and opportunity is what compels me to keep creating. Making things helps me work through my own thoughts—but it’s infinitely more satisfying when it supports others’ growth and livelihoods too.

My professional path—up, down and sideways; under the radar, or off the expected trajectory—has been a quiet blessing. Had there been more eyes and opinions on me, I doubt I would have worked through my challenges as organically as I did. I’m grateful the universe kept me somewhat hidden while I figured things out in my own way.

“So, Mrs… What do you do; in simple terms; summarize it”.. I hear you ask. Err well, let me think… What do I do??! .. I can doooo many things, but what’s the point of it all? Who am I, what kind of artist am I? My art is quite personal, is it connected to a bigger purpose? Are my creations valuable or frivolous? Is this business or therapy? Well… lets see- this is where I have got to…

My work is purpose-driven, and often born from unresolved life moments. I’m not particularly good at being visible, strategic, or business-minded. I fail often. I don’t create for demographics, or trends, and I don’t desire to be shaped into something universally palatable. I make beautiful things from my not-so-beautiful problems.

I think you’ll come to ask this question by the end of reading this page; “why make life so hard? Why not give up and go get a ‘normal’ job?” This question comes up cyclically; I can’t divert so drastically after going in this far. I always wanted to build something unique, something that no-one could take away from me in the sense that what I had forged was attached to my authenticities. At this point in my life I have to invest what little time I have outside Momming into what I visualize; I just can’t juggle more like I used to being split over multiple jobs. But don’t get me wrong, I have waves of pain, of being down where I just want to throw the towel in on everything. I always come back to this: I don’t think I would have been given my gifts if I wasn’t meant to use them, and, around really goddamn spiky corners are truly magnificent things. Sometimes the main challenge is holding on. I need to read this again…

Disclaimer: This ‘About’ page is not succinct. It is self-indulgent, a bit convoluted, and prone to wandering. It at times it jumps around between topics and drifts into funkiness. I didn’t really write this for anyone else to read, it became a place of working. If you desire a neat and tidy short wee blurb, you may want to stop here. Make yourself a cup of tea and move onto something else scintillating like folding your smalls or hunting out some chocolate. Stockists, exhibition history and testimonials are located at the bottom of this novella if you’d like to scroll down. If you so desire, here you can click on hyper links to the boutiques I worked at and see some of my highlighted achievements. If you choose to proceed to read about me, good luck to you- I am in admiration, you may be becoming a dinosaur- a rare being who wants to seek for ideas rather than be shown them. I hold no liability to what level of betwixed-ness you come out in at the bottom of this long About page with a lot of external thinking written out, but I do hope it is a squiggly higgildepigidly one that perhaps made you question things a little, gave you insight into the mind of this artist, and where you may have had an ‘ahhhah’ or ‘ohhh’ in the process.

I should also say: I don’t think I’m special for doing this. We’re all on a journey of self-discovery—some of us are just more compelled to dig around in it. Life knocks us about, especially if you’ve thrown yourself into it fully, but also some people just get really difficult things to deal with (and if that’s you, well done—it takes courage to own problems and work through them). I can’t help but dig; when I see or feel something, I have to go and find out what it’s about.

I have come to realize that the way I look a the world and tackle problems is unique. I am fully applied and I try concepts and activities out first hand which also comes with making a lot of mistakes and having to readjust. I may read a bit here and there ad I talk a lot to other people, but I am not choosing doctrines based on intellectual assessment alone, and I haven’t come to my concepts of spirituality by sitting with hours and hours of gurus, therapists or scholars. I very much feel things out within day to day living. It is feelings that push me to make big decisions. I recently stopped dying my hair, and I’m not advocating for everyone to do this, but for me the feeling of ‘covering’ my hair every 8 weeks was not longer serving my soul in a positive manner and rather making me feel like I was hiding. I remember when I gave up smoking, it. was a similar thing, in that I had got so fed up of having to find my lighters and cigarettes ever morning- I was tired of feeling chained into a loop having to run in a rut of actions every day. Yes, being educated and curious is a big part of this. something peaks my interest, I will go read or find someone to talk to, but the motivation to change that comes from within, and this is in reverse too- like when I got into yoga and the gym and then was driving myself too hard, following plans that were leaving me bereft and taxed rather than building me, and so I recognized that I needed to feel in balance not feel bamboozled into keeping up with some routine someone who wasn’t in my body had written on a computer possibly in another climate.

So. Here we go, strap in for the ride: validation and shame, energy and mortality, sacrifice, healing, ecstasy, grief & pain, gender, legacy, sex, balance, pleasure, fear, frustration, beauty, vanity, purpose, self-doubt, courage. The yin and yang of emotional experience—peaks and troughs, love and loneliness, patterns repeated, choices made and their consequences. What you see on this website are the physical manifestations of riding through, over, and sometimes beneath these undulations, and how I’ve used creativity to cope, process, and restore while moving through this wild, dynamic, and often tumultuous thing we call life.

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I am a passionate creative. I thrive on connection, stimulation, and growth via exploration. My accomplishments are diverse, yet on close inspection you will find there are key underlying principals and consistencies—most notably an attention to detail and a commitment to precision, guided by focus and vision.

‘Moena Moxham’ is a pseudonym for my creative personalities and expressions; think less brand and more Renaissance woman. I move fluidly between different energies and activities, not to perform gender, but to follow what resonates. I’m uninterested in reinforcing labels—especially when the fight against them often strengthens their hold. What matters to me is authenticity in action.

For a long time, emotions and interpersonal relationships were not my strongest arena. What you see now reflects the ways I’ve learned to understand them while streamlining my thinking and decision-making. When my thoughts become too noisy, and I become tired of the tennis match between the questions and answers in my head, I head into physical activities to look after myself and to feed my spirit. Most often to drive, fly, walk, motorcycle, solo-travel and recharge my soul by experiencing new environments. Sometimes people mis-judge my love for ‘extreme’ activities as a desire for recklessness. They are deeply considered practices of risk assessment that quiet my internal monologue by anchoring me in the immediate. They demand assertiveness, presence, and responsibility. Through them, I gain fresh perspectives on how to live & think.

I follow organic “pebbles of interest.” My travel, like my life, is shaped by conversations, people, opportunities, and curiosities as they arise. Recently my oldest daughter Adira started reading the Magic School Bus series. “You ARE The Frizz!” she burst through our front door one day and said “Mom, you are the Magic School Bus!- you find things we like, you get us interested about them and then you help us learn more!”. I think this might be the pinnacle of comparison! Immersion in new cultures and rigorous introspection are central to my creative process, which unfolds in three phases: explore | reflect | create. My life itself is a crafted artwork.

Speed, for me, is not about velocity alone. Whether riding through winding roads, snowboarding, flying, painting, or making music, I seek the sweet spot where precision becomes flow. In that space, action becomes a moving meditation—my mind prioritizing only what matters now, my body and machine dancing as one. The beauty of that smoothness is entirely my responsibility, and there is liberation in its singularity and consequence. Anxiety, I’ve learned, is soothed by sustained, conscious risk evaluation. I’m humbled daily by my limits—some days the clarity isn’t there, and that, too, is wisdom.

Though my literal speed can be high, my psychological pace is slow and attentive. I savor detail, romance the moment, and delight in aesthetics of time and place. This has often frustrated others who wished I would narrow my focus or “stick to one thing.” But I never stopped playing. Actually I think it's immensely important to keep doing. My creativity unfolds in seasons, reflecting both myself, the feminine wax and wane, and the world as it is in that moment. Like life, my work is many interlinked chapters.

There are different facets to my creativity which are influenced by sexuality; the intensity of this energy, my soul’s orientation towards physical & spiritual attraction, my moral direction towards these powers, my ownership over how I share this, how periods of abstinence increase creativity, control v relinquishment; dominate v submission, and my primal desire to watch things grow and to nurture, are attributes that instantly come to mind. My passionate nature + the attention my physical appearance affords me has been a complicated gift- one that has been roses; long, perpetrating painful thorns included. I didn’t naturally gel with being pretty, and I wanted to be accepted for my abilities not my looks.

I am endlessly curious—about myself, about skills, about experience. I never wanted to just be a “pretty girl” on the plane; I wanted to fly it. I didn’t want to wear other peoples fashion, I wanted to create it. I couldn’t find or afford the beautiful things I wanted so I made them. My competitiveness is internal: to outgrow my limits and become the woman I imagine. Though I can be energized by external chaos, my inner world is meticulously ordered. I juggle many projects by moving between mental rooms. I hold myself to a strong moral compass. When I fall short, I create. It is within the ‘I could have done better’s’ and regrets that I find solace in making something lovely. These things are like my apology to the Universe; “I’m sorry I fucked up” they say.. “I see my mistake. Here is something beautiful from my soul as an offering.”

There are particular elements associated to being able to create as a woman and how this is impacted by the hormonal rollercoaster we ride. In my experience, this ebb and flow is integrally intertwined with our qualities of being ultimate creators, but this honor comes with intense fluctuating emotional challenges that require a multitude of different types of care & open-mindedness. A lot of the activities I love to do have parallels with climatic pleasure- the adrenaline of a perfectly executed chase of cat & mouse through heavy traffic, the sensuous vibrations of playing the violin resonating through my heart and breasts, the sensation of bringing an airplane higher and higher to the point of stall… It is primal & sensual delving into both adrenaline & deep creativity. Both wax and wane; are unsustainable at high intensity and volatile in essence. As in nature, beauty lies in the irresistibility of impermanence.

I am drawn to fleeting experiences—edible art, shared moments, laughter, conversations, motion, sensation. I cherish things that don’t endure materially but leave lasting impressions. Perhaps this is rebellion against a world obsessed with tangibility. I want to give what can’t be taken: a memory, a feeling, a hidden treasure within someone else. I value deeply how these gifts can help us when times get tough and we need pebbles of joy to remind us of being loved.

Detail has always mattered to me—not perfectionism, but awareness. I learned early to turn that attention inward, organizing my internal world while others focused on external milestones. I wanted a vibrant, cinematic life, unaware at first that such richness required being broken and rebuilt. Delight, I’ve learned, cannot exist without discomfort.

In a culture that equates success with monetization and ever-increasing visibility, I’ve had to redefine success on my own terms, as those outcomes were not my primary aim. For a long time, I compared myself to commercially celebrated figures—stars, influencers, famous artists—and saw only what I lacked. Over time, I came to understand that my indefinability is a strength, that anonymity has afforded me deep and intimate relationships I might otherwise have missed, that sharing our imperfections, defects and difficulties is valuable and unites us; and, that moving through life as a truthful, engaged human is, in itself, a worthy and honorable pursuit.

I guard my privacy, and enjoy my anonymity greatly. I don’t gel naturally with social media, and although I enjoy sharing tid-bits of my life & my daughters growing up, I don’t want it to be an open book. My friends value my discreteness too- in my world, people would prefer to not always have their locations, assets or names broadcast. Whatever happened to a little mystery? I think that’s rather sexy.

I adore being Mom and I love being social; real social- nightclubs, bars, decadent dinners and late night street vendors. Dive bars, fashion shows, getting together with people in every shape and form. My default introversion is offset by loving being Mommy where I revel in doing fabulous, extravagant, adventurous things with my family, friends & daughters. I love empowering women in particular and adore my girlfriends. When I am flush I reenergize by freely traveling solo where I wish and like the responsibility of my own choices; especially when I am luxuriating somewhere exotic, adventuring or ‘lost’ somewhere up a mountain in the snow, flying somewhere last minute, shopping for unique treasures, or in south east Asia squatting on a tiny plastic chair eating offal from a street vendor with a motorbike behind me and a backpack strapped to it.

This is the life I continue to craft—intuitive, layered, transient, and alive.

As I enter 2026, I can see how much of my earlier work was about being seen and validated—externally and internally—shaped by early rejection and a belief that I had to be “more” to be worthy. Recently, after time in France, Monaco, and Italy, I realized I’d already arrived at what I was searching for: self-approval & acceptance of myself good, bad included. I accept my choices and mistakes, and I accept my shames and joys with equal reverence. I feel a slowing, a settling. After decades of jumping—professionally and personally—I’m choosing to protect my energy with reverence. Now the metronome feels paused, just before something new begins. I am here. And I’m curious—who will arrive to meet me?

…

But let’s rewind a little.

I have lived a very colorful life. I’m deeply protective of my privacy, but here is an abridged outline. The time will come for the full telling—this is not yet that moment.

I was born on the 11th of August, 1984 in Wellington, New Zealand, shortly before midnight with violet eyes, an attribute my Mom said caused quite a hubbub at the hospital where my Grandfather was Chief of Surgery. An only child to upper-middle-class parents, I attended Samuel Marsden Collegiate School for Girls from just before age four through my early teens. I adored school and excelled both academically and socially. I was a vibrant, empathetic child with unusual focus—my mother says that even as a baby I would fixate on tasks until I resolved them.

From very early on, my inner world was vivid and intense. I see people in colors and, well it’s hard to describe exactly- it’s like the different vibrations of the air around each of us. Some people to me have flickers of hues & textures of energy. I hold memories from well before my first birthday, as do my daughters now. As a whippersnapper I had very interesting visions/ dreams/ hallucinations called hypnogogics which happen in the space before sleep and for me were superimposed on my vision over what I could see around me. They had profound audio components which would start with the sounds of my heartbeat or breathing or other repetitive noises, and I was able to create elaborate rhythms and layer the sounds in my environment around me. Until I became proficient at manipulating them, they could become terrifyingly overwhelming and I would panic as I would not be able to get out unless I screamed and moved about. My parents were amazing in helping me learn how to calm within them, and, through this I was able to teach myself how to produce the visions + sounds and learned how to enter and exit these states intentionally. Through this training they became a place of creativity and taught me very early on that my mind was powerful. I firmly believe this was the formative construction of the spaces for my third eye to play within the rooms of my mind. I was incredibly fortunate at this point to have parents who chose presence and patience over fear and medication.

A busy, noisy mind and a strong moral compass have been both blessing and burden. Learning to filter ideas, sensations, and imagination has been lifelong work. It concerns me how quickly high-level creativity is now pathologized rather than understood. These abilities are not defects—they are the very things that allow me to curate, manifest, and bring ideas into form. I’ve first hand been shown profound spiritual and existential experiences—from telepathy to being contacted from the other side; moments of deep intuition, connection, and knowing. I believe these capacities exist in all of us. Children feel them naturally; by adulthood we are taught not to listen. When we stop listening, the messages don’t disappear—we just lose fluency in their language.

I’m a Kiwi, a mongrel of many ethnicities, an immigrant in my home country, an immigrant in my new one (USA). A soul filled with wanderlust. I come from a lineage of science + arty brains and personalities who emigrated and fought for their visions and dreams. My Grandfather; a maverick internationally respected surgeon, operated on the Queen’s Mom & other illustrious celebrities and also designed & engineered new ways to move patients and other faculties at Wellington Hospital. My GPa Gibby was as unique as he was humble and he inspired me greatly to focus on doing in life, not accolades.

At his memorial I recited a version of the following story. I felt it fitted my Grandfather perfectly; he was this boy is whole life:

My Grandfather’s passing had a huge impact on my life. The afternoon of the memorial service I went off to a friend's and went skydiving. As I was drifting back to land I felt the presence of my beloved profoundly. The Starfish story hit me hard and I spent the following days redesigning my purposes and where I saw my life going into the future.

Alongside my Gibby there are other ancestors who had did amazing things: A farmer who invented new ways of doing agricultural activities and fought to protect a petrified forrest from Taupo erupting which was buried under his farm, a wildcard missionary who adventured into mainland China to spread his messages, spiritual healers, Irish militia, a unique strategic planner + cartographer + champion of the underdog who’s a bangin’ motorcyclist, a Veterinary Surgeon who emigrated from Ireland and was formative in setting up quarantines and agricultural protections we still use today in New Zealand. & go-getting women; gold miners, a confectioner, bare back horse ridin’ fabulous milliner, an art history expert, inspiring teachers, and a Māori princess who we believe one of my great great grandfather’s had had a love affair with. Entrepreneurs, a PanAm air hostess from the glory days of aviation, motorcyclists & my great great grandmother (pictured); a Bugatti racing driver & industrious gold miner’s daughter who also raced a Triumph motorbike in the 1920’s - yep, dem dames were spirited!

There is heavy-handed fire in my blood—Irish, a sprinkle of Italian & French. English & New Zealander- a demographic we can’t even choose on a census yet we are generations deep. My people weren’t laid-back. They were wildcards, underdogs, rebels. It has taken me decades to understand my own makeup well enough to accept it rather than trying to dilute or eliminate parts of myself. When I became a mother, I came across a saying that landed hard: “Only parents with gentle children can gentle parent. The rest of us have to square up and fight for our lives with the tiny bullies we made.” My life has mirrored this lesson—learning where fear and dominance collide, in myself and others, and where to temper it, and where to channel this passion into greatness.

Through relationships with humans and animals, across cultures and environments, I’ve spent a lifetime trying to understand and forgive these primal reactions. I don’t offer a perfect solution or a manifesto for living. I’ve simply found healing through activity, connection, and presence—and in the process, helped heal myself and some of those I’ve shared space with. In a world increasingly disconnected from embodied living, this feels vital to share. Humanity lives inside humanism, and our accelerating digital investments are pulling us away from what keeps us well and connected.

New Zealand is a unique cultural mixing-pot located East of Australia, just up from Antartica, in the South Pacific - nope it’s not in Europe (yes, sounds like that innit)… or ‘that little island’ down from Australia thank you.. that’s Tasmania. We are ingenious, resilient, & fiercely proud of what we call our “little piece of paradise.” Everyone there has come from somewhere else. Surviving Aotearoa’s climate (New Zealand’s proper name meaning land of the long white cloud)—both atmospheric and psychological—is an achievement in itself, something I didn’t fully appreciate until I lived elsewhere. Alongside our ingenuity sits a deep obsession with dominance and ownership, which fuels much of our simmering discontent.

I have often been misread by appearance alone. Assumptions collated from my outward appearance as to what type of woman I am, in most cases are misinterpreted. Although I may look pakeha and have whakapapa linking me to this I am also not just this demographic: 'a light-skinned non-Polynesian New Zealander, especially one of British birth or ancestry as distinct from a Māori; a European or white person’. I deeply dislike this term & the negative connotations surrounding it. Although ‘poaka ma’ is the literal translation of white pig in Māori, ‘pakeha’ by cultural appropriation has also become known to mean this. For that part of my life I defined as a New Zealander, a cultural demographic which isn’t offered on forms for nomination.

Internally I align more with Japanese, Indian, Arabic cultures and, Buddhist/ Bahá’i & Eastern religions; masculine and feminine energies without allegiance to either; a child of the world I see myself to be- as I believe us all to be; sensual sentient beings comprised of the same matter; stardust and moonbeams. My ancestors were many colors.. yet I felt forced into picking sides or was tossed into ones by others. I was very confused by this- I didn’t feel like I fitted in anywhere, and yet I felt like I fitted in everywhere.

Reading about reincarnation and other concepts presented in religions different to my upbringing gave me a better understanding of the feelings I felt towards my own existence on Earth, for this lifetime around. I strongly feel I have lived other lifetimes in other skins; why would I show prejudice towards another when that is another version of me, living a life I could have led?

From an early age, I felt deep resonance with certain cultures and people. My Indian neighbors in Hataitai, the Morar’s flood back to my memories as I sit here writing now: the smell of spices in Grandma Morar’s kitchen, the sound of traditional sitar music and the feel of the embroidery and vibrancy in colors of Sari. The Japanese netsuke and lacquered cabinetry my grandparents collected. My nickname in Kindergarten was ‘Hot Lips Hoolihan’ due to the samosa & pakora in my lunchbox. These encounters felt cellular, familiar, like remembering rather than discovering. That sense of meant-to-be-ness, paired with my ability to visualize in detail, has allowed me to master—or re-master—skills and practices that resonate deeply with my soul. These early memories and experiences were collected until I could seek first hand experiences in these cultures and lands.

I was encouraged academically and creatively, across both traditionally feminine crafts and male-dominated pursuits. What I lacked was guidance in how to grow into womanhood with grace—to understand the power of the feminine without rejecting my other energies. This portfolio is the record of that search: learning from other souls, cultures, and practices how to nurture my power while accepting all of myself beyond labels.

In the early 2000s, Wellington, New Zealand pulsed with music, film, and possibility. My twenties were wild, vibrant, electric. Then fear crept in—over-legislation, risk aversion, control—ironically as Aotearoa was being marketed as the adventure capital of the world.  You could bungee jump, white water raft, snowboard & ski on volcanos, hike in remoteness, motorbike on beautiful windy roads, bathe in geothermal pools, experience Māori culture, indulge in local indigenous art & cutting edge fashion, or hunt deer from helicopters within the landscapes of ‘Lord of The Rings’. Our ingenious can do attitude, and friendliness was world renowned, and it truly was the remote land of milk & honey. A perfect storm brewed: internet exposure to what others were building internationally, a small compliant population, mass media fear, and Tall Poppy Syndrome metastasizing into a corrosive epidemic. Over time, compliance replaced courage, and ambition became suspect.

Tall Poppy Syndrome is an insidious cultural behavior which is rampant in my home country, and is quite a hard thing to explain to outsiders. Recently I was chatting to a young NZ friend of mine in NYC; we were talking about conversational power play, and how this compares to the US and other places. Kiwi’s like to jib each other in conversation- there is a tendency to throw out veiled compliments and the nature of the conversation is to try and one up each other with a bigger slag off eg: “you look great tonight.. if you are dressed up to be auctioned off!.'“ You get built up, but then instantly slammed down. Now, people would argue- it’s a good natured jibe! But I think it’s much more poisonous than that. It’s conversational, relational, systemic. These “jokes” accumulate, conditioning people to accept toxic behavior and shrink themselves.

Culturally we accept stealing someone else’s power in a negative way; there is a looser and a winner in interactions and even though these may seem ‘not important’ or given in jest, these comments, this type of interaction eats away at one over time. It wears you down and at night, or when you feel fragile and vulnerable. Comments come back and become prominent in your thoughts within distorted impressions while feeding your subconscious to spit back negativity. This starts young and is prevalent through to elderly, and where is may be found in a conversation, it’s also found in relationships, business dealings, driving (yes, someone might give you the thumbs up that they like your car, but they ain’t letting you in on the motorway merger) and the collective conscious in how the community interacts.

I grew tired of being labeled an “overachiever” like it was a disease. Tired of snide comments in passing, of projects being sabotaged because others felt threatened. What scared me most was how normalized this became—how dangerous it is to dream loudly in an environment hostile to aspiration.

New Zealanders are being conditioned to be compliant and reactive to assertiveness and this is really not healthy… because in order to design a different path, one is going to need a decent dose of exactly those traits. I feel that the community in NZ is being mollycoddled into thinking that making your dreams happen somehow comes about without having to stick your head on the block for them, or that someone is going to give you a guiding hand. It simply doesn’t work like that, if you want something you have to fight for it from your ideas, but when you live in a place where striving for what you want is dangerous and incites jealousy and rage, you’re going to end up either thinking there is something deeply wrong with yourself, or you are going to have to get out. I succumbed for a long time into the first, so far that I too was nearly one of NZ’s deadly statistics.

There are interesting theories about the four main forms of stealing power, or dominating someone’s power in an interaction. Intimidation, aggression, woe-is-me or aloof. In all my travels, I have not immersed myself in a culture which uses these as liberally and intensely as New Zealand on each other. The UK was similar, and even Canada had similarities, Japan has ijime which is a very dangerous type of bullying which I felt was akin, yet I would argue that this is understood in a much better way than young New Zealand. It’s not a coincidence that New Zealand and Japan have the highest suicide rates in the world along with Finland and Korea. The USA (and I’m in New York to be specific) in comparison is buoyant and playful- people are excited to interact and enjoy hearing about ideas and thoughts on new projects. They celebrate success, conversationally & spiritually.  People are attuned to want to build another up, allow people to strive to express themselves; to find an edge against the system to succeed,  and there is an active push to help each other find resources to build the things we have the guts to dream of and be ambitious for. These differences have been profound.

And yet—I love Aotearoa deeply. The wind, the weather, the wildness shaped my resilience. Battling Welly wind (regular 120km wind patterns, in fact the windiest city on Earth), and wonderful dramatic weather gifted me a resilience to life & what it throws you in general, while teaching me to become symbiotic with Mother Nature and her wildness rather than push against her. The landscapes, cultures, oceans, and skies fed my soul. The liberal side of our community let me inquire into my creative personality while I had access to hiking and snowboarding volcanoes (need I say more?), Māori, Pacific & Asian cultures, diverse food & religions. I grew up with whales and water spouts visiting Wellington harbor, swimming with the stingrays & kina in the shallows of Oriental Bay in the warm summer evenings, the Southern Lights and meteor showers from crystal clear skies, cow tipping (if you know, you know lol), vintage car and motorbike culture, and I was able to be let loose in the beautiful geography to explore and have fun without the pressures of big city intensities, health insurance and privatized health care, and the race of a lot of people doing a lot of things.

Even my family + communities risk aversion made me question my values and desires, and the crazy cost of living (NZ is incredibly expensive; personally by far the most expensive place I have lived and worked and that includes big cites like London, Tokyo and New York.. ) carved my tenacity towards making my goals happen. Comparatively, you can be relatively penurious on a world scale and get a lot done if you are resourceful in NZ because people like to help each other learn new skills, but it is taxing and stressful fighting the hiked cost of utilities, food, amenities and the delays in getting anything in and out. Aotearoa gave me freedom, creativity, and grit. She moulded me, whether I saw it good or bad, those things have made me become me. New Zealander’s; Kiwi’s as we are called (Phillipino, Malaysian, Māori, Thai, British, Dutch…and every denomination and ethnic group you can imagine in-between) are beautiful, ingenious people. That’s why it hurts to see fear and division tearing such a special place apart.

People from other countries think that New Zealand is a utopia and ideal place to live- and look, it may be yours, these are my impressions through my personal experiences; another’s can be totally contrasting from a squillion different factors. I definitely think if you are considering a trip to visit, by all means, doooo ittttttt! Every single community on the planet has issues and hidden social nuances which only become apparent after time, and I believe NZ was not meant to remain my home otherwise I wouldn’t have been pushed to grow in a different direction. But I think a little more honesty is needed about what is going on at home.. I am not the only one who feels this way.

I do feel that NZ is also a precursor to the rest of the world. What has been implemented at home are often social constructs which are taken on by bigger nations. We are the testing ground- a nice tidy western population at the bottom of the world to be a petri dish… be careful- what you hear is not what it feels like to live here, to raise a family, to do business.

If NZ was a human she would be a hot supermodel glinting from a giant billboard in Time Square.. dazzling & airbrushed to be all that and a bag of chips, but in reality, vacant & suffering from self hatred, spiritual anxiety & being torn from the inside out by racial division, jealously, bickering and deep internal fracture.

I say all this not from bitterness, but from love—and from hope that naming the truth might still make room for healing.

….

Early childhood was joyful. Around age ten, everything fractured. My family was pulled apart by violence, deception, legal conflict, and trauma. As I entered adolescence and began forming my own identity, my parents—loving but terrified—became increasingly controlling and violent. Fear distorted perception. Home collapsed. I spent time living with other families, on the streets, and eventually I was put into foster care. I became one of the first young people to access the Independent Youth Benefit.

At about 10ish I had got really sick with a tummy bug. I used to be mercilessly bullied at Marsden- tied to chairs at lunch, my stationary distributed along the concrete ledge outside the 2 floors up windows for me to try and retrieve before the end of recess (my outdoor building scaling in a skirt got pretty refined); bullied for being smart, bullied for being pretty, bullied for being nice. After I had had a week off with this bug, I had lost a lot of my puppy fat and I went back to school, well skinnier and with a new found confidence. I had lost my softness, but it had also ingratiated me to a dangerous new tool- I LOVE food, but did not come from a family with a good history with it, my Mom, and I say this with no blame, has struggled with eating and depression for decades which laid a negative framework around these things early on, and this tummy bug showed me two things- I could eat what I loved, I didn’t put on weight, but it also brought into line my very vivid ability to visualize things and the torrent of noise in my mind- especially later in the day as I got more tired… “I’ll do this for a little bit, it’s just helping me out”, I thought, “I’ll keep it under control, just until I am stronger.” Sadly anorexia and bulimia doesn’t work like that, it becomes a cage for your mind; the more it makes you shameful and afraid, the more it consumes you into a cycle of feeling inadequate and sick.

Up until twelve, I had been “the best.” After the family breakdown, I gave up on being exceptional. Excellence hadn’t protected me—it had brought attention, pressure, and rejection. I wanted to walk my own path because I felt distress lived on both sides of my life; whether I gave everything to be the best, or if I tried to be honest and voice my opinions on choices that mattered to me. I began a darker path. And it was incredibly self destructive - I didn’t like to directly hurt others, (but inevitably through collateral damage I did), but I was violently abusive towards myself. Drugs/ sugar/ alcohol/  (although there is another side to this too- nights out dancing at raves also healed me more than any pharmaceutical ever could, and in-fact drove me towards many remedies to wellness), questionable relationships build on foundations of mutual pain, and self hatred carved a void through my soul. There was a period around 14 where I was deeply unwell, reckless and off the rails. There was a life-size photo of me at Wellington police station, I had been banned from the central city, I’d knocked out the Wellington police station sergeant, nearly OD’d in a pool of my own vomit in a McDonalds and I was dabbling in transporting LSD in my private school uniform between dealers.

My assigned police youth aid officer was one of the first adults who set aside my inflammatory behavior for a moment to listen to me. He recognized that what I was doing were consequence of me trying to process what I was feeling. In many ways, I owe my life to him for taking the time to see me, to listen and to separate the acting out from what was driving me to do it. I was on a knife edge. This pivotal opportunity has always inspired me to give this grace to others and not be intimidated by actions flailing on the surface, but use them as clues to unravel the emotional distress charging below.

When an opportunity came for me to make a decision about my schooling I put my foot down for change on my terms. At this intersection I saw how my private school covered up unsightly realities and yet pointed fingers of disgrace to others; “You’re going from the best school in New Zealand to the lowest decile school in the city!!, You will be Head Girl & Dux, if you go there you will be nothing!” my Principal berated me in her office before leaving to attend Wellington High School. Wellington High had a lot of creative opportunities, but at the time bad press, but I was steadfast in what I wanted to do and it was not without a lot of thought that I had made my decision.

I attended WHS for a year and half—an experience that quite literally rerouted my life (I was privileged to have Rob McLeod as my art teacher and where I progressed in the inclusive authentic creative community of WHS). It stripped away illusions about status and exposed the deep divide between appearance and reality. I thrived there. I will always be grateful to Marsden for teaching me how to learn, but Wellington High taught me how to live. I left 1/4 of the way through 6th form, where I had really only enrolled so I could complete NZ Young Designer of the Year in Christchurch (I came third for Fashion Design) to do the Massey University Foundation Certificate in Design for early entry into college for my Bachelor of Design degree. I was 15 turning 16. Flatting with people in the 20’s and running my life independently, but not all was well.

I really want to put in here that I feel for the situation my parents were dealing with too. I was provided many amazing opportunities by my family and I feel for them and the fear they must have felt when I started growing up. Mom wanted to create a safe and protective home while also being a corporate power woman. My Dad was invested in creating strategies for emergency services utilizing new mapping and technologies. Both were honorable in their pursuits. My Mom and Dad tried to protect me from the ugliness of what was happening around them in their personal lives, but they got caught up in trying to control the wrong pieces. They feared watching me make mistakes and superimposed someone else’s story onto mine. Instead of seeing me as a young woman whom they had instilled all the best qualities & good judgment they could into, they slipped into being terrified of watching me find my way while superimposing another family members’s choices over my own. I was not my family member, but I can see how their fear of him became only the qualities they could see in me. I am also a lot less conservative than my parents, and I can appreciate how affronting this may have been. Now as a Mom myself, I have first hand compassion towards my parents choices towards the complexities of raising littlelies while protecting them and also not clipping their wings in the process.

I entered tertiary education (college for ya’ll from ‘merica) very young at, living a split reality of study, partying, and searching. I moved between design disciplines—industrial & textile design, fine art—driven by tactility, curiosity, and refusal to live inside one lane. A formative trip to New York at 19 years old with the senior final year Fine Art students at Massey University shifted everything. I ended up graduating with a Bachelor of Design, Honors in Textile Design. I freelanced, worked in high-end fashion, funded my art through design, and built a diverse skill set through self-teaching and mentorship. It was exhilarating—and brutally hard. Financial droughts, uncertainty, and trepidation towards my skillset was pronounced. I had one foot in design, one in fashion, one in fine art.

One lasting impact of those years was sidelining my own personal needs. I learned how to function, achieve, and appear balanced, and I could be assertive professionally —but not how to advocate for myself in intimate relationships. Fear of rejection ran deep. In a small country like New Zealand, where social proximity discourages honesty and conflict, it’s easy to shrink yourself for harmony. I slipped into roles others expected, dampened my desires, and accepted paths that were close—but not true.

I lived dual lives: capable and gifted on the outside, fractured and lonely within. My eating disorder friend became both coping mechanism and prison, deeply entangled with trauma and self-worth. Recovery took many years and profound humility. I was so desperate to try and achieve the dreams I held in my heart, but I was a fractured kid at the bottom of the world who just had fantasies until she could master eating eggs and bacon for breakfast.

In my early 20’s as I was coming out of the darkness in my younger years, and finding my way in the world with a gorgeous job in a luxury boutique, an art studio, and a safe living environment I had built around me, I was raped by the father of my best friend at the time. I was a situation which had ripples for decades; it sligshot’d me back into puddles of shame, guilt and and over analyzing my responsibilities towards how I had ended up being abused. This took a decade to unwind. It was quite close after I met a pivotal love. I went on to get engaged to this beautiful human who opened big doors to the power of Faith, brought me into his family, stood by me while I dragged my out-of-control ass into AA, and three years later, after our break up on to Overeaters Anonymous, as I had become acutely aware that sugar was my main addiction issue. However at this time, I wasn’t able to cope with loosing my love, his family, and the breakup of our engagement, while also shedding my friend bulimia at the same time.

Instead, to try and literally eat away at problems towards recovery, I tried to become more mindful about food and sugar and delved further into my passions for adventurous activities; motorcycling, snowboarding, and then flying- I also discovered that this moving meditation did wonders for my mind, while my body was focused on what it could do and how strong it is, rather than what it looks like. They also indulged my emotions of all varieties, made me commit to my choices and thoughts without relying on anyone else and taking full responsibility for my actions and thus consequences. Intertwined with my physical escapades, my spiritual journeys also became more profound. I started to travel internationally by myself a lot; Australia, Bali, Japan, Myanmar; all around South East Asia. London, the Netherlands, India, Kashmir.. many more- letting places and experiences guide me, choosing locations that resonated with me and becoming more attuned to following and trusting my intuition. I was intentionally working on getting well mentally and spiritually so I could unwrap & unwind my physical compulsions.

The major turning point came over a decade and a half later, in the Netherlands where I had a major breakthrough with why I was making myself sick. I’d had a kind of out of body experience at Schiphol airport where I arrived after hashing out trying to find a job in London for two months. A close family friend was living in The Hague and I was delighted to be able to hang with them over the Christmas period. I got off my flight and I started panicking to comfort eat. I was tired, lonely and exhausted. I sat on a bench opposite a convenience store, refusing to allow myself to step inside to what would have been me buying candy and cookies and too much junk food. Instead I forced myself to be still, present and watch and feel what was happening without running with it.

Literally images of comfort foods my Nana & Mom would make were flashing infront of my vision- an awake hypnogogic, but this time very specific, and immensely emotionally charged. Feelings of failure (which we me being so incredibly hard on myself) for not finding employment, shame for spending too much time out enjoying London and not more at interviews, a longing for certainty, and a deep well of sadness towards just wanting a hug from a real person telling me somehow everything would be ok, came charging up from my conscious like a tsunami. It was this vision; the hug, which made me stop still instead of letting the wave literally make me run. I connected the physical and immaterial compulsion. I was seeking emotional validation in food, which it couldn’t provide. I’d consume and then reject because it was like a trick. My hollowness inside was not a physical void that could be filled by a consumable even if this gave me a type of energy temporarily. I naïvely thought this energy could be bought when it had to be nurtured from within. It sounds so simple now to write it down, but to those of us caught in this type of nightmare, it is so painfully elusive to see this.

I dragged my ass back across the world and into the familiar Overeaters Anonymous room and it was here in this safe space, I was allowed to realize I had to love being sick. Enormous contradiction for me at the time. Every other strategy, (including medical which made me sicker than ever) was trying to eliminate something from me. Sick was me, and that was ok. And acceptable. I am terrible and beautiful, humanity is terrible and beautiful; I don’t think we can appreciate beautiful without terrible.

That paradox—terrible and beautiful existing together—shaped my worldview and my art.

I have recovered from 18 years of begging to just be able to eat three meals, completely dumbfounded as to how someone could eat a plate of pasta, and enjoy it, to not obsessing about food at all, and then on to using sugar, at one point my nemesis as a transformative medium to celebrate pleasure and create dialogue about identity, gratification and expectations.

Bulimia wrapped every Easter, every Christmas meal, every friends birthday party and my own in fear, anxiety and shame. I would at times feel so paralyzed by my preemptive thinking making up scenarios of what to do or not do, all I could mange would be to decline attending events, or make excuses and turn up late or some other convoluted situation. The logistics of living in this Hell are a nightmare. Bulimia was both my confidant and my tormentor, it gave me comfort and release from the world but the cost for doing so was sacrificing any semblance of contentment and sanity.

Today, I eat what I like, and what I crave in moderation and balance. My only ‘rule’ is savory before sweet and that there are no ‘bad foods’ but I am aware of what certain foods can do to my mood or spike my anxiety, and what does and doesn’t keep me levelheaded. I think calorie numbers and health food stars & scales are the devils work, and am incredibly cynical about labelling- eat how our Grandparents ate; predominantly fresh, home cooked and limited shit out of packets. My metabolism doesn’t like it when I travel and I have to consciously up vegetables when I’m international to keep in line with my normal food intake at home. I keep highly processed foods to a minimum but never tell myself I can’t eat something. If I do; if I hear ‘die’t, my psyche will panic and seek comfort foods- I prefer to encourage myself to intake more veggies, more soups and make sure I have a lunch filled with these so I can still indulge in whatever cake, pastry or delicious meat, seafood, cheese or whatever it is at the time I’m hunkering for.

One of the very dangerous and long standing effect of having issues with eating, and major trauma, is that it really screws with one’s abilities to trust instincts. I was deeply cynical about listening to myself or even realizing that the amazing things that were popping into my life as I got well were actually FOR me, not coincidental happenings. This mistrust of my thoughts, emotions and the undercurrent of fractured self esteem took a long time to learn how to get in flow with. If you have been trapped in your mind for nearly two decades, unable to break free of compulsions, you may be able to see how becoming well becomes a bit Stockholm Syndrome-ish.

The key to my recovery was, quite literally, learning to develop positive feelings toward the acts of deprivation I had inflicted upon myself—becoming both prisoner and captor. Trusting my intuition again was slow work. When you’ve been trapped in your own mind for years, wellness can feel unfamiliar, even threatening. I believe this was where I began to recognize that I am somewhat unique in how I relate to others. I don’t fear inner ugliness or what it can make us do, because I have wrestled fiercely with my own. Yes, others have done horrible things to me, but by far it is myself who has most tormented my soul or taken other’s actions and used these to continue to hurt myself. Travel, solitude, and adventure became essential tools for recalibration—ways to hear myself clearly, see how other cultures think about things and choose alignment over anxiety.

….

Travel widened my world and strengthened my intuition. I love how indulging in wanderlust makes my thinking cut to the chase and choose what I want to do without negotiations. I was now turning 30 and I met a new major love. He was older and I was not ready. I friend zoned him for years, but through this time, he changed me quietly and completely showing me loyalty—through respect, patience, friendship, and generosity. His empowering positivity towards my ideas and projects was refreshing & bolstered my confidence, and his advocacy allowed me to spread my wings uninhibited. Inadvertently by just being himself, he shared with me how love can be channeled through food.

In the early time as business associates, he would invite me to dinner at elite restaurants and order lots of little plates of yummy delights for us to try with no pressure or expectation. We would chat and nibble for hours- on more than one occasion with the lights being flicked on and the seats being put up around us. At the time he was completely unaware of what gift he was sharing with me. He shared pleasure with me in a place which I had painted with extreme pain. He recolored my life by putting spice, enjoyment and variety back into it, and I felt enormous loyalty to him for his gift. Only a few months later my opportunity to fight for his life would come crashing into my reality…

Eight years ago my world imploded. I had taken a pregnancy test at Sydney airport after flying back from New York where my mother in law was hospitalized. I had been in India, Myanmar and Thailand prior this and I was not happy about returning to NZ, I knew I was much healthier offshore. It was my 32nd birthday the next day and we were flying into Queenstown to celebrate by snowboarding. Instead my partner and I were detained at the airport and my partner was served legal proceedings from the Serious Fraud Office; a special wing of the New Zealand Police department, a now disbanded unit. I was terrified; by the accusal of fraud on my friend and love, and by my pregnancy and insane morning sickness I was now experiencing.

Any former illusion of safety and security I had again cultivated was shattered. I would be entangled within a twisted love affair gone bad between former friends and business partners. I’d watch a billionaire unleash his power, to wipe any stain of truth, or the opportunity for it to be aired away, to a point of madness… and this has been ongoing to us in the USA, including auctioning our home with us in it in late 2025. The saddest and most destructive of ‘divorces’; you cannot hate what you did not love. Corruption, fear, malice, possessiveness.. I went into protective mode but at great cost to myself. I declined joy to preserve stability. I survived—but this time not without deep scaring.

This arc of my story is not only about resilience but also about performance. It’s survival, repair, choice, Motherhood, and the long curve of becoming and breaking and re-making. I am still here. Still making. Still listening. I think Leonard Cohen put it perfectly "Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack, a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in.”

….

Shame.
I know her intimately. I am a connoisseur of shame in all her forms.

Through my pivotal work '𝓤𝓷-𝓜𝓪𝓭𝓮 𝓦𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓛𝓸𝓿𝓮', I started to recognize how my life story and imperfections were of value to share. I tried to translate what it feels like to consume and be consumed by her. I brought in dueling with tough concepts like obsession, polyamory, unease, judgement & expectations. Food felt like the only honest medium for this: something infused with care, intimacy, pleasure, and vulnerability. Shame and I have a long history. She has punctured my life for decades. It began to realize I wanted to share the ugliness behind the beauty of my life; I realized it’s within this that our most powerful connections are made.

Motherhood is my greatest joy—the role I value above all else, the guardianship of souls who chose me. I’d never been so happy as when our firstborn Adira came into the world. On one side my life was being cleaved into chunks on the sidelines of our malicious court cases filled with vengefulness, on the other I was floating in maternal bliss.

There were a lot of strange connections through the case, that lead to reinforcing my beliefs that life really isn’t coincidental. My Mom had taught the Billionaire at school, I had dated his personal assistant, other families were finding me to share their own horror stories, and other significant connections. NZ is not a big place, we often joke there is one degree of separation, everyone’s a bit entwined in everyone else’s business. I think it’s also contributes to why people shut down people who stand up from our big dysfunctional family; ol’ Tall Poppy Syndrome. Our communities get fearful of seeing ugliness get the limelight 1) because we’ve told the whole world we are perfect, NZ is paradise and come Hell or high water we are not liars 2) because we are scared of vicariously getting our own ugliness exposed and 3) because the government has spent billions building a tourism industry based on the mirage of perfection. This is quite in contrast to reality and impeding our country uniting and understanding our grievances. When you live on these islands to a certain extent you’ve gotta shut up and get along with people whether you like it or not, calling out flaws or disrupting the status quo can be a legitimate threat upon your livelihood and ability to support your family. Life threatening threats. I now know too many people who will agree.

The ugliness of the court cases was all-consuming. I became toxic by association, while my partner hemorrhaged cash and every asset he had worked a lifetime to build. We were trying to be heard against an adversary with unlimited resources—someone who owned media narratives, influence, and malice in measures unparalleled. My partner was painted as a caricature: an Italian-American “wise guy” scamming New Zealand’s creative wizard. A carefully cultivated image of the Billionaire’s; unhinged but eccentric Creative hiding the truth: a vindictive malevolent gangster deeply entwined in government dealings. Documents were burned, properties stormed and locked, my partners major assets; two Warbird airplanes stolen and chained to the floor of a hangar guarded with armed security, and new stories seeded through word of mouth and media. Very few people understand the torment & misery of standing against someone with endless money, paid-off officials, and no moral limit. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

When someone can have anything, motivations turn darker. This isn’t about things—it is about power; it becomes about owning the unseen. I feel a deep sadness for our adversary: a wounded, petulant boy throwing toys from the sandpit, unable to accept that one of the closest loves of his life wanted to leave, to stop hiding ugly truths, to claim his worth, and to love freely. I believe that while the Billionaire was going through his own marital divorce, watching his former friend being supported and loved unconditionally, through destruction unparalleled was like Avgas on an already blazing inferno. He’s terrified of the truths about corruption and mistreatment coming to light, but even more than that, he believes he owns my partner. No matter how much money or influence he fired our way I refused to allow him to take our joy and break us; you’re now fucking with a Momma Bear. Our most dangerous actions are derived from heartache.

I remember sitting in our legal team’s office before the trial. They told us there was no way my partner could be convicted—there were recordings, contracts, statements proving my partner’s rightful decision making. Still, right before trial, and when the initial judge was mysteriously swapped out days before, they advised him to plead guilty to a charge or two, to “take a fall” and allow the Billionaire his version of justice. In hindsight, there was wisdom right there. But there’s sleeping at night- you know, when you are so against the wall you have to make a decision you can live with the rest of your life. Would you give up fighting for your freedom when you’d worked your whole life towards it? We believed in truth. History,at this point, would play out otherwise.

I got the call as I stepped outside Kilbirnie pool after taking Adira swimming because I was so anxious I couldn’t do anything else. I was 9 months pregnant. I will never forget the tone in my love’s voice. He had been convicted of fraud and sent to Rimutaka Prison. I remember the sound of the blood pulsing though my heart and crashing in my ears…

I became a single mother with a two-year-old, days from giving birth in Covid lockdown, while banks moved toward bankruptcy on my partner’s remaining assets, our home was under threat through another court case being used to make my partner insolvent and loose his airplanes. All of our insurances were pulled through the billionaire & his wife’s influence- cars, planes, house… Wellingtonian’s in particular know the problems that can cause- our houses have to be sold with insurance. I couldn’t get basic clothing or necessities to my partner for a month and a half. No mail being released on purpose, only the hope of one phone call a day. The stories that filtered out of prison—of trauma inflicted through influence—were bone-chilling. I held the logistics together, but it was the inner turmoil that was most dangerous.

March 2020. At home, I focused on creating a safe haven for my daughter Adira while preparing for her sister’s arrival during mass world virus fear which slammed into effect when I was in hospital giving birth. No-contact rules, tracking devices on my car, home invasions, wiretapping—it felt relentless. In the midst of this, I believed I’d been gifted a new friendship with a neighbor, someone checking in, bringing groceries, some banter unrelated to my distresses. However slowly things started to not add up; nauseating information indicating this friendship wasn’t what it seemed filtered to me. I was told this this person had been bought—planted to extract information from me to hurt my partner. We were photographed going for coffee and dinner; those images were sent to my partner in prison with elaborate lies. I learned this man’s sports team received a large cash donation from the billionaire and that and that he’d just moved into a new rental a few doors down from our adversary’s home. Up was down. Nothing aligned. My intuition, heart, and mind were in constant conflict, and the confusion was overwhelming.

Friends of my partner (the same people who our Billionaire had used to say that my partner had convinced fraud and who stood in court and said otherwise) saved our home through a private sale- days from me going birth. This ensured a place for me and the girls to live and for my partner to return to on parole. At a dinner with a former friend I saw an email stating the Billionaire wouldn’t rest until my partner killed himself, the pit fell out in my stomach, the end to my trauma disappeared away from me.

A powerful property developer—himself in legal battles with the same man—was so moved by my situation when I approached him desperation, that he gave me an unsecured loan to keep us afloat until the sale on our house could be finalized. And my great girlfriend (you know who you are), I treasure our time together at the birth of Darzia- you brought joy and stability into my life, you shared the load of visiting the prison with my girls, you helped me financially and loved me and gave me the strength to keep choosing right- thank you forever for being with me during this time.

Darzia was born on March 31, 2020—a pure delight. I was caring for my incarcerated partner, fighting for his parole, while my parents faced their own crisis, my mother in rehab for pharmaceutical addiction. Around us swirled invisible violence: legal documents, media narratives, journalists hunting for information, whispered judgments, professional doors closing by association; trying desperately to navigate a way though.

It was loud. Overwhelmingly loud within so much silence.

….

A year and a half later I thought I’d come through unscathed-ish although the adversity was immense and then the deepest wound would come. We were now five years into the court cases aftermath already mentioned. In the middle of extreme pressure, I was blessed with another child.

I wanted our child with my whole heart. Only recently paroled, my partner was terrified—afraid he couldn’t provide, afraid we would all fall apart. His fear collided with my own lifelong insecurity around money coupled by our extreme current situation. I had been conditioned to believe that financial success was the measure of worth, even though experience had shown me I always found a way. I have been gifted many things—but ease with money has never been one of them.

The voices gathered quickly: friends, circumstances, the chorus already living inside my head. You can’t do this. You’re irresponsible. You can’t give this baby what they need… Look at the mess you are in… You already have been given so much in life, why do you need more, you’re gluttonous, you are greedy. You have two already to provide for, you need to prioritize them! I felt utterly alone. I felt completely abandoned, I felt shameful. But, my choice was my own- I owned my fate in this decision, but it was only in retrospect I could see this test.

I chose to terminate the pregnancy.

I terminated myself along with my child.

I chose my insecurities over believing in my strengths.

No one forced my hand. That truth is the hardest to live with. The weight of that decision broke me. Of all the things in my life that have tried, the weight of this decision tore me apart in an anguish I relive every moment I wake to this day.

In doing so, I chose fear over faith. I chose other people’s opinions over my own knowing. I didn’t just lose something precious—I lost myself for a very long time. Shame rushed in and filled the space where life and possibility had been. It colored everything with grief and melancholy.

That period felt like madness—alienating, relentless, and overwhelming. Multiple realities collided at once: isolation, new motherhood, fractured love, public scrutiny, private loyalty, and a world locked down. There were so many things happening. It was when my friend went to leave to another country that we realized we had deep and unfulfilled feelings for each other. I was so scared. I was being taken for a ride? Was this a set up? Was I being tricked? I had an unnerving feeling that he had been set up to hurt me but love had grown there too. I couldn’t cope so I pushed them down into a deep internal box, with feelings of shame for my emotional indulgences. I stuffed in there confusions, and locked away truths about my sexual orientation and desires. Focus on my daughters. I told myself, put your head down and tail up and get to work and build a fortress of security around yourself. Had I not learned yet, nothing is secure, no timings feel right, there is only so much one little human can do. I’d dealt with the situation but my soul was mad. I didn’t allow myself to be human, and she was not going to let me forget it. I was ostracized for standing by my beliefs and protecting those I loved. Support I hoped for did not come from fundamental places I believed in lived. Even my parents would not break their bubble to help with their only grandchildren. I carried so much alone it was getting too much to bear.

Not long after this, a stranger quite out of the blue crossed my path and said something unexpected: that my child was never meant to be born—that their role was to wake me up. To show me how far I had drifted from living my own truth by listening to others instead of myself. Whether one believes this literally or symbolically, it landed with force. From that moment, I understood that I could no longer outsource my choices. I had to live with blinders on—guided only by what I know to be true.

My experiences have taught me how fear can drive us to betray ourselves, and how clarity can be forged only by walking straight through consequence. It has given me deep empathy for the murky inner worlds people inhabit when they are terrified, cornered, and unheard.

I believe we are helped when we ask. I believe there are moments of grace even in the darkest of hours. I believe we do not miss what is truly meant for us—though timing is never ours to dictate. We shape our worlds, but worthiness is not measured by our fear, our productivity, or our perfection. It is held by something far larger than our egos.

This is the one wound that teaches me to stand like iron and fight for the life I want to live.

….

I treasure my epic memories above all else; my babies taking their first breaths & our first glimpses into each other’s eyes, the first time taking off & landing an aeroplane, falling in love with flying helicopters and taking the controls on a very special held ride into New York with my little family for my birthday to high tea at Bergdorf Goodman, snowboarding off the highest gondola in Asia (located in Gulmarg, Kashmir) with Indian army militia accompanying me with assault rifles on my gondola trips, solo motorbike road trips around Japan to onsens down corkscrew highways on stilts in the moonlit wee hours of the morning, midnight snowmobile races across a frozen lake to a midnight wazwan feast on top of Kongori Mountain with the men who looked after it, all while sandwiched in the middle of a war between India and Kashmir. Chewing betel and nightclubbing around New Delhi into days that became nights that became days again… driving my parents in the middle of the night in their pj’s to show them my newly fixed differential in my 1959 Morris Minor… which ended up in me overlooking how much petrol was in the car due to my excitement- sorry Mom & Dad, it was a very embarrassing push down the motorway we won’t forget. Skinny-dipping off float planes, swimming with phosphorescence & dolphins, flying inverted in an Extra 300L over Wadi Rum, being proposed to under meteor showers & the Southern Lights over Lake Ōhau in South Island, New Zealand. Solo motorbike road trips through Myanmar, Cambodia, London, Japan, and other exotic locations, running my finger over the soft skin of my lover and watching the goosebumps rise in the pale patches of Winter sunlight dancing on their body through the shadows of a kowhai tree... Multi-day music festivals in Aotearoa with my little Morris Minor car ‘Maria’, mind expansive journeys meeting souls of past lives, a perfect batch of macaron fresh from the oven risen with delicate frilly feet, the sitting tree at the top of the Cable Car, cherry blossom season in Tokyo, eating fire ants & holy basil in Cambodia, being Au Pair in Tokyo to two of the most special little girls you could ever meet, meeting my bestie from age 4 in New Zealand, now us both grown women in New York laughing with reckless abandon and flagrant disregard to the tiply-topply bar stools we are perched on with espresso martini’s in hand. Three day Thingyan celebrations on motorbike around the castle moat in Mandalay, dawn breaking at Wainui Beach in Gisborne, NZ - the first place in the world to see the light. Temples in Bagan & Angkor Wat. Rappongi bleary eyed after dancing the night away VIP with a Swedish boy band. My daughters’ first Broadway show and the pure delight on their little faces, spiritual realignment in Ubud while watching a pig being gutted on the side of the road for a celebration, Flashlight on Mt Victoria, a surprise encounter on New Years in Amsterdam, hiking solo to the summit of Ruapehu & snowboarding down.. and doing it all over again straight after. Smoking and talking politics with some of the brightest 85 year old female minds in New Delhi into the wee hours of the nights, motorbike adventures repairing my friendship with my Dad, Halloween at Shibuya crossing… and the painful ones too, some too much to write: loosing our baby which I mourn every day of my life since, foster care in my teens, looking after elderly to their time of passing, toxic family dynamics, people I hurt, that just-shy-of 2 decade long eating disorder which dragged me to search for exit strategies. Rape, starting from scratch - sooo many times broke and existing on dreams, including turning up to the USA to start all over again, self hatred & sabotage, lost love, and broken relationships. Big volumes of intense moments; of beautiful, vibrant faces, smells, sensations, feelings and instances, all cherished within me, although some laminated with finger marks smeared upon from years of pulling them out, and others delicately wrapped in tissue paper and boxed with keys.

I have invented, reinvented, burned, risen again, bottomed out, clambered up and put myself out there over and over and over again. I feel in some ways, this is defined by femininity. We are in an unavoidable loop monthly of wax, wane, facing feeling horrible often with responsibilities that won’t wait but having to show up, pick up and forge forwards. Life impresses upon us whether we like it or not to change, alter, bloom, & recreate so much more than men. I feel chiseled by my rounds with life yet each decade I feel humbled by the authentic revelations each chapter unveils.

My beautiful daughter’s Adira Isla and Darzia Sanaa, are my favorite bosses and we get up to all sorts of artistic and adventurous impishness together. They challenge, teach and humble me daily. Darzia Sanaa - Darzi means daring = पुरुषार्थin Hindi and Sanaa is Arabic for brightness /radiance. Adira Isla - Adira is Hebrew for strong/ noble/ powerful and Isla in Gaelic means bright one or shining one. Mochi my Samoyed fur baby and service dog and our new puppy, another Samoyed boy coming late Jan 2026 teach me every day how to be a better human. We used to have a wee hedgehog called Hunny- Adira got a fear of needles when we arrived to the USA and Hunny and her formed a close relationship which helped Adira address this terror.

In 2017 I was delighted to be invited to Amman to attend a private audience with His Majesty King Abdullah II & Her Majesty Queen Rania of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, where I was able to discuss a business project of my design in person with His and Her Majesty. My artwork 'Mandala' was purchased as a gift which I personally presented to the King and Queen.  

Some of my hurdles have nearly killed me, I’m not saying that lightly, and others professionals have said would be insurmountable. The proof is in the pudding, I’m still here. Yet although I have been dealt some complicated hands, I have also learnt, that I am equally the maestra of my masterpieces as I am of my mess. I love hearing “it can’t be done”- there is always a way, it may take many years (stop counting; honestly people ask me how long some of the things I do take me to make- if I knew, I would never make them! it’s a ridiculous amount of time, preempted by a lot of plotting and planning, and totally daunting when I add it up) but there is alwaaaaays a way, it just depends how tenacious we are to keep fighting for our dreams.

I’ve made profound sacrifices to become the healthy, effervescent human I am. My suffering has not been balanced by success; it has been heavy, prolonged, criticized, not financially rewarding and at times devastating. I’ve hit rock bottom more than once and lived most of my life broke. Yet this breaking has given me a distinct voice—perhaps I needed to fracture to learn the language of pain, love, and healing. I am a kind of kintsugi human. I learnt that broke doesn’t stop momentum; money is like water it flows, although lets be realistic, as we get older it is undeniably comforting to have a few puddles now and then, or a trickling stream and not be slogging though the desert.

Faith in good energy and yes God(dess)’s - insert many, many different names in here, there are so many names in religion that are given to a power bigger than ourselves—faith in dreams, connection, responsibility, and relentless determination has brought me here, on my own terms and timeline. By listening closely to the answers that surface in my heart and mind, by acknowledging and forgiving trauma—both received and inflicted—and by cherishing kindred spirits; genuine wonder-kids sailing wild ass life seas, I’ve managed to survive this interesting existence. That some days can be a damn big achievement in itself.

I have little tolerance for bullies, lies, repression, or exploitation. I’m tired of seeing airbrushed perfection, life is raw and incredibly painful for most of us. I resist fakeness because I watched the loves of my life try and convince themselves that the were ok- my family, my school, my country, myself. Hypocrisy, fractured identity, and spiritual disorientation shaped my path because I mirrored the world around me. Choosing truth and radical honesty pushed me against mainstream beliefs, cultural norms, family expectations, and my own assumptions, but that friction became my redemption.

There is no hidden team behind me. I am a one-woman show, and it is hard work. I love collaboration and outsourcing to those more skilled than I am, and success—when it comes—means being able to bring others into the fold, which I value deeply. My work is long hours and limited scalability, but just like every other parent out there, there are times when I am completely overwhelmed, strung out and oscillating between exhilaration and submersion. Being belligerent enough to keep building a different life with no safety nets, no extended support is brutal. Baking macarons, doing yoga to the moon and attending fashion shows with my family, also comes hand in hand with scrabbling for gas money, thumping the table in frustration to my kids, yelling about the morning or bedtime routine and crying in the middle of the floor after Mochi has demolished another ornament off the Xmas tree or his favorite gourmet delight; the toilet roll.

Are my creations valuable or frivolous? Well, in a way they are both. Creating gives me time for personal reflection, & meditation which is incredibly valuable for me, and whoever I come in contact with as I am a better person for it. I spent my life making beautiful things, because often I was not surrounded by beauty, or I was within really horrible situations. Making something lovely buffered my experiences and perspectives with joy, and often I was making solutions to things I couldn’t find elsewhere. It’s immensely satisfying to be able to create something beautiful even when you're surrounded by ugliness. What I create can be completely pointless on a world scale, but immensely important on a personal one to the person making & secondarily viewing or receiving. Are those negative snide comments dangerous or benign? I would argue they are pure poison.. what do you think of my antidotes? .. Like a butterfly, some of the things I make exist for a teeny blip of time, but can bring immense delight within this short timeframe, and a lasting effect on a person’s mood or impressions of the world & their place in it.

I don’t believe genius is rare. We all possess it in different forms—care, intuition, science, problem-solving. We squander it when fear and external noise drown it out. My talents unfold slowly, over decades. In a world obsessed with efficiency and speed, I am a dinosaur who believes in patience, in complexity, in making things that take time. “Genius is eternal patience,” Michelangelo said, and I agree. Patience allows beauty, perspective, and hope to emerge from chaos—a lesson I relearn daily with my children.

So “What do I do?”. I flourish. With resilience, tenacity and in challenging conditions I thrive. My true value is not what I create, but that I harness my fears to re-generate. What kind of artist am I? I dip my brush, my hands, my thoughts into my soul and paint my essence into everything I touch. My creations are the psychoanalytical manifestations of traveling on the conduit between my thoughts, anxieties, desires, pains & pleasures and the spiritual tendency fields. These ephemera may be invisible lines through traffic, they may be a delight you can eat, it could be a sculpture to hold in your hand, my caress, or that you get to indulge in the offbeat combination of colors and textures I am wearing. It could be that we make art together, or that you receive a handwritten note from me. Perhaps you are blessed to meet my most powerful creations; my daughters. Ultimately I hope that in most instances, my presence has been a blessing. There is a wise old saying which says, “in the end, no one remembers what you said or did, but they do remember how you made them feel”. I hope that I am remembered less for what I make, and most for the warmth & effervescence I bring.

For a long time, I didn’t know the point of it all. I learned to trust my process and only later understood what I was healing. My art is not my legacy; my story is. My capacity to connect, to sense what others need, to grow together—that is my gift. My life has been an unveiling, a return to a simpler, childlike essence. I may never be a master artist, but my story carries impact. My art made me strong enough to offer kindness, safety, and love to others. This simple we quote sums it up so nicely; we see it everywhere; in schools on the subway, on Insta. I’m sure you have swiped past with a nonchalant internal nod.. but this a project ongoing in every sense- internal & external alike; “in a world where we can be anything, be kind”.

Our communities need givers, healers, and cheerleaders. Those gifts can’t be collected or displayed. My physical creations were simply the conduit until I was strong enough to serve on a larger scale. I’ve made art and touched hearts around the world on almost nothing, proving that determination creates resources. Financial stability is the last fortress I want to build—not for excess, but to give back meaningfully.

I love encouraging others to take time to spend on their mental and spiritual health & get up and out doing what they adore. I never feel 'Ready', but I decide I am anyway. Ready isn't a feeling I have very often, I battle with a lot of noise in the contrary, but I make those decisions daily to open my heart to the new possibilities on the other side of ‘ready’. Stepping into the unknown can be terrifying in many ways. Sometimes you have to be irrational, irresponsible, selfish and single minded. When you try to be a good person, making choices here can be bloody hard- set aside fear of rejection and focus on personal truth and redemption. So get at it, take a deep breath, eyeball your dread, wrap yourself in it and fill up on it, because once you can nail that to the wall, you’ll be able to see behind it- here’s a virtual HUUUG, lets take a moment, it’s a big step- it will be ok.

I still feel nervous too, fears are slippery little suckers- it’s intimidating staring at your terror & wanting to fight for dreams that may or may not happen and setting intentions to understand one’s self, but I can assure you, you’ll feel much better if you at least give them the light of day to not whither and disappear into the ‘I wish that I could have’ pile to be covered with the negativity of others and your own whisperings. Turn off watching other people’s dreams playing out (Insta, Facebook.. ) and dedicate your thoughts to what is your greatness, it may not look like other’s.

Dreams and desires are your’s for a reason, they are given to you because you can do it, you can make them blossom and you have the ability to find the resources and connections to make them happen. Some of these are going to be scary and challenging, they are testing you- if you feel the fear, it’s your time to choose for your story. Go have some fun- you. deserve. a. life. filled. with, it! First step, find that prickly bubble that’s sitting inside and gently, but properly take a look at it. You know the one, it’s not ugly, it needs aroha, a generous sprinkling of this and slowly the trepidation will melt and a new path to a better way will appear.

With Kindness,

Alexandra aka Moena Moxham - last updated 11th Jan 2026

𓍯𓂃𓏧♡

Extra yada yada.. I completed to teacher certificate in playing the violin, and similar gradings in tap and jazz dancing which lead to successes in theatre and drama. My partner taught me to fly fixed wing and then as I was preparing to start my exams, I had lessons in the helicopter… well, I never thought of fixed wing after that. It’s learning how to fly heli all the way for me now on… must. sell. more. art. I studied Japanese, introductory Russian, intro aerospace engineering and have an ongoing interest in non-alphabetic orthographies. As of January 2025 my daughters and I are learning Mandarin. I really enjoy learning the basics of a new language when traveling and do my best to try it out on the poor accommodating souls that I encounter. I love sharing healing through creative workshops, which I conduct formally with my travels and informally with persons when needed. I think we greatly underestimate the power of even the smallest of our interactions in our days and that these are not coincidental; a smile and chat with the rubbish collector, and the postie and our neighbors, the coffee dudette, someone cutting us off on the 495; how we make these ‘little’ ripples make much more powerful larger ones, and these accumulate to paint out lives. My resourcefulness has lead me to create for my own companies, established organisations, mavericks, a European billionaire, non profit’s, royalty, solo on self made opportunities or as a team member of up-to-the-elbows-multi-day-no-sleeper creative tornados. My creations are found in collections around the globe and collected by patrons internationally.

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