Healing Hinemoa ‘I finally appreciate my own company'

The child psychiatrist and bestselling author opens up bout family trauma and how she’s learnt to be kind to herself.

- JUDY BAILEY

“ Let’s start at the beginning,” I suggest.

“Now, there’s an interesting point,” Hinemoa replies, fixing me with those lively eyes of hers. “Where is the beginning? That’s what I’m interested in for the people I work with.”

For the beginning, she explains, is long before we’re born. Our beginnings lie in the paths of our ancestors. There is, she points out, an enormous body of research available now that reveals the impact of trauma and colonization on previous generations can manifest in many ways, both physically and emotionally, on those who follow. Many of the troubled youths she sees in her practice are a case in point.

Dr. Hinemoa Elder is one of our most respected forensic child psychiatrists. She writes psychiatric reports for the courts, as well as having a private practice, consulting to Starship children’s hospital, and lecturing at the University of Auckland’s School of Medicine.

She’s also a member of an eyewatering number of boards and committees, among them the Mental Health Tribunal and Emerge Aotearoa, a charitable trust that works to support whanau physically and mentally, as well as helping achieve greater equity. She is also an author. Her latest book, Aroha: Maori Wisdom for a Contented Life Lived in Harmony with Our Planet (Penguin Random House, rrp $30), has become a bestseller. It is one of very few Kiwi books to receive a recommendation from Oprah Winfrey’s book club, an anointment that pretty much guarantees international success.