I Couldn't Afford Therapy - Kiwi Comic's Darkest Days

Luckily his mum wasbeside him all the way

- Amy Nelmes Bissett

When Kiwi comedian Cori Gonzalez-Macuer’s mum Alejandra starts talking about her son, she can’t help but beam from ear to ear. She admits that her firstborn was always incredibly thoughtful, a sensitive and creative soul who’d ask her a million questions a day.

“He was reading encyclopaedias at three,” says Alejandra, smiling. “By the time he was four, he knew all the planets and all the capitals in the world, plus he would write these amazing poems.

“He’d sit down at dinner and we’d have proper conversations. He would ask me, even at such a young age, things like, ‘Why is the sky blue?’”

Their bond as a family was tight, further cemented

by the fact that Alejandra, 57, had relocated the GonzalezMacuers to New Zealand from their native Chile in the early ’90s.

Cori says, “We couldn’t speak English, so we just had each other in a tiny flat in Wellington. But I always remembered us being happy.”

When Cori turned 21, he left the family home to start university, but he found himself doing something he’d never thought possible – pushing away his family, including his beloved mum.