FROM P ADDICT TO PAGEANT QUEEN!

After turning her life around, Rotorua mum Celestina now helps others to do the same

- Hayley Barnett

Wearing a gorgeous gown, a tiara and her sash, Celestina Aolele Grant looks every inch the regal beauty queen at our photo shoot.

Crowned Miss Mana Wahine at Miss Rotorua in 2022, you’d never guess that just three years earlier, she was at rock bottom – a P addict who sold both drugs and her body.

Celestina, 48, who is of Ngāti Awa and Te Arawa descent, tells Woman’s Day her struggles started when she was being raised by her grandparents in the Bay of Plenty.

“My mother left early on to live in Australia, so I grew up with her brothers and sisters,” shares Celestina. “They were jealous of me and I rebelled. I left at 13 to live with my mum.”

It was a decision she came to regret for the rest of her life. “I wish I had never gone,” she admits. “I didn’t get on with my mum. Her husband told his family that I was her niece.”

Feeling rejected and unloved in Adelaide, Celestina fled to Sydney to live with another relative, but he had his own problems and this move sealed her fate for the next 30 years.

“He was a drug taker,” says Celestina. “I ended up making some fast, easy money as a sex worker in King’s Cross. It was there that the drug addiction really took hold.”