Sophie | Belmont

“I originally come from Christchurch, and so now I call Auckland home, but I’ve travelled around and lived in different places, but I love being in Auckland.

It’s sort of at the top of the fault line, and it feels a bit safer. I’ve been here about four and a half years, and I found it really challenging to reconnect into a different community, especially being a little bit older than when I was in my 20s and moving at an older age. I made connections through my music career, through playing in orchestras and different groups, but largely through the school and my son entering school at the age of five. That was really a key thing to help connect me into the community.

I’ve travelled a lot to study music. I’ve also lived in Australia and Germany, for about six years, and then I came back to New Zealand and I’ve since moved around and lived in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch. I didn’t think I would end up back in Christchurch, but I did end up there for the earthquakes so that was a very interesting experience. It was very positive and negative and obviously for a lot of people it was really challenging. I feel for the people still in Christchurch and I think because of that there’s going to be lots of mental health issues related to what everyone’s experienced, and it’s only really when you find yourself in a safe place again that you have a chance to think about all those things that may have happened during the earthquakes. I really think that Christchurch is a wonderful place and it’s going to change and become a really interesting city when it’s rebuilt, but obviously it’s going to take awhile to do that.

I’m a classical viola player. I trained in New Zealand, Australia, and Germany, and I came back to New Zealand and played with all the orchestras around New Zealand. Then I decided that I wanted to feel more connected to people through music, and so I decided to study music therapy. I’ve studied and finished in 2012, and I’ve been working as a violin/viola teacher music therapist since. I’m also a performer, so I perform with organisations around Auckland such as the Auckland Chamber Orchestra, Bach Musica, and sometimes Auckland Philharmonia, as well as other small gigs for various events.

I think there’s quite a lot of guilt involved in the decisions you make, whether you decide to stay or whether you decide to go. Because you leave the city and you’re not helping to rebuild it, or you decide to stay and live through the challenges that you face, whichever way you look at it it’s quite challenging. I think it’s easier if you didn’t leave straight away after the earthquakes to build a new life, but instead had time to process what happened in the earthquakes, see the change, and go through that process with your community; it’s a much healthier way to deal with it, rather than leaving straight away and not deal with that trauma.

But of course it was very necessary for some people to leave straight away, because they may not have had a home, or a workplace, to go to anymore, and so it was the best option for them at the time. I think I feel guilt sometimes, going back now, that I’m not there to help rebuild, and obviously being a music therapist I can support people in a lot of different ways, so maybe one day I’ll go back and do that.

I think there’s many different layers of dealing with the earthquake, and it takes time to process it and discover what those layers are and what they mean to your life and to other people’s life, but I think the one powerful thing that’s positive about the earthquakes is it has given everyone a sense of connection to the community and having the sense that wherever you were placed in society, whether you had lots of money or didn’t have lots of money, everyone came out in the same place, and had to deal with the same things. It didn’t matter what you had or what material things you had; you still had to deal with the main issues of the trauma in going through an earthquake. It was a leveller for everyone to be on the same page and to build support for one another in a different way, which is very strengthening for communities. So, disaster creates bonding and connection to others.”

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