Growing up as a queer Korean New Zealander, Romy Lee lived between two worlds with two different sets of expectations. The identity dissonance and isolation drove her to substances as a teenager - a solution that worked until it didn't. After moving overseas thinking a geographical change would fix everything, Romy had a realisation: it wasn't the environment, it was her. That moment led to 18 weeks of residential treatment and now over seven years clean and sober. Today, Romy is National Man...
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Growing up as a queer Korean New Zealander, Romy Lee lived between two worlds with two different sets of expectations. The identity dissonance and isolation drove her to substances as a teenager - a solution that worked until it didn't. After moving overseas thinking a geographical change would fix everything, Romy had a realisation: it wasn't the environment, it was her. That moment led to 18 weeks of residential treatment and now over seven years clean and sober. Today, Romy is National Man...
Rhonda Hāpi-Smith: Surviving 20 years as a female prison officer
Take It From Us with Kent Johns
37 minutes
4 months ago
Rhonda Hāpi-Smith: Surviving 20 years as a female prison officer
Rhonda Hāpi-Smith describes her career as a female prison officer in New Zealand as "wonderful, devastating, fantastic and heartbreaking" - and those contradictions tell the whole story. For 20 years, she walked among dangerous criminals at Rimutaka and Hawkes Bay men's prisons, loving the brotherhood, the resilience she witnessed, and the humour that got her through each day. But the career she loved also slowly broke her down - sometimes compromising her principles, destroying relatio...
Take It From Us with Kent Johns
Growing up as a queer Korean New Zealander, Romy Lee lived between two worlds with two different sets of expectations. The identity dissonance and isolation drove her to substances as a teenager - a solution that worked until it didn't. After moving overseas thinking a geographical change would fix everything, Romy had a realisation: it wasn't the environment, it was her. That moment led to 18 weeks of residential treatment and now over seven years clean and sober. Today, Romy is National Man...
