New Zealand has been struggling with increasingly high rates of depression and suicide, particularly among young people.

A report by Unicef states that New Zealand has by far the highest youth suicide rate in the developed world. My teenage children have been to three funerals of friends under the age of 19 in the last year who have taken their own lives.

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My daughter is a shining light.

She is 17 and beautiful.

Beautifully broken.

My daughter has chronic depression and anxiety.

My daughter is funny and smart.

She is creative, imaginative, and amazing at art.

My daughter is kind and thoughtful. She is loving and forgiving.

My daughter cries and sleeps and sleeps and cries.

She will isolate and then socialise.

She will talk and then retreat.

My daughter has said she sometimes wishes she wasn’t here.

She wants it to stop.

When she felt light and free.

My daughter is brave and fierce.

With a hairline fracture of fragility.

She is a part of my soul.

She wants to go back to how she used to be.

If I lost her I would lose the essence of me.

~