Rachel and Stuart White with 1 -year-old son Maxim.
Former Dancing with the Stars judge Rachel White has battled with MIQ and no sooner did that situation ease, than she found herself voicing support for Ukraine, while defending her Soviet Union background to online trolls.
The Los Angeles-based dancer and teacher married Kiwi fitness professional, Stuart, in Hawaii in 2016. In 2020 the couple had a difficult path with IVF followed by a tough journey for White, with her health and her pregnancy hampered by lockdowns. That November the joy at the birth of their son, Maxim, was overshadowed when Rachel nearly died on the delivery table.
The first thing the new family did when they were settled at home was get Maxim a New Zealand passport so they could bring him home to Aotearoa to meet his Kiwi family. Like many ex-pats, they were unable to score a spot in MIQ.
"Obviously we want Maxim to recognise and have a relationship with his Kiwi grandparents. We were trying to get back at the end of 2020 and 2021 but couldn't manage to get an MIQ spot," White tells Spy.
Stuart's Nana also passed late last year and they again tried multiple times for an MIQ spot but couldn't get through.
"We don't really have anything to complain about compared to many others in much more immediate emergencies. This pandemic has not been easy on anyone anywhere, and we have all had to make huge sacrifices," White says.
Now the borders are open, Stuart's mother, Cathy, will be making the journey from Maungakaramea in Northland to meet her grandson in LA and see her son for the first time in three years and the family couldn't be more excited. And then in summer, the family will finally introduce Maxim to the whole White whānau in New Zealand.
Like many, White lived her frustration with MIQ loudly on Instagram. Now the USSR-born brunette beauty is standing up to ill-informed trolls on the invasion of Ukraine and her perceived Russian origins.
"My mother's family originate from Ukraine, and Dad's family originate from Belarus. They escaped to Soviet Georgia during World War II, when they realised they would be in the firing line of the Holocaust if they stayed where they were.
"I was born in the former Soviet Union, and when we left for the United States in 1990, it was still the Soviet Union.
"Under the former Soviet Union everyone spoke Russian, so many ex-soviet countries speak Russian but don't associate as Russian. We were Jewish Ukrainian and Belarusians who fled to Soviet Georgia until moving to America in 1990."
White sees the war in Ukraine as heartbreaking and tragic, and reinforces that it is a war on freedom and democracy.
"Democracy is not a spectator sport. It's not what governments do. Democracy is what people do.
"I'm not exactly Russian, but rather, Russian-speaking. However, it still doesn't make it okay to attack Russians. This is not their fault, as citizens of the country.
"Most of the time, people are powerless to stop government over-reach. Not only do citizens often lack power to intervene but they are also at the mercy of what the media is willing to tell them."
On a lighter note, White is thrilled DWTS is finally able to return to Kiwi screens this autumn. Two years ago she was replaced by comedian Laura Daniel and since then her former co-judges Julz Tocker and Camilla Sacre-Dallerup have both returned only to see the show cancelled due to lockdowns.
Discovery is yet to announce the judging line-up for 2022 but White says, had she been asked, she has too many projects on the go in the US to consider a return.
As for the nine new celebrities hitting the dance floor, she says the show is particularly important to really enjoy at this time and hopes the new-to-dance stars enjoy every single moment.