Waikato wāhine toa Shani Troughear. Photo / Waikato Wellbeing Project
Waikato wāhine toa Shani Troughear. Photo / Waikato Wellbeing Project
Waikato wāhine toa Shani Troughear has been through a lot, from drug addiction to gang life, all despite a relatively privileged upbringing.
Now she has turned her life around, become a social worker and hopes to inspire others with her story.
“Oh, I tell you, I’ve seen it all. Coming from meth addiction and gangs…I’ve seen things ... I’ve done things I’m not proud of,” Shani says.
“If an intelligent girl who grew up... with relative privilege can still make really bad choices and get into a criminal life and addiction, then maybe it can help create a better understanding of those who do not live in the hood,” Shani says.
She says she would like people to be less judgemental of rangatahi today.
“I hope [my story] can help them understand that we are not all bad people, that we can just get caught up in a world that we don’t want to be in but often can’t find a way out of.”
Shani was raised by her grandparents, a constable at the local police station and a post lady because her parents were very young when they had her.
She says she had a relatively privileged upbringing.
“I had everything I wanted and needed, I was a little princess... I spent so much of my youth playing golf [at Huntly Golf Club].
Shani used to play golf with her grandparents at Huntly Golf Club. Photo / Waikato Wellbeing Project
“My Koko and my Nan really pushed me to play golf... I was pretty good and I’m pretty competitive, so I won a lot of competitions.”
When Shani turned 14, she started to rebel.
“I just didn’t want to play golf any more. I started doing heaps of dumb stuff: running away from home, bunking school ... eventually I got caught stealing.”
That’s when Shani was put in touch with social youth worker Donyelle Wirihanga, from Maatua Whāngai, a marae-based social services provider.
“Donyelle was amazing. She used to come to see me at school, sit with me and ... and just chat.”
In 2008, life was looking good again. Shani was encouraged to enter a local pageant and ended up winning Miss Huntly. Not long after, she was asked to represent the country as Miss Aotearoa New Zealand.
“Next minute I’m on a plane to Samoa. I was just a little Māori girl from Huntly. It was such an awesome experience. I said at the pageant that one day I want to be a youth worker and give back to my community.”
The pageant led to some acting and modelling work in Auckland and her world started opening up. Then Shani fell pregnant and decided to put her dreams aside to be a parent.
Gradually Shani and her then-partner, who is the father of her four children, became heavily involved with meth, alcohol, marijuana and gambling.
“I was pregnant and still using it. I was so lost to the addiction and the life that came with it. I didn’t want to be the person I was being... I’d look in the mirror and say, ‘this is not me’.”
In 2015, things were looking up. Housing New Zealand got her a house in Tauranga, Shani managed to get off the drugs and was studying towards a level 4 degree in social work.
But that was also the point when the father of Shani’s children decided to join a gang. The fact they lived as a sweet family in a nice house meant they were the perfect foil for the gang.
“I would have ‘brothers’ turning up with wounds from ‘acts of war’ as they would call it and be dragged into my house bleeding in front of my kids. We lived in fear all the time,” Shani says.
“Gangsters coming in and out of our home whenever they pleased. We had drugs, money and weapons all stashed in the roof. It was horrible.”
Just as things seemingly couldn’t get any worse, Shani’s partner ran off with the gang vice president’s wife.
“The head of the gang came to my house asking me to tell him where my partner was, he said he’d give me 10, then 14 grand to tell him. But I didn’t know.”
Shani was desperate to get out of the situation she was in but didn’t know how.
“I drove myself to the urupā where my Nan and aunties were buried. I sat by their graves and ... spoke to my tūpuna and asked them for their help.
“As I looked to the sky, the clouds parted and a beam of sunlight came down on me... I looked at the names of the wāhine on the gravestones and thought about the hardships they all went through and the strength and love they carried throughout. I knew that I had to honour them.”
She decided to leave Tauranga with her kids to start again - in Huntly -where she felt her tūpuna would support and guide her.
Despite the chaos, Shani managed to complete her studies and follow her dream to help others through hardship.
“Even when my life was so dark, I always said I wanna be like Donyelle, I wanna be that person for other kids like me who were getting lost on their pathway. Once you’ve lived and seen it you can’t unsee it. You have to look after those who are going through it and walk alongside them on their journeys.”
She found that lots of rangatahi could relate to her - and she to them.
“Some of my nephews and their mates who were getting into trouble at the time were hanging at my house. I would listen to them and relate to their situations. Kind of an ‘auntie to the hood’. They knew my story and I guess I had their respect and was able to get through to them; they would listen to me.”
Shani has since worked in several different youth development roles including with Te Ahurei e Rangatahi and the Graeme Dingle Foundation. She is now involved as a leader of the Kaitiaki Project, analternative mental health project.
Shani also went back to Huntly Golf Club which welcomed her back with open arms.
“It was such a nice release from the life I had been living. Just being out in the fresh air in nature and doing something I was good at again, it just felt good.”
