Many of us move cities at some point in our lives and know it can be overwhelming, terrifying and exciting all at the same time. But one aspect of moving that makes for a smoother transition is the people you meet on the other side.
Broadcaster Brodie Kane says her friends – both new and old – have been key to helping her feel settled again in Christchurch after 11 years away. Living close to her mum Jo again, with whom she is shares an extremely tight bond, has also been pivotal.
Brodie left Auckland and her job with TVNZ’s Breakfast at the beginning of this year to return to her hometown of Christchurch to join the Breakfast crew at The Hits radio station.
A priority for Brodie was to surround herself with people she loved.
“As women we thrive off those emotional connections with one another,” she enthuses.
The bubbly TV and radio journalist, who is Triumph’s ambassador for World Friendship Day, says with both moving experiences it was her friends who helped her through, despite the two experiences being completely different.
Moving from Christchurch to Auckland as a fresh-faced 21-year-old was “pretty daunting”, she recalls.
“I’d lived in Christchurch my whole life and it’s a big scary city when you’re 21. But all it takes is to join an indoor netball team or a gym or to go out and have a couple of drinks with some people from your new job.
“I was lucky when I moved to Auckland in that I had a pretty cool job and worked with lots of young people. And back in that day you were quite happy to go flatting with randoms – that’s essentially how I met some of my best mates, you know, from finding them on TradeMe and moving in together.”
Now in her thirties, “moving in with randoms” doesn’t hold the same appeal for the former Fair Go reporter.
“You want more of a settled lifestyle and that kind of thing but I still find I absolutely love people and making new friends. You probably just go about it a bit differently.”
While living in Auckland Brodie had kept in touch with friends from Christchurch so she’s enjoyed being able to reconnect with them again.
“The main difference is a lot of my friends are married or coupled up or have kids now whereas my crew in Auckland were single and lived quite a different life,” she says. “It’s just been that there’s been a bit of a a challenge to meet some new people and start finding some other circles where you’ve got people that you can share different parts of your life with.”
As a keen runner and gym-goer, who recently shed 11kg, the gym is where Brodie has found some new kindred spirits.
With World Friendship Day being celebrated this week Brodie is feeling extra grateful for the friends she has in her life.
“I think about all my mates and I just adore them, they’re essentially sisters,” she says.
“With your close girlfriends you go through some awful times, you go through amazing times, and you can tell each other anything and I think that’s really important for women of any age. That need to have somebody there for you for a laugh or for a cry, I think it doesn’t change whether you’re 22 or 32 or 42…”
A good friend will tell you when you’re “being a dick” she says, but also support you when you tell her why you’re being a dick. Good friends don’t judge you, she says. And being around them makes you a better person.
Brodie says there’s nothing she’d rather do any day of the week than spend time with her friends.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret that might not be so secret,” she says. “So we’ve got a squad, we’ve got a theme song and we take minutes, and I’m not going to disclose the minutes, but my friends and I usually get together round the dining room table on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon with quite a few gins or reds, and all of the problems of the world usually get solved.”
The meetings started in 2016 after Brodie bought a “beautiful new dining table with bench seats” and she is now caretaker of the minutes box, which she regularly opens to take inspiration from. “When you’re feeling a bit down you can go and read it and pick yourself up a bit,” she divulges.
“I got it out the other week and showed a couple of mates who aren’t part of the squad – I mean, anyone can be part of the squad but they’re from down here and I’ve just met them. But they said ‘this is genius’ and I said ‘I know’. It’s all about empowering one another and propping one another up, isn’t it.”
