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Speaker 1: I love celebrating locals doing neat stuff and one of

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Speaker 1: which she may have spotted in the Courier last week.

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Speaker 1: Simone Hurley, who has been named a Tower Local Hero

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Speaker 1: Midleist for her work establishing the Dear Iffy Charitable Trust,

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Speaker 1: sat down with her to talk this form.

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Speaker 2: Said that there was over one thousand entries people who

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Speaker 2: have been nominated, and I got one of the top

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Speaker 2: one hundred. So yeah, obviously our story is so said

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Speaker 2: and would be so different if he was able to

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Speaker 2: stay with us. But being able to turn something so

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Speaker 2: so awful into such a positive and then be recognized

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Speaker 2: for it is really truly such an honor.

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Speaker 1: Remind us again about that story.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So if he passed away in January of twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty three, and it was quite sudden, basically streep Be

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Speaker 2: and her boat that traveled down into her Organs where

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Speaker 2: there wasn't anything that we were able to.

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Speaker 1: Do for it, Oh my gosh.

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Speaker 2: So with our boys they were seven and five at

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Speaker 2: the time, we were in a fortunate possession throughout our

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Speaker 2: lives that we didn't have to rely on mental health support.

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Speaker 2: And I feel very, very lucky that that was our

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Speaker 2: story at the time. But the minute that our story

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Speaker 2: changed and we suddenly wanted support, there was nothing there.

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Speaker 1: Really, there was.

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Speaker 2: Nothing there open, especially for our children. Wow, And that

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Speaker 2: was a real shock to us. We just didn't realize

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Speaker 2: that the mental health sector was in such a dire

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Speaker 2: state that they just couldn't help children, and it didn't

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Speaker 2: make any sense. So we decided. It was about five

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Speaker 2: months after Ethiad died. I had a super griefy day

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Speaker 2: and I was just felt really really down, and I

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Speaker 2: was like, I need to do something. I need to

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Speaker 2: do something for these kids. And we were luckily already

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Speaker 2: in a position the community had fundraised for us through

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Speaker 2: a gabble little so we were in the position that

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Speaker 2: we were able to send our kids to a psychologist privately,

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Speaker 2: and we're able to fund that ourselves. But we knew

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Speaker 2: that a lot of people wouldn't be able to afford

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Speaker 2: to do that in our same situation. So we decided

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Speaker 2: that we wanted to create their effort help fund support

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Speaker 2: for children and their families. So we privately fund up

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Speaker 2: to ten psychologists or counseling sessions, and from there it's

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Speaker 2: kind of just growing. I've worked really hard with creating

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Speaker 2: a database in the Canterbury region and there's so much

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Speaker 2: support that these kids don't actually have to wait long

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Speaker 2: to be seen, where I think the longest they've had

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Speaker 2: to wait is two weeks. It's incredible. We got a

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Speaker 2: message from someone just being like they're a completely different child,

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Speaker 2: like what it's done to them after they've lived a

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Speaker 2: few years in such a grief kind of state and

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Speaker 2: it's hard on them. It's so hard as an adult

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Speaker 2: to go through grief ones, yeah, and then watching your

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Speaker 2: children go through it where they just still don't quite

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Speaker 2: really understand their emotions as we do ourselves. Having someone

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Speaker 2: support them and actually help them through that is incredible

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Speaker 2: to actually watch and see them grow until the potential

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Speaker 2: that they can actually get to Like I don't know

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Speaker 2: me as someone who's grave, it's coming out to Epps

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Speaker 2: three year anniversary and the brain fog that I still

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Speaker 2: have with it, the lack of motivation some days, like

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Speaker 2: it's really really hard. And then you put a little

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Speaker 2: brain who's learning so so much and expected to learn

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Speaker 2: so so much like everyone else in their class or

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Speaker 2: things like that, and it's just isn't quite clocking to

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Speaker 2: what it should be and everything. So having their extra

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Speaker 2: support for them I think is so so needed and

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Speaker 2: just so it's such a special Honorge for us to

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Speaker 2: be able to give that