Shelley Loader spent the summer holiday at Motutere, beside Lake Taupō.
Most summers, I holiday at Motutere.
It’s more than a break. It’s a reminder of how rarely our everyday environments allow us to regulate, settle and recover.
Over the years, some of the faces have changed and we have all grown older, but the place itself hasn’t changed in the ways that matter.
The air still carries that familiar mix of warmth and lake water as the light glitters across the surface, and something inside me eases.
Being by the water has always relaxed me.
At home, I walk around Virginia Lake often, not just because it’s exercise, but because it restores me in a deeper, almost spiritual way.
At Motutere, that feeling deepens. I sleep better, let go of schedules, and spend long stretches simply looking out at the water.
Even ordinary tasks like cooking dinner or doing the washing feel restorative.
At first glance, this sounds like nothing more than a good rest – but that explanation never quite fits.
It feels less like escape and more like a return, a shift into a different way of being human. Having studied psychology and sociology, I can’t help but ask why.
Part of the answer is physical. Without clocks, alarms and constant artificial light, my days fall back into step with daylight.
Psychology describes this as circadian alignment, when natural rhythms resynchronise, and physiological stress reduces.
Being near water deepens that effect.
Research on what’s sometimes called Blue Mind shows that water calms the brain and settles the nervous system.
In everyday life, our attention is constantly strained by screens, schedules, emails and performance.
In nature, attention is allowed to drift. Psychologists describe this as attention restoration – a well-established theory showing that natural environments reduce stress, improve mood and sleep, and support social connection.
There’s also the pull of familiarity. Because I’ve returned to Motutere since childhood, it has become an emotional landmark – what psychology calls place attachment.
We talk a lot about safe people, but rarely about safe places, even though our bodies remember places through smell, sound, light, and rhythm. When I return, I don’t have to brace; I can just arrive.
Safety, however, is not inherent. It is shaped by whether a place is predictable, welcoming, and accessible.
A space that feels calming to one person can feel hostile to another.
A parent managing a disabled child without accessible toilets will not experience restoration, no matter how beautiful the setting. When vigilance is required, rest becomes impossible.
This isn’t really a story about holidays; it’s about what happens when environments make settling, safety and belonging possible.
We see this sense of regulation closer to home, when places are accessible, familiar and shared.
In Whanganui, this shows up in different forms.
Spaces like Hakeke Street Community Centre, Sport Whanganui, and the riverbank along the Whanganui awa all offer somewhere shared to belong without needing to perform or prove.
At Hakeke Street Community Centre, belonging is relational.
Through Sport Whanganui, it’s found in movement and participation.
Along the riverbank, we are simply people walking, sitting, reading, chatting, and watching our kids play – especially on sunny or market days.
These spaces don’t work by accident.
They rely on safety, welcome and care being actively maintained rather than assumed.
In te ao Māori, whenua and awa are understood as living entities and relationships, not backdrops, reminding us that wellbeing is relational and place-based.
What these places have in common is that they are free – and that matters more than we often acknowledge.
Free public spaces are among the few remaining places where wellbeing is not means-tested.
Keeping these spaces open and welcoming depends on under-recognised and often underpaid labour.
When that labour is stretched thin, safety and predictability erode, people stop coming, and the costs resurface later in poorer health outcomes, weaker social cohesion, and exhausted families.
Even where free spaces exist, many people lack the time or energy required to use them.
Precarious work, financial stress, caregiving, and harm don’t pause for breaks, and as the cost of living rises, rest and leisure move increasingly out of reach.
We talk about resilience as a personal trait, rather than a predictable outcome of humane and equitable conditions.
Motutere is something I don’t take for granted, not only because holidays cost money, but because access to real rest is unevenly distributed.
Campgrounds can be rare equalisers, but only when people have the time and financial flexibility to step away.
That’s why free public spaces have become frontline infrastructure for collective wellbeing.
When we underfund shared spaces, we don’t remove the need for rest; we shift its provision into the private market.
When community and recreation spaces struggle to stay open, we lose more than services and amenities.
And when we feel connected to place, we are more likely to care for it. Belonging and responsibility grow together.
In shared spaces, hierarchy relaxes. When status drops away, belonging rises.
All of this raises an uncomfortable question: why do we only feel fully human when the pace slows and our surroundings feel safe and welcoming?
We’ve built a culture that asks individuals to self-regulate in environments that continually dysregulate them, promoting resilience and wellbeing tools while eroding the conditions that make those outcomes possible.
Places like Motutere show what’s possible when rest and belonging are part of everyday life.
Our community spaces carry those conditions. At the same time, rates of anxiety, distress, and burnout continue to rise, even as we ask individuals to be more resilient and better regulated.
It’s worth asking whether this is a failure of coping, or a sign that we are no longer taking collective wellbeing seriously enough in the environments we choose to fund, protect, and sustain.
As I write this, watching the light soften and the lake settle for the evening, my body already knows the answer.