Stretch and grow - your kids and yourself!

Kanoa Lloyd, one of New Zealand’s most-loved broadcasters, saw her seven-year run on The Project come to an abrupt end in late 2023, following the show’s cancellation amid significant cuts at Three.

Despite the shock and sadness of farewelling a great job and crew of colleagues, with the clarity of hindsight, it became an opportunity to reflect on how her late-evening workdays had been impacting family life, particularly with her daughter Nikau.

In this episode of Parents We’ve Met, Kanoa chats to hosts Jenny Hale and Dayna Galloway about motherhood, career transitions, chasing dreams – and the mess and magic in between.

“It was normal for me not to be there to put Nikau to bed on a weeknight, and not be there for dinner, and that was how our family worked...” Kanoa says.

It wasn’t until faced with much slower summer months that she realised just how many of these simple, precious parenting moments she’d been missing out on.

“Two weeks ago I picked her up from daycare at about 4.30pm and she just snuggled into me and kind of flung herself on my body and said ‘Māmā, I love you and you get me at daycare’,” she tells Jenny and Dayna.

"She was expressing how much she loved that I was able to do that now and it kind of broke my heart a little bit."

Kanoa also opens up to Jenny and Dayna about the new emotions, especially anger, that have surfaced since becoming a mother.

She shares the constant personal challenge of needing to have a flexible mindset to navigate the waves of parenthood, including the daily battle of getting an independent "me-do-it" toddler out of the house and into the carseat.

"I think particularly women, and New Zealand women, we have this tendency to think that anger is an unattractive or inappropriate emotion,” Kanoa says. “I would hate for anybody to think that it’s a good thing to just squash the anger down and not address it.”

“It's pointless addressing it right then when we're trying to go somewhere, but I am really working on not simply cutting that limb of anger off, because in the long run it just ends up worse,” she adds.