Real Life: Nadia Reid on refusal to sacrifice music career for motherhood

“That’s not untrue. But I witnessed first-hand what my mum sacrificed to mother me, and I also witnessed first-hand what it’s like growing up in a single child, solo mother household.”

Reid says her own childhood was “complicated” and imbued with “a lot of sadness and yearning and lacking”, and she is eager to give her own children a different upbringing.

She believes sacrifice, no matter how well-intentioned, can burden children.

“I think the best thing for my children is for me to be fulfilled and happy and present. My wish when I was growing up was just to have seen that in my own mother,” Reid reflected to Cowan.

“I pasted a Carl Jung quote up on my studio wall: ‘The greatest burden a child can carry is the unlived life of its parent’. And I wouldn’t say it haunts me, but it’s very present, it’s in the front of my mind.”

While acknowledging that parenting is intense and designed for two people, Reid told Real Life she was “blown away” by how much better it was than she had anticipated.

“It blew my mind open. It melted me from the inside,” she told Cowan. “I have a really, really awesome husband and we are just completely equal parents. A lot of the gallivanting around I do is because he’s just such a great dad.”

A lot has changed for Nadia Reid since she and her husband moved overseas – not least adjusting to living, recording and touring in a new country, and the arrival of a second child. But while many in her position may have pumped the brakes on their music career, Reid explained she’s deliberately kept her foot on the gas. Photo / NZ Herald

That gallivanting has led Reid back to New Zealand, the place she grew up. Raised in Dunedin and coming of age musically in Christchurch, Reid is in the midst of a two-week tour of Australasia including dates in those cities, plus Auckland and Wellington.

While Reid has many fond memories of Christchurch, it feels somewhat alien to her now.

“I lived through the earthquake there … I think it’s taken a long, long time to really properly digest that whole period of time,” she told Cowan.

“When the pandemic was happening, like the collective stress or collective trauma … I think people just got on with it, you know? You carried on – and some did, others are still getting over it.

“I left quite quickly [after the quake]. Every time I touch down in Christchurch in the plane, I always think about it because it’s so different now. The city is awesome – like, it looks amazing, all these new buildings – but so much of it is just gone.”

Reid is playing three shows in Australia this week before returning for a show in Wellington on December 12 and another in Dunedin on December 19.

Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7:30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.

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