Teressa Michelle Hakaraia

“Maybe that you can have a tough beginning. But you could, you know… Maybe the biggest problem in my life is that it took me so long, to find the confidence. To… figure out what is it that I wanted to do. Ya, I have a rough childhood, like my parents, my dad, was not a good father. So it affected me back then and it still affected me now. So that affected me my whole life. Maybe that’s a reason why I’m single. But what I try to teach my students that is no matter what is going on you have to be confident in yourself because if your not confident in yourself you won’t be able to stand up on your own. And it took me until I was, what? 30 years old to be able to stand up on my own and be able to think I can stand up instead of … those many years I dug my self into a hole. I think if I could go back in time and I can have a different thinking and maybe I could be a different person. What could I have become? I could have been an astronaut, you know, because I was a smart person. But I had spent so much of my time having no confidence. So that’s that, you have to be confident in yourself and learn how to stand up for yourself.” – Tess Hakaraia